Old Romanian

Situația generală. Vechile texte românești prezintă destul de frecvent un tip de situație reperabil în vorbire, caracterizat de un anumit grad de variabilitate. Dincolo de faptul în sine, prima tentație cognitivă este ca, după stabilirea etimonului, să se afle cauzele acelei oscilații, impactul și semnificațiile ei lingvistice. Un astfel de caz este dat de avatarurile cuvintelor poruncă şi porunci (< vsl. *poronka, poronciti).

This paper deals with three phenomena specific to old Romanian: prehead complements to adjectives (i.e., head-final adjectival structures), postadjectival degree markers, and discontinuous adjectival and degree phrases. Following recent work by Adam Ledgeway, we defend the hypothesis that the old Romanian adjectival phrase preserves relics of the head-final and non-configurational syntax of Latin. The fact that prehead complements of adjectives and postadjectival degree markers represent a genuine instance of head-finality (i.e., roll-up movement) is reinforced by the existence of discontinuous adjectival phrases (the hallmark of non-configurationality), discontinuous structures being unavailable in harmonic head-initial systems (Ledgeway, in press).

In the written texts dating from the 16 th–18 th centuries, most of the modal forms seem to be underdeveloped. Our attention is also drawn by the large number and the various means of expressing [+ fulfilled] action or [+ anteriority]. More often than not, all the periphrases combine with the Past Participle and the Present Participle, giving rise to an intermediary form known in Romanian as " prezumtiv " , which does not have a clearly defined status: " tense " , " conjugation form " , " epistemic or potential variant " (Iliescu 1999 : 108), but which, under no circumstances, should be considered as a mood in its own right since it borrows forms from some other moods and since, semantically, it is not the only one to express epistemic values. When it was first recorded, the periphrase had no modal value but rather aspectual − temporal ones, being marked [+ duration] and having present, future or past time reference. It explains why the form ară fi aflând is the synonym of the conditional form aş(i), ai, ară + fi + the participle of the lexical verb, not to mention that at the time the two forms of the participle were confused. Au niveau morpho-syntaxique, une caractéristique majeure des textes écrits entre le 16 e et le 18 e siècle dérive de l'emploi général de certaines constructions périphrastiques verbales qui se trouvent parfois en concurrence avec les formes synthétiques équivalentes, tout en présentant la tendance de s'y substituer et tout en réussissant souvent, situation qui contribuera – premièrement – à accentuer le caractère structural analytique de la langue littéraire. Les périphrases mentionnées supra varient du point de vue diastratique et/ou diatopique, certaines connaissant des invariantes attestées seulement dans l'oeuvre d'un seul écrivain, fait qui renforce leur faible emploi dans la langue parlée. En même temps, tout à fait surprenant et varié est le nombre des structures qui essaient de rendre l'aspect [+ Achevé], ou, plus précisément, le rapport temporel [+ Antériorité par rapport à la Sit 0 ], situation valable pour tous les paradigmes analysés. Non seulement cet aspect attire l'attention, mais aussi le fait que (probablement à cause de la tendance d'annihiler en général l'opposition aspectuelle du latin infectum/perfectum et de souligner seulement les rapports temporels) tous les types de périphrases appartenant à ces tiroirs verbaux se combinent souvent tant avec le participe passé, qu'avec le participe présent, ce qui conduit à la création d'une série formelle intermédiaire, parallèle, connue dans la