Considerations to some forms of the verb a fi: sum and sunt

Affiliations

• Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, Str. Edgar Quinet 5–7, Sector 1, 010017 Bucharest, Romania
• Romanian Academy, Calea Victoriei 125, Sector 1, 010071 Bucharest, Romania

History

Received June 4, 2018
Accepted June 9, 2018
Published October 7, 2018

Key words

Romanian literary norm
literary norm
cultured verbal forms
sum
sunt

Abstract

The history of the verbal forms sum and sunt, introduced into the literary writing by the Transylvanian Latinist School, reveals a winding process in the elaboration of certain cultured norms proper to the modern literary Romanian. Not at all linear, this process was concurrently influenced by two, often divergent, tendencies that were active from the end of the 18^th century up to the beginning of the 20^th century: the use of some cultured forms, borrowed from Latin or created according to Latin patterns; and the revitalization of certain linguistic forms with regional diffusion.

Initially proposed as literary pronunciations, the two verbal forms were soon adopted and used as etymological graphic forms that corresponded to sîm and suntu from certain conservative patois. During the second half of the 19^th century (sum), and during the first decades of the 20^th century (sunt), the two graphic forms became orthoepic norms as well, due to the phonological tradition of the Romanian writing.

Copyright

© 2018 The Authors. Publishing rights belong to the Journal. The article is freely accessible under the terms and conditions of the CC-BY Open Access licence.