Features of noun quantifiers in old Romanian

Afiliații

• Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, Str. Edgar Quinet 5–7, Sector 1, 010017 Bucharest, Romania
• “Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics, Calea 13 Septembrie 13, 050711 Bucharest, Romania

Istoric

Received May 18, 2017
Accepted June 4, 2017
Published September 30, 2017

Cuvinte-cheie

historical grammar
biblical text
old documents

Rezumat

This study is part of a collective research on the historical morphology of Romanian, conducted at the Institute of Linguistics of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. This analysis approaches in detail a specific issue in the diachrony of noun quantifiers, more precisely, the tendency towards internal fusion which compound ordinal numerals showed in old Romanian (the 16^th to 18^th centuries). The tendency towards formal unity determined certain changes in the morphology and syntax of numerals. Thus, the aim of this analysis is to highlight and explain the morphosyntactic manifestations of this process. Therefore, the forms of the numeral are discussed in relation to the syntactic structure of the quantified nominal phrase. The framework adopted here is the theory of grammaticalization, and contemporary diachronic syntax. The analysis of the old structures containing ordinal numerals allows us to formulate observations related to: the inflectional features of the ordinal numerals and their combination with articles, the grammaticalization degree of the formative al, the origin of the enclitic formatives –l(u)/–le/–lea, –a, and the ordering of these formatives.

Drepturi de autor

© 2017 Autorii. Drepturile de publicare aparțin Revistei. Textul este accesibil în mod gratuit, în concordanță cu prevederile licenței Open Access CC-BY.