Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics (May 2014)
De-phrases and specificity in old Romanian
Abstract
Romanian inherited the Romance de-genitive from Latin. In the 16th century, the de-genitive had an archaic character and was used in the formal register. The absence of the de-genitive from original documents goes to show that it was not used in the spoken language any longer. In the first grammar textbooks of Romanian, from the 18th century, the de-genitive was a bookish form.
