Proto-Romance language

Proto-Romance language
Proto-Romance is the comparatively reconstructed ancestor of all Romance languages. It reflects a late variety of spoken Latin prior to regional fragmentation.
Phonology
Vowels
Monophthongs
Diphthong
The only phonemic diphthong was .
Phonetics
Vowels were lengthened in stressed open syllables.
Stressed may have yielded the incipient diphthongs when followed, in the same word, by a syllable containing a close vowel.
Whatever the precise outcome, Maiden argues that this phenomenon would have been limited, at the Proto-Romance stage, to open syllables. That is, it would have applied only to instances of subjected to stressed-open-syllable lengthening.
Constraints
Neither a distinct nor occurred in unstressed position on account of having merged into and respectively.
Neither a distinct nor occurred in the second syllable of words with the structure (such as càntatóre 'singer') on account of having merged into and respectively.
Consonants
Palatalized consonants
There is disagreement over whether Proto-Romance had phonemic palatalization. For the purposes of this article, it is assumed that it did.
Palatalized consonants tended to geminate in intervocalic position, though the extent of this varied by consonant.
There appears to have been a tendency to merge and occasionally into .
was affricated to or .
Phonetics
A prop-vowel [ɪ] was added before word-initial /sC/ clusters not already preceded by a vowel (as in ).
The sequence was likely realized as at first, with subsequent developments varying by region.
was likely realized as or , possibly with gemination in intervocalic position.
and might have been fricatives or approximants in intervocalic position.
might have been apico-alveolar.
might have been retroflex.
might have been bilabial.
Constraints
did not occur intervocalically on account of having merged into .
The same merger may also have occurred after the consonants , but this is not entirely clear.
did not occur before back (rounded) vowels on account of having delabialized to .
Morphology
Note: the spellings provided below are based on those used in Latin and not indicative of reconstructed Proto-Romance pronunciation.
Nouns
Nouns appear to have had three cases: a nominative, an accusative, and a combined genitive-dative.
Several Class III nouns had inflections that differed by syllable count or stress position.
Some nouns were pluralized with -a or -ora, having originally been neuter in Classical Latin. Their singular was treated as grammatically masculine, while their plural was treated as feminine.
Such nouns, due to their plurals, were often reanalyzed as collective feminine nouns.
Adjectives
Positive
Comparative
Proto-Romance inherited the comparative suffix -ior from Latin, but only in a limited number of adjectives.
Otherwise, the typical way to form a comparative seems to have been to add either plus or magis (meaning 'more') to a positive adjective.
Superlative
With the exception of a few fossilized forms, such as /ˈpɛssɪmʊs/ 'worst', superlatives were formed by adding an intensifying adverb or prefix (/mʊltu, bɛne, per-, tras-/ etc.) to a positive adjective. Comparative forms could also have been made superlative by adding a demonstrative adjective.
Possessive
Feminine singular forms shown below. In certain cases there was an opposition between 'strong' (stressed) and 'weak' (unstressed) variants.
Pronouns
Personal
Numerous variant forms appear to have existed. For the third-person genitive-dative inflections, there appears to have been an opposition between 'strong' (stressed) and 'weak' (unstressed) variants, as also with the possessive adjectives.
Relative
The interrogative pronouns were the same, except that the neuter nominative-accusative form was .
Verbs
Proto-Romance verbs belonged to three main classes, each characterized by a different thematic vowel. Their conjugations were built on three stems and involved various combinations of mood, aspect, and tense.
Present indicative
Participles
As in Latin, present participles had an active sense and inflected like class III adjectives, while past participles had a passive sense and inflected like class I/II adjectives. Regular forms would have been as follows (in the accusative feminine singular):
See also
Palatalization in the Romance languages
Phonological changes from Classical Latin to Proto-Romance
Notes
References
Bibliography
Forms of Latin
Romance languages
Romance