Istro-Romanian grammar expresses the structure of the

Istro-Romanian language The Istro-Romanian language ( ruo, rumârește, vlășește) is a Balkan Romance language, spoken in a few villages and hamlets in the peninsula of Istria in Croatia, as well as in the diaspora of this people. It is sometimes abbreviated to I ...

It is similar to those of other

Eastern Romance languages The Eastern Romance languages are a group of Romance languages. Today, the group consists of the Daco-Romance subgroup, which comprises the Romanian language (Daco-Romanian), Aromanian language and two other related minor languages, Megleno-R ...

Morphology

Istro-Romanian is thought to have evolved from

Daco-Romanian Romanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: ''limba română'' , or ''românește'', ) is the official and main language of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. As a minority language it is spoken by stable communities in t ...

(which instead may have evolved independently). The evolution shows two distinct features. Noun declension shows a rationalisation of forms: normal noun declension almost totally disappeared in Istro-Romanian, whereas verbal inflexion is more conservative and its evolution is not as pronounced.

Grammar

Articles

Articles have two forms:

definite In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...

and indefinite. The definite article may be

nominal Nominal may refer to: Linguistics and grammar * Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech * Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement") * Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb * Nou ...

or adjectival, the nominal being added to nouns, and the adjectival placed before adjectives. The nominal forms are: for masculine nouns: -l and -le, for feminine -a in the singular, and for masculine -i and feminine -le in the plural. As in spoken Daco-Romanian, the -l of the masculine singular definite article is dropped, leaving the linking -u- vowel, e.g. DR lupul > IR lupu (''the wolf''), DR ursul > IR ursu (''the bear''), DR mielul > IR mľelu (''the lamb''). The -le ending is used for all masculine singular nouns ending in -e, e.g. fråtele (''the brother''), sorele (''the sun''), cărele (''the dog''). Some examples of masculine nouns showing case endings,

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 ...

accusative The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

dative In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jaco ...

. The

vocative In grammar, the vocative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and num ...

case is not shown as this normally corresponds with the nominative. * fiľ (''son''), fiľi (pl.) * socru (''father-in-law''), socri (pl.) * fråte (''brother''), fråţ (pl.) The -a replaces -ĕ and -e, e.g. cåsĕ > cåsa (''the house''), nopte > nopta (''the night''); however a few feminine nouns ending in a stressed -e behave differently, e.g. ste > stevu (''the star''), ne > nevu (''the snow''). * fetĕ (''girl''), fete (pl.) * muľerĕ (''woman''), muľere (pl.) * ste (''star''), stele (pl.) Neuter nouns behave as masculine nouns in the singular and feminine in the plural. * bråţ (''arm''), bråţe (pl.) – bråţu (''the arm''), bråţele (pl.) * os (''bone''), ose (pl.) – osu (''the bone''), osele (pl.) * zid (''wall''), zidur (pl.) – zidu (''the wall''), zidurle (pl.) * plug (''plough''), plugur (pl.) – plugu (''the plough''), plugurle (pl.) The forms of the adjectival article are ''ćela'' for the masculine and ''ćå'' for the feminine singular, and in the plural masculine ''ćeľ'' and feminine ''ćåle'', e.g. ćela bur (''the good one''). The masculine indefinite article is ''un'' and feminine is ''o''. The declension of the indefinite article has disappeared. Examples: un om (''a man''), un cå (''a horse''), o misĕ (''a table''), o båbĕ (''an old woman'').

Adjectives

Adjectives also have three

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...

s, the masculine and feminine forms from the Latin, while the neuter form is of Slavic origin. E.g. bur, burĕ, buro (''good''). The

comparative general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as well ...

adjective is måi bur (''better'') and the

superlative Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In language ...

is ćel måi bur (''the best''). The adjective may precede the noun: bura zi (''(the) good day''), which in itself can be made definite by the change of -ĕ to -a; or follows the noun: feta muşåtĕ (''the beautiful girl'').

Pronouns

Definite pronouns can be

personal Personal may refer to: Aspects of persons' respective individualities * Privacy * Personality * Personal, personal advertisement, variety of classified advertisement used to find romance or friendship Companies * Personal, Inc., a Washington, ...

possessive A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...

, demonstrative, relative and

interrogative An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...

References

* A. Kovačec: Notes sur les formes de cas en istroroumain. Studia Romanica 13–14: 75–84, Zagreb 1962 * A. Kovačec: Certaines modifications grammaticales des 'quantitatifs' et 'qualitatifs' istroroumains dues a l' influence croate. Studia Romanica 23: 195–210, Zagreb 1967 * A. Kovačec: Le calque lexical d' apres le croate comme cause de certains changements grammaticaux istroroumains. Actele de XII Congres International de Lingvistica si Filologie Romanica, vol. 2: 1127–1131, Bucuresti 1971 * A. Kovačec: Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik s gramatikom i tekstovima ''(Glosar Istroroman-Croat cu gramatica si texte)''. Verba moritura vol. I. Mediteran, Pula 1998

External links

The Istro-romanians in Croatia – Alphabet

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20081009174954/http://istrianet.org/istria/linguistics/istrorumeno/index.htm Istro-Romanian Community Worldwide {{Language grammars

Grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

Italic grammars