Peculiarities of Romanian Word-Formation

Romanian has features which distinguish it from other Romance languages. These can be attributed to its geographical location on the periphery of the Romance area, and to its having evolved independently and through contact with different languages. Until the early decades of the 19th century, loans and calques based on Slav(on)ic, Hungarian, Turkish, and Greek models influenced Romanian in several respects, including its word-formation patterns. Subsequent enrichment by means of numerous loans and calques from French, Italian, and (Neo-)Latin has been an important force in the re-Romanization and modernization of Romanian. In recent decades English word-formation models have also exercised a strong influence. The wide range of etymological sources and their historical stratification have meant that Romanian has a much richer inventory of affixes and allomorphs than other Romance languages. The possibility of combining bases and affixes entering Romanian from different sources at different periods and related to different registers has been exploited to create nonce formations with ironic connotations and greater expressivity. Of all Romance languages, Romanian is certainly the most interesting for the study of borrowing of affixes and of word-formation patterns. The most important characteristics distinguishing Romanian from other Romance languages are: the limited productivity of the V-N compounding pattern; the formation of compound numerals; the high number of prefixes, suffixes, and their allomorphs; the presence of a complex system of morphophonological alternations in suffixation; the many gender-marking suffixes; and the systematic and prevalent recourse to -re suffixation and to conversion of the supine to form action nouns, and to adjective conversion to form adverbs.