Linguistics Arhive - romanianlanguage.org

On the Centum Features of Thraco-Dacian Language

By Mihai Vinereanu| 2017-09-27T06:43:53+00:00 25 September 2017|

The centum/satem distinction refers to the nature of the first two dialects that appeared in Proto-Indo-European, namely the different evolution of Proto-Indo-European palatal velars *k , *g and *g'h. The western dialect was named centum and the Eastern one satem. Following this distinction, we can demonstrate that the Traco-Dacian language is a centum, not a satem language as it was believed since 19th century to the present. The Romanian lexical elements of Thraco-Dacian origin, discussed in this article have centum, not satem features which proves that this language was a centum language and even related to Latin and other Italic languages. Furthermore, we may easily distinguish the genuine Slavic lonawords into Romanian and vice-versa. Until now the Romanian linguists were completely unaware of these details.

The Romanian sine ‘self’ – a linguistic perspective presented at the 20th Ecumenical Theological and Interdisciplinary Symposium Metropolitan College of New York

By Ana Radu Chelariu| 2017-03-20T07:18:34+00:00 6 October 2016|

Author: Ana R. Chelariu, MA, MLS If we take the idea expressed by G. H. Mead that language is at the heart of the constitution of the self, (1934) a short linguistic approach to the concept of self, soul, spirit may be due. In the Greek world the word Psyche as expressed in Homeric poems meant the dead or, described death, most likely associated with breath. Similar association between breath and soul is found also in the Romanian neuter noun suflet, ‘soul’, derived from the verb a sulfa, suflare ‘to breathe, breath’. Other languages associated the Soul with the Spirit, [...]

THE LANGUAGE OF THE SINAIA TABLETS’ INSCRIPTIONS (III)

By Mihai Vinereanu| 2017-03-20T07:19:31+00:00 6 October 2016|

This is the third and the last part of nn etymological dictionary of the Thraco-Dacian language. spoken in Central Europe including the Balkan region which is, in fact, the ancestor of Romanian language. This small etymological dictionary includes around 1000 words, group in about 340 semantic groups. One will find out that this language has a lot in common with Romanian language, Latin and Italic languages as well. The words analyzed here are from the Sinaia tablets discovered at Sinaia, Romania. In this part one will find the etymology of the adjectives and the closed classes parts of speech (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections).

The Language of the Inscriptions of the Sinaia Tablets(II)

By Mihai Vinereanu| 2017-03-23T06:26:53+00:00 22 June 2016|

The following is the second part of The Language of the Inscriptions of the Sinaia Tablets (a relatively small etymological dictionary of Dacian language), namely the nouns (see Verbs in the previous issue of this Journal) identified on the Sinaia tablets discovered near the town of Sinaia, Romania. The language is closely related to Romanian, being in the same time the real mother language of Romanian. There were several attempts to decipher the texts of the tablets. I used here the one made by Eugen Nicolaescu.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE SINAIA TABLETS(I)

By Mihai Vinereanu| 2017-03-20T07:19:26+00:00 24 March 2016|

There have been and there is still much controversy about the origin of Romanian language and people originating either from bad faith or ignorance. Basically, it comes down to two hypotheses: the Latin or the Dacian one, both well known to all of us. The real discovery of Sinaia tablets took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, but the details remain a mystery. In the 90s of last century when Dan Romalo published the first book on the inscriptions of the remaining 134 lead tablets out of hundreds that were discovered more than a century before. Meanwhile, a few more authors tried to decipher these inscriptions. In 2014, Eugen Nicolaescu a professional decrypter published his Vorbele din Plumb (The Words from Lead) making a much better interpretation of the data. In what follows, I make the etymological analysis of 336 Thraco-Dacian words. From what we could see, the language is actually an archaic form of Romanian, with many links to Latin and other Italic languages (including Etruscan) or other Indo-European languages.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY.HISTORY IS, FIRST OF ALL, GEOGRAPHY! (Jules Michelet)

By Maria Crișan| 2017-03-20T07:20:57+00:00 24 March 2016|

Here’s a sensible reason why this science should become an educational discipline starting with just the middle school, and, as for the higher education, this discipline should be also introduced to the School of History (and l'histoire est avant tout géographie) not only the School of Geography, where it was, as Prof. Marin Giurăscu, who had worked there until half a century ago, confided, irrationally abolished, as the lack of knowledge in such domain of crucial importance has led to major errors, also in the academic environment. As for me, I joined the reasonable opinion of those two, scientific above all, figures.

The Infinitive Built Prepositionally

By cristina hant| 2017-03-20T07:20:20+00:00 28 September 2015|

This paper aims at analyzing the role of the preposition when it is used together with non-finite forms of the verb. We will examine the following aspects: the mixed features of the infinitive (substantival and verbal), the types of prepositions which can be combined with the non-finite forms of the verb (lexical, semi-lexical and functional), the ability of the preposition to generate a prepositional syntactic group, the setting/non-setting of a thematic role, the syntactic positions held by the infinitive with preposition. If the rule says that the preposition has a case government, we ask ourselves what happens to it in the presence of non-finite forms of the verb. Therefore, one of the discussed topics is the obstruction of the case government/practising it under the substantival features of the non-finite forms.

