Acasă Articole RTR Aspects de la dynamique flexionnelle des noms en roumain ayant des conséquences...
Aspects de la dynamique flexionnelle des noms en roumain ayant des conséquences sur le genre
Rezumat
Some Notes on the Inflectional Dynamics of Romanian Nouns with Consequences on Gender
Abstract: The article is based on Valeria Guțu Romalo’s work Morfologie structurală a limbii române [Structural Morphology of Romanian] (1968), strongly inspired by structuralism, and continued by current morphological studies. The work aforementioned offers a classification in inflectional classes of the nouns pertaining to the three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and differs from previous morphological descriptions, dealing with homonymous forms and affix realizations. In relation to this classification, Romanian shows variation and gender switches, which finally drives to oscillations and inflectional class reorganization. Such phenomena are the expression of the inflectional dynamics of the Romanian nouns. Gender variations have different explanations brought into discussion by the present article: (i) formal identity of nouns in the singular and plural (see the identity of the singular desinence which favours plural formation as masculine or neuter in the case of astru ‘heavenly body’ – pl. aștri m./astre n. ‘heavenly bodies’ or the identity of the plural ending which favours the variation of two gender forms, as in flanelă f./flanel n. (nonstandard) ‘sweater’ – pl. flanele ‘sweaters’); (ii) avoiding invariability in the case of certain nouns (see the usage of the nonstardard neuter plural form bonsaiuri ‘bonsai trees’ of the invariable masculine noun bonsai); (iii) semantic-referential characteristics (in the case of [+Animate] nouns) are rarely affected by gender change; on the contrary, generic nouns accept this change more often: see the variants ipochimeni m./ipochimene n. ‘human beings, persons, dudes’ (obsolete and colloquial), registered by DOOM3, or the nonstandard feminine variant fructă, instead of the neuter fruct ‘fruit’). Certain variations or gender switches are supported by a partial semantic specialization: for example, the plural form diluanturi ‘solvents; thinners’, a nonstandard neuter form, expresses the idea of different sorts more accurately than diluanți. Hesitations and transitions from one gender class to the other generally involve the neuter, a fact favoured by its morphological and syntactic characteristics, common to those of the masculine and feminine.
Keywords: noun inflection, structuralist analysis model, gender, variation, present-day Romanian.
Citation suggestion: Nedelcu, Isabela. “Aspects de la dynamique flexionnelle des noms en roumain ayant des conséquences sur le genre”. Transilvania, no. 9 (2025): 37-45.
https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2025.9.05.
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