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re: In which groups can romlangs be devided?



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From: Deiniol Jones
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 11:33 PM


”Actually, as I've been writing the introduction to my Dravean reference grammar today, I've been pondering exactly the same thing.

Of course, I'm not actually a fan of the East Romance/West Romance division anyway: "Eastern Romance", comprising as it does only Romanian and its closest relatives (Arumanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian), isn't really a helpful first-level grouping when opposed to "Western Romance"- one might as well propose Ibero-Romance vs. Non-Peninsular Romance.”

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I know what you mean, and I pretty much feel the same way. It has become something of a reference point in literature concerning Romance languages, so I continue to use it with the provisos mentioned above. 
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”The *primary* isogloss setting "Eastern Romance" off from the other Romance languages is its development of the CL vowel system, wherin u u: > u and o o: > o (rather than u: > u, u o: > o, o > O, as in "Western Romance"). Dravean's treatment of the back vowels matches that of the Western Romance languages. On the other hand, it does share a number of innovations in common with Romanian, such as the development of the plural inflections -e and -i from VL -as and -es, the extension of the singular accusative pronouns by *-ne. The first innovation is shared by Dalmatian and Italian, the second by Dalmatian. The reflexes of a dental followed by yod and a velar followed by yod are kept separate in Dravean, as in Italian, Dalmatian and Romanian. Finally, In common with (Vegliot) Dalmatian, the stressed vowels of Dravean also undergo a number of diphthongisations, although the relative chronology of these changes indicates that they aren't a shared inheritance.”

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Have you got a specific con-area Dravean?
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”In the treatment of CL ct and gn, Dravean has the reflexes /jS/ (< / jt/) and /J/, in common with Dalmatian and in opposition to Romanian. Similarly, labiovelars become plain velars, rather than labials. In common with both Dalmatian and Romanian, but in opposition to Italian, geminate consonants become single consonants.

Shared archaisms are not, of course, indicative of genetic relationship, but like Romanian, Dalmatian and the southern Italian varieties, Dravean does not exhibit voicing of intervocalic  consonants, nor monophthongisation of VL *au.

Going by Hall's classification, then, Dravean is part of the "Eastern Romance" subgrouping, along with Romanian and Dalmatian. By Ethnologue's classification, I'd say that the weight of the evidence indicates membership in the Italo-Dalmatian branch of the Italo-Western grouping.

(All of which is by design, natch. Dravean is very much inspired by Vegliot and Romanian. What the above doesn't show, however, is the massive amount of Raetoromance influence in its creation, although the influences here are mainly lexical and morphological.)

Dan”

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Thanks for this, one Dan to the other …

Dan

 



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