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Romance Plurals
The plurals of the Romance languages and their historical origin and development are an important area of study in comparative and historical Romance linguistics. There are two general categories that Romance languages fall into based on the way they form plurals. Languages of the first category, belonging to Western Romance, generally employ a plural suffix morpheme -s (meaning the "sigmatic plural"). Languages of the second category, belonging to Italo-Dalmatian and Eastern Romance, form the plural by changing the final vowel of the singular form, or suffixing a new vowel to it (meaning the "vocalic plural"). There are various hypotheses about how these systems—especially the second—emerged historically from the declension patterns of Vulgar Latin, and this remains an area of much debate and controversy amongst scholars of Romance. Two types of plural marking Romance languages can be broadly divided into two broad groups based on the historical trajectory that the plur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a Feature (linguistics), feature of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement (linguistics), agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and many other languages present number categories of singular or plural. Some languages also have a Dual (grammatical number), dual, #Trial, trial and #Paucal, paucal number or other arrangements. 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 many other languages, involves a simple two-way contrast between singular and plural number (''car''/''cars'', ''child''/''children'', etc.). Discussion ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Orthography
French orthography encompasses the spelling and punctuation of the French language. It is based on a combination of phonemic and historical principles. The spelling of words is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French –1200 AD, and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years. Even in the late 17th century, with the publication of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française">first French dictionary by the Académie française, there were attempts to reform French orthography. This has resulted in a complicated relationship between spelling and sound, especially for vowels; a multitude of silent letters; and many homophones, e.g. ''/////'' (all pronounced ) and ''//'' (all pronounced ). This is conspicuous in verbs: ' (you speak), ' (I speak / one speaks) and ' (they speak) all sound like . Later attempts to respell some words in accordance with their Latin etymologies further increased ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plural
In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This default quantity is most commonly one (a form that represents this default quantity of one is said to be of ''singular'' number). Therefore, plurals most typically denote two or more of something, although they may also denote fractional, zero or negative amounts. An example of a plural is the English word ''boys'', which corresponds to the singular ''boy''. Words of other types, such as verbs, adjectives and pronouns, also frequently have distinct plural forms, which are used in agreement (linguistics), agreement with the number of their associated nouns. Some languages also have a dual (grammatical number), dual (denoting exactly two of something) or other systems of number categories. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Occitan
Old Occitan (, ), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the 8th to the 14th centuries. Old Occitan generally includes Early and Old Occitan. Middle Occitan is sometimes included in Old Occitan, sometimes in Modern Occitan. As the term ' appeared around the year 1300, Old Occitan is referred to as "Romance" (Occitan: ') or "Provençal" (Occitan: ') in medieval texts. History Among the earliest records of Occitan are the '' Tomida femina'', the '' Boecis'' and the '' Cançó de Santa Fe''. Old Occitan, the language used by the troubadours, was the first Romance language with a literary corpus and had an enormous influence on the development of lyric poetry in other European languages. The interpunct was a feature of its orthography and survives today in Catalan and Gascon. The official language of the sovereign principality of the Viscounty of Béarn was the local vernacular Bearnès dialect of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it was deemed no longer make to think of the varieties spoken in Gaul as Latin. Although a precise date can't be given, there is a general consensus (see Wright 1982, 1991, Lodge 1993) that an awareness of a vernacular, distinct from Latin, emerged at the end of the eighth century.] and mid-14th centuries. Rather than a unified Dialect#Dialect or language, language, Old French was a Dialect cluster, group of Romance languages, Romance dialects, Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible yet Dialect continuum, diverse. These dialects came to be collectively known as the , contrasting with the , the emerging Occitano-Romance languages of Occitania, now the south of France. The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Latin
Old Latin, also known as Early, Archaic or Priscan Latin (Classical ), was the Latin language in the period roughly before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. A member of the Italic languages, it descends from a common Proto-Italic language; Latino-Faliscan is likely a separate branch from Osco-Umbrian. All these languages may be relatively closely related to Venetic and possibly further to Celtic (see the Italo-Celtic hypothesis). The use of "old", "early" and "archaic" has been standard in publications of Old Latin writings since at least the 18th century. The definition is not arbitrary, but the terms refer to spelling conventions and word forms not generally found in works written under the Roman Empire. This article presents some of the major differences. The earliest known specimen of Latin seems to be on the Praeneste fibula. An analysis done in 2011 declared it to be genuine "beyond any reasonable doubt" and dating from the Orientalizing period, in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romance Plurals
