Linguistic characteristics of the Romance languages

Word order is the means most used by modern Romance languages to show the grammatical relationship between words; statistically the most-frequent order in statements is subject–verb–object. In many of the Romance languages, interrogation can be shown by inversion of the subject and verb, placing the verb, as the element on which the interrogation falls, at the beginning of the sentence (Spanish ¿Vino el hombre?, Italian É venuto l’uomo? ‘Has the man come?’). In such examples, however, it is the intonation (represented in writing by the question mark) rather than the word order alone that marks the question. Inversion, without interrogative intonation, is not infrequent in emphatic assertions. Unambiguous question markers—such as the Latin particles -ne, nonne, and num—are lacking in most Romance standards; popular speech, though relying everywhere principally upon intonation, often has developed new particles to reinforce interrogation. Romanian has oare (Oare a venit? ‘Has he come?’); Italian uses dialectal ce, che, or o (Vulgar Tuscan Che è venuto? ‘Has he come?’; O come si chiame? ‘What is he called?’); Sardinian has a (A morde kkǔstu kǎne? ‘Does this dog bite?’); and French and Limousin have ti (generalized from such forms as a-t-il?; French Je suis-ti bête? Limousin Sieu-ti nesci? ‘Am I stupid?’). In modern standard French great use is made of est-ce que as an interrogative particle: Est-ce qu’il est venu? ‘Has he come?’ Comment est-ce qu’il s’appelle? ‘What is his name?’

Negation in Latin was expressed by a range of special items (non, nemo, nihil, nullus, nunquam, and so on). Although some of the others survive in Romance, continuators of non are usually used for negative expression and are regularly prefixed to the verb. Nuances within negation are usually expressed by the adjunction of other items. In France, both north and south, and in northern Italy and some of the Swiss Rhaetian areas, the non particle has been so weakened phonetically that it no longer can express unambiguously the important distinction between negative and positive; hence, formerly positive adjuncts have acquired its negative meaning.

French personne / une personne signifies ‘no one / a person’; pas / un pas means ‘not / a step’; and plus can mean ‘more / no more.’ In popular speech the non particle is frequently omitted altogether in areas that use these additional forms (e.g., French Je (ne) le vois pas; Occitan Lou vese pas for Noun lou vese ‘I don’t see it’).

Morphology

Romance methods of forming new words from native sources are in part inherited from Latin (the morphological device of adding a suffix and that of prefixing an element that modifies the original meaning) and in part later developments (mainly that of combining two or more free forms to make compound words and of changing or extending the syntactic distribution of an already existing word).

Derivation by means of suffixes is the most popular and widespread device. Verbs in particular must be morphologically marked as members of a conjugation, of which those corresponding to Latin -āre form by far the most frequent and indeed in modern times virtually the only productive class (thus, Latin plantāre ‘to plant,’ Italian plantare, Engadine plaunter, French planter, Catalan plantar, from planta ‘plant’). Infixes, inserted between the verbal root and the conjugation marker, are common. Sometimes they continue Latin infixes, such as the frequentative (compare jactāre for jacere ‘to throw,’ Italian gettare, French jeter, Catalan gitar, etc.); sometimes they add semantically to the root meaning (compare pejorative Italian lavoracchiare ‘to slack off’ from lavorare ‘to work,’ French criailler ‘to bawl’ from crier ‘to cry’). The Greek verbal infix -iz (as in English suffix -ize) is particularly popular in modern Romance languages (e.g., automatiser).

