CU PRIVIRE LA ADAPTAREA NEOLOGISMELOR ÎN REGULAMENTUL ORGANIC AL MOLDOVEI (1831): ÎMPRUMUTURILE ÎN -TA

ON THE ADAPTATION OF NEOLOGISMS IN THE ORGANIC REGULATIONS OF MOLDOVA (1831): THE NOUNS ENDING WITH -TA (Abstract) The purpose of this paper is to highlight some linguistic aspects of the original version of the Organic Regulation of Moldova (1831). Despite the importance unanimously recognized to the Organic Regulations by the historians as a turning point in the modernization of Romanian institutional and social life, linguists haven’t payed much attention to them. Although the texts of the Organic Regulations have been put to fruition in the most important Romanian lexicographical works as well as in a few monographs with broader horizons, detailed textual investigations are still lacking. This paper will show through a case study on the Moldovan version how the study of the Organic Regulations could be significant for a more complete and nuanced reconstruction of the state of the Romanian language at the beginning of its modernization. The study focuses on the adaptation with the ending -ta of a numerous class of neologisms whose ultimate source are Latin abstract nouns ending with -ta, -tatis, although they are borrowed in Romanian from several different sources (Latin, French, Italian, German, Hungarian, Russian). Such way of adapting said neologisms have not received much attention from the researchers. It is generically considered the product of “Italian influence”, and has been stated that the expected sg.GD/pl. form -tale was extremely rare, being replaced by the correspondent form of the termination –tate, thus creating a suppletive, morphologically hybrid subclass. The analysis of the vicissitudes of the ta-forms in late 18 th -early 19 th century texts shows that they were particularly frequent in Moldova, where they appear first in the 70s of 18 th century and circulate more intensely in the 20s-40s of the 19 th century (the Organic Regulations era), declining and quickly being written-off in the 50s-60s. In particular, research into the text of the Moldovan Organic Regulation of 1831 shows that in it the ta-forms are much more frequent than the tate-forms, and that the sg.GD/pl. tale-form is widely and exclusively used. Regarding their origin, the author makes a distinction between “Italianisms”, due to the direct influence of the Italian language and culture, and “pseudo-Italianisms”, in which Italian had more of an indirect “model” role. In these cases, Italian forms in -tà provided a model for the adaption or readaptation of French and German loanwords ending respectively in –té and -tät (the latter possibly also through Russian). For the intellectual élite of the time, increasingly well versed in western languages, this adaptation “à l'italienne” had two major advantages: it preserved the feminine genre of the known Latin-Roman etymon, and offered a cultured and prestigious prototype for them to be integrated in the numerous morphological subclass of the feminine oxytone nouns in -a, otherwise comprising mostly Turkish loanwords.