The plurals of the Romance languages and their historical origin and development are an important area of study in comparative and historical Romance linguistics. There are two general categories that Romance languages fall into based on the way they form plurals. Languages of the first category, belonging to Western Romance, generally employ a plural suffix morpheme -s (meaning the "sigmatic plural"). Languages of the second category, belonging to Italo-Dalmatian and Eastern Romance, form the plural by changing the final vowel of the singular form, or suffixing a new vowel to it (meaning the "vocalic plural"). There are various hypotheses about how these systems—especially the second—emerged historically from the declension patterns of Vulgar Latin, and this remains an area of much debate and controversy amongst scholars of Romance. Two types of plural marking Romance languages can be broadly divided into two broad groups based on the historical trajectory that the plur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Romance
Proto-Romance is the result of applying the comparative method to reconstruct the latest common ancestor of the Romance languages. 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. 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 diphthongs 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Latin
Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin, and developed by the 3rd century AD into Late Latin. In some later periods, the former was regarded as good or proper Latin; the latter as debased, degenerate, or corrupted. The word ''Latin'' is now understood by default to mean "Classical Latin"; for example, modern Latin textbooks almost exclusively teach Classical Latin. Cicero and his contemporaries of the late republic referred to the Latin language, in contrast to other languages such as Greek, as or . They distinguished the common vernacular, however, as Vulgar Latin (''sermo vulgaris'' and ''sermo vulgi''), in contrast to the higher register (sociolinguistics), register that they called , sometimes translated as "Latinity". ''Latinitas'' was also called ("speech of the good fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Third Declension
The third declension is a category of nouns in Latin and Greek with broadly similar case formation — diverse stems, but similar endings. Sanskrit also has a corresponding class (although not commonly termed as ''third''), in which the so-called basic case endings are applied very regularly. In contrast with the first- and second-declension endings, those of the third declension lack a theme vowel (a or o/u in the first and second declensions) and so are called athematic. One distinguishing feature of third-declension nouns is a genitive singular ending of a short vowel and ''s'': Latin ''rēg-is'' "of a king" Greek χειρ-ός (''cheir-ós'') "of a hand", and Sanskrit ''bhagavat-as'' "of the blessed (one)". Another is a dative singular ending of ''i'' (short ''i'' in Greek, long ''ī'' in Latin): ''rēg-ī'' "for a king"; χειρ-ί (''cheir-í'') "for, with the hand". This corresponds to an ''-e'' ending in Sanskrit, which might have been a contracted ''ai'' or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Declension
The second declension is a category of nouns in Latin and Greek with similar case formation. In particular, these nouns are thematic, with an original ''o'' in most of their forms. In Classical Latin, the short ''o'' of the nominative and accusative singular became ''u''. Both Latin and Greek have two basic classes of second-declension nouns: masculine or feminine in one class, neuter in another. Most words of the former class have ''-us'' (Latin) or -ος ''-os'' (Greek) in the nominative singular, except for the r-stem nouns in Latin, and the "Attic" declension and contracted declension in Attic Greek (when these groups are considered part of this declension). The latter class, i.e. the neuter nominative/accusative singular, usually ends with ''-um'' in Latin and -ον (''-on'') in Greek, matching the accusative of the former. In Latin, the masculine words of the second declension that end with ''-us'' in the nominative case are differently declined from the latter in the vocat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Declension
The first declension is a category of Latin declension, declension that consists of mostly grammatical gender#Overview, feminine nouns in Ancient Greek and Latin with the defining feature of a long ''ā'' (analysed as either a part of the stem or a case-ending). In Greek grammar, it is also called the alpha (letter), alpha declension, since its forms have the letter Alpha, α, at least in the plural. In Latin and Greek grammar, the first declension is analyzed as a thematic declension. But its lack of a Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European thematic vowel (''o'' or ''e'') and of any nominative singular Proto-Indo-European noun#Case endings, ending (ordinarily ''-s'' or ''-os'') doesn't neatly place it within either of the Proto-Indo-European noun, nominal categories, thematic and athematic. Therefore, it is assumed to be a newer formation: a suffix based on the neuter plural ending ''*-(e)h₂'', forming a collective noun. Latin Latin nouns and adjectives Latin first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
