Certain Romance languages retain reflexes of the Latin nominative case in nouns.
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Linguistic sources indicate that certain Romance languages, such as Old French and historically Italian varieties, preserved reflexes or systems involving the Latin nominative case for nouns.
... nominative- oblique case - system ( which was mainly operative for nouns denoting human males ) . It is claimed that ... Latin genitive in -AE . Otherwise traces are rare of the Latin genitive case ( which marks relation- ships ...
What is a Romance language? How is one Romance language related to others? How did they all evolve? And what can they tell us about language in general? In this comprehensive survey Rebecca Posner, a distinguished Romance specialist, examines this group of languages from a wide variety of perspectives. Her analysis combines philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, both synchronic and diachronic. She relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors, and teases out those elements which can be attributed to divergence from a common source and those which indicate convergence towards a common aim. Her discussion is extensively illustrated with new and original data, and an up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography is included. This volum
Romance linguistics is the scientific study of the Romance languages. Romance languages have a number of shared features across all languages: Romance
Romance linguistics is the scientific study of the Romance languages.
Rom…
In all Romance languages, this system was drastically reduced. In most modern Romance languages, in fact, case is no longer marked at all on nouns, adjectives, and determiners, and most forms are derived from the Latin accusative case. Much as in English, however, case has survived somewhat better on pronouns.
Most pronouns have distinct nominative, accusative, genitive, and possessive forms (cf. English "I, me, mine, my"). Many also have a separate dative form, a disjunctive form used after prepositions and (in some languages) a special form used with the preposition con "with" (a conservative feature inherited from Latin forms such as mēcum, tēcum, nōbīscum).
The system of inflectional classes is also drastically reduced. The basic system is most clearly indicated in Spanish, where there are only three classes, corresponding to the first, second and third declensions in Latin: plural in -as (feminine), plural in -os (masculine), plural in -es (either masculine or feminine). The singular endings exactly track the plural, except the singular -e is dropped after certain consonants.
The same system underlies many other modern Romance languages, such as Portuguese, French and Catalan. In these languages, however, further sound changes have resulted in various irregularities. In Portuguese, for example, loss of /l/ and /n/ between vowels (with nasalization in the latter case) produces various irregular…
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# Where did Latin and its descendants retain a case system most recently?
Tags: latin, romance-languages, cases, romanian
- Score: 10
- Views: 944
- Answers: 1
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: hippietrail (15126 rep)
- Asked: 2013-07-02
- Site: linguistics
## Question
So we know that Latin nouns and adjectives inflect for case as well as person, number, and gender.
Also we know that all the major modern Romance languages except Romanian no longer have a case system.
I believe it's been judged that Romanian's case system is not a direct descendent from the Latin but a later innovation just as its neuter gender is not descended from that of Latin - but I could be wrong on some of this.
So my question is, which Romance language, or which variety of Vulgar Latin is believed to be the one that retained a case system directly inherited from Latin the longest?
(If I'm wrong about Romanian please show the direct relationship or provide references.)
## Answers
### Answer by Olivier (score: 6)
Old French most certainly retained a fully functional case system (cas sujet et cas régime) at least up to the XIVth century, perhaps up to the XVth century in eastern parts of France (and of cou
# Historical morphology of Italian nouns from Latin 3rd declension
Tags: historical-linguistics, morphology, latin, romance-languages, italian
- Score: 4
- Views: 439
- Answers: 2
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: Rethliopuks (364 rep)
- Asked: 2019-03-31
- Edited: 2019-04-01
- Site: linguistics
## Question
Italian is commonly analysed as inheriting the nominative forms of nouns from Vulgar Latin, instead of the accusative ones. But what happened to 3rd declension nouns?
It looks like for the majority of them, due to the irregularity of the sg. nom. forms, the sg. nom. was simply remodelled with the sing. accusative. This explains e.g.
(Latin noun forms in the order of sg. nom., sg. acc., pl. nom./acc.)
voce "voice" from vōx, vōcem, vōcēs,
-trice "-er (f.)" from -trīx, trīcem, trīcēs,
as well as fiume "river" from flūmen, flūmen, flūmina.
Fair processes. Now, what happened to some other Latin 3rd declension patterns?
It. -ione "-(t/s)ion" from Latin -iō, -iōnem, iōnēs,
Did the same process happen here as well?
It. -[d/g]ine from Latin -[d/g]ō, -[d/g]inem, -[d/g]inēs,
incl. It. voragine "chasm, abyss" from Latin vorāgō, vorāginem, vorāginēs, It torpedine "stingray, torp
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