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Romance Plurals
This article describes the different ways of forming the plural forms of nouns and adjectives in the Romance languages, and discusses various hypotheses about how these systems emerged historically from the declension patterns of Vulgar Latin. Three types of plural marking Romance languages can be divided into two broad groups depending on how the regular plural forms of nouns and adjectives are formed. One strategy is the addition of the plural suffix ''-s''. For example: *Spanish: ''buena madre'' "good mother (sing.)" → ''buenas madres'' "good mothers (plur.)" Modern languages that have this type of plural suffix include Catalan, French, Occitan, Portuguese, Galician, Romansh, Sardinian and Spanish. The second strategy involves changing (or adding) the final vowel: *Italian: ''buona madre'' "good mother (sing.)" → ''buone madri'' "good mothers (plur.)" The main examples of modern Romance languages exhibiting this type of plural marking are Italian, Venetian, Gallo-Ita ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of singular or plural, both of which are cited by using the hash sign (#) or by the numero signs "No." and "Nos." respectively. Some languages also have a dual, trial and paucal number or other arrangements. The count distinctions typically, but not always, correspond to the actual count of the referents of the marked noun or pronoun. The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see "Grammatical aspect". Overview Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. One widespread distinction, found in English and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallo-Italic Languages
The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages of northern Italy. They are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian, and Romagnol. Although most publications define Venetian as part of the Italo-Dalmatian branch, both Ethnologue and Glottolog group it into the Gallo-Italic languages. These languages are spoken also in the departement of Alpes-Maritimes in France, Ticino and southern Grisons in Switzerland and the microstates of Monaco and San Marino. They are still spoken to some extent by the Italian diaspora in countries with Italian immigrant communities. Having a Celtic substratum and a Germanic, mostly Lombardic, superstrate, Gallo-Italian descends from the Latin spoken in northern part of Italia (former Cisalpine Gaul). The group had for part of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages a close linguistic link with Gaul and Raetia, west and north to the Alps. From the late Middle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diachronics Of Plural Inflection In The Gallo-Italian Languages
The general lines of ''diachronics'' of Lombard and Piedmontese plural declension are drawn here: Feminine In Lombard and Piedmontese, feminine plural is generally derived from Latin first declension accusative -as; nouns from other classes first collapsed there; some concrete realisations are: *-as > -a *-as > -es > -e *-as > -es > -ei > -i *-as > -es > -ei > -i > -e *-as > -es > -ei > -i > -∅ Masculine On the contrary, masculine plural is generally derived from Latin second declension nominative -i; this suffix eventually drops or gives rise to palatalisation or metaphonesis; some concrete realisations are: *-li > -lj > -gl > -j *-ni > -nj > -gn *-ti > -tj > -cc * Metaphonesis (in regression) : orti > öört; *Neutralisation: -i > -∅ See also *Western Lombard *Eastern Lombard *Piedmontese *Romance plurals This article describes the different ways of forming the plural forms of nouns and adjectives in the Romance languages, and discusses various hypotheses about how these ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classification Of Romance Languages
The internal classification of the Romance languages is a complex and sometimes controversial topic which may not have one single answer. Several classifications have been proposed, based on different criteria. Attempts at classifying Romance languages Difficulties of classification The comparative method used by linguists to build family language trees is based on the assumption that the member languages evolved from a single proto-language by a sequence of binary splits, separated by many centuries. With that hypothesis, and the glottochronological assumption that the degree of linguistic change is roughly proportional to elapsed time, the sequence of splits can be deduced by measuring the differences between the members. However, the history of Romance languages, as we know it, makes the first assumption rather problematic. While the Roman Empire lasted, its educational policies and the natural mobility of its soldiers and administrative officials probably ensured some deg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
