Considerations to some forms of the verb a fi: sum and sunt

• Main Author: Gheorghe Chivu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Diacronia 2018-10-01
• Series: Diacronia
• Subjects: romanian literary norm; literary norm; cultured verbal forms; sum; sunt
• Online Access: http://www.diacronia.ro/ro/journal/issue/8/A113/en/pdf

The history of the verbal forms sum and sunt, introduced into the literary writing by the Transylvanian Latinist School, reveals a winding process in the elaboration of certain cultured norms proper to the modern literary Romanian. Not at all linear, this process was concurrently influenced by two, often divergent, tendencies that were active from the end of the 18th century up to the beginning of the 20th century: the use of some cultured forms, borrowed from Latin or created according to Latin patterns; and the revitalization of certain linguistic forms with regional diffusion.Initially proposed as literary pronunciations, the two verbal forms were soon adopted and used as etymological graphic forms that corresponded to sîm and suntu from certain conservative patois. During the second half of the 19th century (sum), and during the first decades of the 20th century (sunt), the two graphic forms became orthoepic norms as well, due to the phonological tradition of the Romanian writing.