Proto-Romance is the result of applying the
comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...
to
reconstruct the latest common ancestor of the
Romance languages
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
. To what extent, if any, such a reconstruction reflects a real ''état de langue'' is controversial. The closest real-life counterpart would have been (vernacular)
Late Latin
Late Latin is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the 3rd to 6th centuries CE, and continuing into the 7th century in ...
.
Phonology
Vowels
Monophthongs
Diphthong
appears to be the only phonemic diphthong that can be reconstructed.
Phonetics
* Vowels were lengthened in stressed open syllables.
* Stressed may have yielded incipient
diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
s like in
metaphonic conditions.
** Metaphony, if it can be projected back to Proto-Romance, may have initially been limited to open syllables. That is, it would have targeted allophonically lengthened .
Constraints
* did not occur in unstressed position.
[; ]
* did not occur in the second syllable of words with the structure
ˌσσˈσσ.
Consonants
Palatalized consonants
* There is scholarly disagreement over whether palatalization was phonemic in Proto-Romance.
* Palatalized consonants tended to
geminate between vowels. The extent of this varied by consonant.'
* would have been an
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...
like or .
Phonetics
* in word-initial position was assigned a
prop-vowel � as in .'
* was likely at first, with later developments varying by region.'
* might have been fricatives or approximants between vowels.
* might have been
retroflex
A retroflex () or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consona ...
.'
* might have been
bilabial.
Constraints
* did not occur in intervocalic position.
Morphology
The forms below are spelt as they are in the cited sources, either in Latin style or in phonetic notation. The latter may not always agree with the phonology given above.
Nouns
Nouns are reconstructed as having three cases: a
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...
, an
accusative, and a
genitive-
dative:'
Some nouns of the –C type had inflections with alternating stress or syllable count:
There were also ‘neuter’ nouns. In the singular they would have been treated as masculine and in the plural as feminine, often with a collective sense.
Adjectives
Positive
Comparative
For the most part, the typical way to form a comparative would have been to add ''magis'' or ''plus'' (‘more’) to a positive adjective. A few words can be reconstructed as having a comparative ending ''-ior'', which would have been inflected as follows:'
Superlative
Superlatives would have been formed by adding definite articles to comparatives.
Pronouns
Personal
= Tonic
=
The stressed or 'strong' forms:
= Atonic
=
The unstressed or 'weak' forms:
Interrogative/relative
As follows:
Verbs
Present
Preterite
Participles
See also
*
Phonological changes from Classical Latin to Proto-Romance
Notes
References
Bibliography
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** Original in German:
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{{Romance languages, state=collapsed
Forms of Latin
Romance languages
Romance