Talk:Romance plurals

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Romanian is an Eastern Romance language. Italian is in the Italo-Western group. There may be some dispute about how Italian should be grouped however, I'll get back to this Bonaparte. The Eastern-Western division is based on the La Spezia-Rimini line. There is a lot to it, but there are also other things to consider. I'll get some references eventually. For the purposes of this article however (detailing plural formation), the Western-Eastern division is accurate. Alexander 007 04:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Alex 007's take on this: merge with La Spezia-Rimini Line. Further comments: I do not think linguists actually group Romanian and Italian in one sub-group, though the West-East division is interesting. Romanian and Dalmatian are not even in the same sub-group, aside from some linguists in the past who maybe grouped them together on some hypothetical branch of Romance. Alexander 007 05:47, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, Romance languages are more like points in an Rⁿ space, rather than points on an R axis, so there can be more groupings, depeding in which subgroup of features you take.

True, I thought of that; a sub-group with further sub-groups, or a different type of "grouping" based on some features in common. But my own opinion, not usable in Wikipedia, is that Eastern Romance developed quite separately from Italian, so the East-West division is not indicative of some close branch. Alexander 007 00:02, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, it can be summarized like this. But indeed, Romanian developed many features that make it distinct from the Western Romance. The "s" plural was just an inovation that simply did not reach Italy, Romania or Sardinia and just proves that these languages were isolated from the other Romance languages, not that Romanian and Italian were connected. bogdan 00:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It in fact indicates at least 3 groups to me. Western Romance; "Mid-Romance"; and Eastern Romance. Alexander 007 00:28, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] There is more to it...

What about the way plurals are formed in, say, Piedmontese or Lombard? Only in Lombard there are at least two (maybe three) ways (depending on the variety) to form the plural of nouns and adjectives...

Example (Ticinese/Western Lombard koiné):

m. ul gatt 'the (male) cat' ~ i gatt 'the (tom) cats' (sg.: Ø ending, pl.: Ø ending)

f. la gata 'the (female) cat' ~ i gatt 'the (female) cats' (sg.: -a ending, pl.: Ø ending).

That is to say:

m. sg.: Ø ending, pl.: Ø ending -- i.e. unchanged

f. sg.: a ending, pl.: Ø ending

Other varieties have:

m. sg.: Ø ending, pl.: Ø ending -- i.e. unchanged

f. sg.: a ending, pl.: i/e ending

Others have:

m. sg.: Ø ending, pl.: Ø ending -- i.e. unchanged

f. sg.: a ending, pl.: a ending -- i.e. unchanged

Moreover, many Lombard varieties make also use of metaphony:

m. sg. vecc 'old' ~ m. pl. vicc 'old'

m. sg. tòch 'piece' ~ m. pl. töch 'pieces'

--Jorgengb 22:44, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Even Friulian, that is generally regarded as a language with s-plural, does pose some problems. Cf. Friulian language, 'Exceptions':

[edit] Exceptions

Masculine nouns ending in -l or -li form their plurals by substituting -i for the l or the li.

• cjaval, cjavai = horse, horses
• fîl, fîi = string, strings
• cjapiel, cjapiei = hat, hats
• cjaveli, cjavei = hair, hairs
• voli, voi = eye, eyes
• zenoli, zenoi = knee, knees

[...]

Some masculine nouns which end in -t are pluralized by changing the final -t to -cj.

• dint, dincj = tooth, teeth
• dut, ducj = all (of one thing), all (of several things)

--Jorgengb 23:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IPA

I'm not an expert on IPA (nor, really, on Romanian) but [bunitʃi] doesn't strike me as quite right: that terminal [i] is barely pronounced, if at all, I'd expect that there is a different symbol for that. Certainly not the same sound as the Italian in the immediately previous example. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:52, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to add there another sign but I couldn't find it :( So if you know romanian you know how to pronounce bunici is like dutch. Please add if you can. Bonaparte talk 20:00, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is a different symbol: ʲ (small sup j) bogdan 20:03, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

LOL and how could I make the difference, for me is still a square Bonaparte talk 20:09, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

You don't have the right fonts installed. bogdan 20:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Probabil. Bonaparte talk 20:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I fiddled round with that, not knowing the Romanian phonology and just assuming that the only thing wrong was that the Italian and Romanian transcriptions had ɪ where they should've had tʃ. My bad. As to ʲ looking like a box, if you're using Internet Explorer it might be because IE is really bad at handling fonts. Does it look better in my post here? Basically, there's a template {{IPA|#1}} which tries to work around the bug in IE using another bug in IE. Real solution? Use Mozilla or Firefox or something. —Felix the Cassowary 03:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)