More on Cucuteni-Tripolye culture and the Indo-European homeland

By Ana Radu Chelariu| 2017-03-20T07:18:44+00:00 16 June 2015|

This paper presents Axel Kristinsson, (Reykjavik Academy, Island) new hypothesis on the Indo-European expansion from the Cucuteni Trypolie location, and its importance for the Romanian research. His background on studies of massive movement of populations from the history of Europe such as the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, or of the Vikings migrations from the history of Europe, not to mention the populating of the Americas, may offer a better solution for solving the IE spread. Kristinsson offers two models of expansion, by colonizing, and by ‘expansion system’, models that could be applied and observed in relation to the colonization of Dacia. Even though Kristinsson considers that the comparative mythology should not be regarded as a valid source in the IE discussions, one should not ignore the few patterns that could be observed in most of the IE cultures. An interesting example is presented to sustain this argument.

Bucovina: Onomastics and History (II)

By Gheorghe Moldoveanu| 2017-03-20T07:17:24+00:00 15 March 2015|

The conference was delivered in the Council Hall of the Romanian Academy on May 24th 2001
The author of the present paper describes the evolution of Bucovina from the inclusion into the Habsburg Empire of this territory - once part of Moldavia - to the day. After some hesitations, this land annexed to Austria-Hungary, which had not previously had a name of its own, received a Slavic name eventually. This name had been used by the Moldavian Chancellery only in the documents written in the Slavic language, since proving that it was not a Romanian territory was a necessity back then. The same criterion was used when choosing Cernăuți as the capital of Bucovina; it is worth noting, however, that this is a Romanian name, since the Ukrainian one is Cernivtsi. The author also analyses the dramatic changes in the toponymy and anthroponymy of Bucovina, both during the Austrian-Hungarian occupation and especially after the northern part of this territory, included in the Cernăuți/Chernivtsi region and currently part of the Ukrainian Republic, became part of the Soviet Union.

Bucovina: Onomastics and History(I)

By Gheorghe Moldoveanu| 2017-03-20T07:17:17+00:00 23 December 2014|

The conference was delivered in the Council Hall of the Romanian Academy on May 24th 2001
The author of the present paper describes the evolution of Bucovina from the inclusion into the Habsburg Empire of this territory - once part of Moldavia - to the day. After some hesitations, this land annexed to Austria-Hungary, which had not previously had a name of its own, received a Slavic name eventually. This name had been used by the Moldavian Chancellery only in the documents written in the Slavic language, since proving that it was not a Romanian territory was a necessity back then. The same criterion was used when choosing Cernăuți as the capital of Bucovina; it is worth noting, however, that this is a Romanian name, since the Ukrainian one is Cernivtsi. The author also analyses the dramatic changes in the toponymy and anthroponymy of Bucovina, both during the Austrian-Hungarian occupation and especially after the northern part of this territory, included in the Cernăuți/Chernivtsi region and currently part of the Ukrainian Republic, became part of the Soviet Union.

Words Defining the Notion of ‘WATER’ in Various Language Families of the World

By Emanoil Florin Ganciu| 2017-03-20T07:18:22+00:00 23 December 2014|

From the information shown bellow, one may conclude that a large number of the world languages share at least 8 (eight) different terms defining the notion of ‘water’ or from the same semantic field. There are, in general, at least several hundred words common to various world languages, besides those discussed in this article. I should stress that of them are found in Romanian as well. This mean that Romanian language seems to be a very old Indo-European language, not just another Romance language. The myth of Tower of Babel is wide spread in many cultures all around the world. I would like to mention here only the one of the Kaska Indians of North America: “before the Flood, there was a single center. All people lived in one country and spoke only one language”. Therefore, the myth of the Flood, as well as the one of the Tower of Babel, refer back to some real events which took place many thousands years ago and some peoples remember them even today.

The Etymology of the words țigan (gypsy) and (r)rom (romany)

By Lucian Cherata| 2017-03-20T07:16:43+00:00 23 December 2014|

The present paper analyses the etymology of the words țigan ‘Gypsy’ and (r)rom ‘Romany’. Previous approaches trace back the term țigan to the Greek word athingánōs, meaning ‘untouchable, pagan, impure,’ and (r)rom to the homonymous Persian term with the sense ‘man, husband, master of the house.’ I argue that, despite their long-established influence, these etymologies are misleading and partially inconsistent. I postulate instead that the two words are of Sanskrit origin. On this view, țigan goes back to the term at(i)-ingā-nin (‘a person who is on the move, a traveller, a nomad’). In Indian culture, nomadism and lack of purity were understood as two complementary dimensions of intangibility, a characteristic attributed to the so-called pariahs and the lower caste sudra. Due to close commercial and cultural relations between India and Byzantine Greece under the Seleucid dynasty, at(i)-ingā-nin may have entered the Greek language under the form athinganoi, with its original negative connotations enhanced by the local Christian context. As far as the word (r)rom and its variants dom and lom are concerned, a number of phonetically similar Sanskrit terms can be identified, all of which converge towards the meaning ‘lord, master of the house, husband.’ If we also take into account historical information related to the migration of the gypsy population from India, it is plausible to ascribe the term (r)rom a Sanskrit instead of a Persian origin.

The Turkish Influence on the Romanian Language

By Emil Suciu| 2017-03-20T07:20:29+00:00 26 August 2014|

The Turkish language (called also Ottoman or Osmanli) has had, during almost five centuries, a considerable influence on Romanian, from the end of the 14th to the middle of the 19th century, and having some local, dialectal extensions in Dobrudja until nowadays. The Turkish linguistic influence on Romanian was the result of a historical context in which the Ottoman Empire extended its domination and suzerainty on the Romanian Principalities, and exercised a longstanding influence on their social, administrative and economic life until the second half of the 19th century. The Turkish linguistic influence on Romanian was the result of a historical context in which the Ottoman Empire extended its domination and suzerainty on the Romanian Principalities, and exercised a longstanding influence on their social, administrative and economic life until the second half of the 19th century.