Linguistic calques in the Romanian language of the Republic of Moldova

Abstract

In this paper we shall analyze several examples of morphological and syntactic calques taken from the Russian language, used in oral and written communication by the Romanian-speaking population in the historical province Bessarabia, the present-day Republic of Moldova. Unlike semantic calques, the morphological loan translations we have identified in source texts are less numerous, because the morphological structure of the language is not so receptive to foreign influences as its lexical structure. In terms of the morphological loan translations, we have chosen to contrastively analyze the forms resulting from calquing the reflexive diathesisin Russian. The constructions with an obligatory reflexive are taken after the Russian language, when, in fact, the literary Romanian language norm often recommends the use of the active voice.The syntactic loan translations we have identified are much more numerous as compared to the morphological ones and, most of the times, they reside in imitating case relationships according to the Russian language pattern

Keywords

• linguistic calques
• morphology
• syntax
• romanian language
• russian language