Proto-Romance Language

Proto-Romance is the comparatively reconstructed ancestor of all Romance languages. It reflects a late variety of spoken Latin prior to regional fragmentation.

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs

Diphthong

The only phonemic diphthong was /au̯/.

Allophony

*Vowels were lengthened in stressed open syllables.
*Stressed /ɛ, ɔ/ may have yielded the incipient diphthongs ͜ɛ, o͜ɔwhen followed by a syllable containing a close vowel.
**Whatever the precise outcome, Maiden argues that this would have been limited, at the Proto-Romance stage, to open syllables. That is, it would have applied only to instances of /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ that had been subject to stressed-open-syllable lengthening.

Constraints

*Neither a distinct /ɛ/ nor /ɔ/ occurred in unstressed position on account of having merged into /e/ and /o/ respectively.Ferguson 1976: 76; Gouvert 2015: 78–81, 121–122
*Neither a distinct /i/ nor /u/ occurred in the second syllable of words with the structure �σσˈσσ(such as ''càntatóre'' 'singer') on account of having merged into /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ respectively.

Consonants

was affricated to and was at least fronted to , if not also affricated to .

Allophony

The following features are reconstructed with varying degrees of certainty:

*A prop-vowel �was added before word-initial /sC/ clusters not already preceded by a vowel (as in /sˈtare/ �sˈtaːɾe.
*Palatalized consonants, other than /sʲ rʲ/, tended to geminate in intervocalic position, although this varied widely depending on the consonant in question. For /bʲ dʲ ɡʲ/, see below.
*The sequence /ɡn/ was likely realized as �nat first, with subsequent developments varying by region.'
*/j/ was likely realized as �or � possibly with gemination in intervocalic position.
* /d/ and /ɡ/ might have been fricatives or approximants in intervocalic position.
*/s/ might have been apico-alveolar.
*/ll/ might have been retroflex.'
*/f/ might have been bilabial.

Constraints

*/b/ and /bʲ/ did not occur intervocalically on account of having merged with /β, βʲ/.
**The same may also have occurred after /r/ or /l/.
*/dʲ/ and /ɡʲ/ did not occur intervocalically on account of both having merged with /j/.
*/kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ did not occur before back vowels on account of having delabialized to /k, ɡ/.

Nouns

Proto-Romance nouns appear to have had three cases: a nominative, an accusative, and a combined genitive-dative.

Several Class III nouns had inflexions that differed by syllable count or stress position.

Some nouns were pluralized with -''a'' or ''-ora'', having originally been neuter in Classical Latin. Their singular was treated as grammatically masculine, while their plural was treated as feminine.

Such nouns, due to their plurals, were often reanalyzed as collective feminine nouns.

Adjectives

Positive

Comparative

Proto-Romance inherited the comparative suffix ''-ior'' from Latin, but only in a limited number of adjectives.'

Otherwise, the typical way to form a comparative seems to have been to add either ''plus'' or ''magis'' (meaning 'more') to a positive adjective.

Superlative

With the exception of a few fossilized forms, such as /ˈpɛssɪmʊs/ 'worst', superlatives were formed by adding an intensifying adverb or prefix (/mʊltu, bɛne, per-, tras-/ etc.) to a positive adjective. Comparative forms could also have been made superlative by adding a demonstrative adjective.

Possessive

Feminine singular forms shown below. In certain cases there was an opposition between 'strong' (stressed) and 'weak' (unstressed) variants.

Pronouns

Personal

Numerous variant forms appear to have existed. For the third-person genitive-dative inflexions, there appears to have been an opposition between 'strong' (stressed) and 'weak' (unstressed) variants, as also with the possessive adjectives.

Relative

The interrogative pronouns were the same, except that the neuter nominative-accusative form was /ˈkʷɪd/.

Verbs

Proto Romance verbs belonged to three main classes, each characterized by a different thematic vowel. Their conjugations were built on three stems and involved various combinations of mood, aspect, and tense.Hall 1983: 47–50

Present indicative

Participles

As in Latin, present participles had an active sense and inflected like class III adjectives, while past participles had a passive sense and inflected like class I/II adjectives. Regular forms would have been as follows (in the accusative feminine singular):

See also

* Appendix Probi
*Reichenau Glossary
*Lexical changes from Classical Latin to Proto-Romance
* Phonological changes from Classical Latin to Proto-Romance

Notes

References

Bibliography

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*Chambon, Jean-Pierre. 2013. Notes sur un problème de la reconstruction phonétique et phonologique du protoroman: Le groupe */ɡn/. ''Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris''. CVIII, 273–282.
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*Lausberg, Heinrich. 1970. ''Lingüística románica'', I: Fonética. Madrid: Gredos.
*Lausberg, Heinrich. 1973. ''Lingüística románica'', II: Morfología. Madrid: Gredos.
*Leppänen, V., & Alho, T. 2018. On the mergers of Latin close-mid vowels. ''Transactions of the Philological Society'' 116. 460–483.
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*Lloyd, Paul M. 1987. ''From Latin to Spanish''. Philadelphia: American Philological Society.
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*Maiden, Martin. 2016. Diphthongization. In Ledgeway, Adam & Maiden, Martin (eds.), ''The Oxford guide to the Romance languages'', 647–57. Oxford University Press.
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{{Romance languages, state=expanded

Latin language
Linguistics
Romance languages