Among noun suffixes, diminutives are frequent and, except perhaps in French, still productive. Romanian uses -aş (baieƫaş ‘little boy’), but the other languages prefer derivatives of Latin -ittus (especially in Spanish: arbolito ‘little tree,’ señorita ‘Miss, young lady,’ etc.; but also French sachet ‘little sack,’ Italian foglietta ‘little leaf,’ etc.) or of Latin -īnus (preferred in Italian: tavolino ‘little table, desk,’ signorina ‘young lady’; and Portuguese: copinho ‘little drinking glass,’ senhorinha ‘young lady’). The Latin -ōne suffix has, conversely, acquired augmentative meaning in several languages (Italian cavallone, Spanish caballón ‘large horse’). Romanian -oi, -oaie seems to continue an adjectival form of this suffix -oneus, -a; căloi ‘large horse,’ căsoaie ‘big house.’

Other frequent suffixes sometimes have a “learned” modern form alongside the older “popular” one—e.g., Latin -atione becomes Italian -agione / -azione, French -aison / -ation, Spanish -azón / -ación, Portuguese -azão / -ação; also Romanian -ăciune / -ațiune (-ație), and Occitan -azó.

Suffixes that remain extremely productive include the Latin verbal adjectival -bilis (not found in Romanian), which can be seen in Italian bastevole ‘enough,’ French admirable, Spanish amable ‘pleasing’; and Latin verbal nominal -mentum, which can be seen in French abonnement ‘subscription,’ Spanish cobijamiento ‘lodging,’ Italian abboccamento ‘interview, parley,’ Romanian acoperămînt ‘cover.’

Prefixing of modifying elements remains frequent in all languages (Italian autostrada ‘highway,’ Spanish contraveneno ‘antidote,’ French photocopie ‘photocopy’), although some older prefixes may hardly be recognized as such today. The “repetitive” verbal prefix re- remains particularly active (Romanian răpune ‘to kill,’ Italian ricattare ‘to recover,’ French racheter ‘to buy back’).

Compound words, though less frequent than in the Germanic languages, are not uncommon (e.g., French cheflieu ‘principal town,’ Italian primavera and Romanian primăvară ‘spring,’ Spanish lavamanos ‘wash basin’).

Originally a compounding process, the most common method of forming adverbs from adjectives (suffixing of Latin mente ‘mind’) has become in most languages a morphological process, although Spanish and Portuguese retain traces of the earlier stage in phrases such as severa e (y) cruelmente ‘severely and cruelly.’

Among the syntactic means that most Romance languages use to extend vocabulary is the potent device, unavailable to Latin, of juxtaposing to any part of speech an article or other determiner and using it as a noun (e.g., Italian il perchè ‘the reason,’ Spanish lo útil ‘utility, something useful,’ French un je ne sais quoi ‘an I-don’t-know-what’). In French and Spanish, verbal infinitives are frequently so treated (le devoir ‘duty,’ el poder ‘power,’ etc.); Romanian also uses infinitives as verbal nouns, but they are differentiated formally by retaining the full form (e.g., cîntare ‘singing’), compared with the shortened verbal form (cînta). In earlier stages of most Romance languages the verbal root (most often as it appears in the third-person singular present indicative) could be used as a noun, a process known as back-formation (compare Romanian laudă ‘praise,’ Italian domanda ‘question,’ French approche ‘approach,’ désir ‘desire,’ Spanish baila ‘dance,’ Portuguese muda ‘change’).

Just as former adjectival forms are frequently used as substantives, so are nouns used with adjectival function; there seem to be few restrictions on this use, though practice varies as to whether agreement should be made (French les frères ennemis ‘enemy brothers,’ with agreement; une femme médecin ‘a woman doctor,’ without agreement). Past-participial forms normally act as adjectives, as in English.

Romance makes use of gender classification to extend and modify its vocabulary, especially by relating the gender markers to sex differences (e.g., Romanian nepot, nepoată, Occitan nebut, nebudo, Spanish nieto, nieta, Portuguese neto, neta, Catalan net, neta ‘nephew, niece,’ with Italian invariable nipote, and French lexically differentiated neveu, nièce). Modern French makes particularly fruitful use of gender differences (originally via ellipse); thus, le (vin de) champagne (the drink) / la Champagne (the province); La Normandie (the province) / le Normandie (the ship).