Abstract
The chapter presents an overview of the principal syntactic-typological features of Romani dialects, building on Matras (2002, Chapter 7) and drawing on a representative sample from the Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) database including free-speech recordings from RMS and the Pangloss Collection. The chapter is informed by cross-linguistic studies in syntactic typology, as represented by the entries of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) and other selected typological works and covers features including linear order in the noun phrase, constituent order in the verb phrase, possession and external possession and complex clauses.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adamou, Evangelia. 2013. Replicating Spanish estar in Mexican Romani. Linguistics 51 (6): 1075–1105.
Adamou, Evangelia. 2016. A corpus-driven approach to language contact: Endangered languages in a comparative perspective. Boston and Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Alexopoulou, Theodora. 2006. Resumption in relative clauses. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 24 (1): 57–111.
Andrews, Avery D. 2007. Relative clauses. In Language typology and syntactic description, ed. Timothy Shopen, 206–236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Arvaniti, Amalia, and Evangelia Adamou. 2011. Focus expression in Romani. In Proceedings of the 28th west coast conference on formal linguistics, ed. Mary Byram Washburn, Katherine McKinney-Bock, Erika Varis, Ann Sawyer, and Barbara Tomaszewicz, 240–248. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Benišek, Michael. 2017. Eastern Uzh varieties of North Central Romani. Unpublished PhD thesis, Charles University of Prague.
Bodnárová, Zuzana. 2015. Vend Romani: A grammatical description and sociolinguistic situation of the so-called Vend dialects of Hungary. Unpublished PhD thesis, Charles University of Prague.
Boretzky, Norbert. 1993a. Bugurdži. Deskriptiver und historischer Abriß eines Romani Dialekts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Boretzky, Norbert. 1993b. Conditional sentences in Romani. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 46: 83–99.
Boretzky, Norbert. 1996a. The ‘new infinitive’ in Romani. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 5th ser., 6: 1–51.
Boretzky, Norbert. 1996b. Entlehnte Wortstellungssyntax im Romani. In Beiträge zum 10, ed. Norbert Boretzky, Werner Enninger, and Thomas Stolz, 95–121. Bochum: Brockmeyer.
Boretzky, Norbert. 1998. Erli. Eine Bestandsaufnahme nach den Texte von Gilliat-Smith. Studii Romani 5–6: 122–160.
Bubeník, Vít. 1997. Object doubling in Romani and the Balkan languages. In The typology and dialectology of Romani, ed. Yaron Matras, Peter Bakker, and Hristo Kyuchukov, 95–106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bubeník, Vít. 2000. Was Proto-Romani an ergative language? In Grammatical relations in Romani: The noun phrase, ed. Yaron Matras and Viktor Elšík, 205–227. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cech, Petra, and Mozes F. Heinschink. 1999. Sepečides-Romani. Grammatik, Texte und Glossar eines türkischen Romani-Dialekts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Comrie, Bernard. 2013. Alignment of case marking of full noun phrases. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/98. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Corbett, Greville G. 2013. Number of genders. In world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/30. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Crevels, Mily, and Peter Bakker. 2000. External possession in Romani. In Grammatical relations in Romani: The noun phrase, ed. Yaron Matras and Viktor Elšík, 151–185. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cristofaro, Sonia. 2013. Utterance complement clauses. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/128. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Dixon, Robert M.W. 2010. Basic linguistic theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013a. Order of object and verb. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/83. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013b. Order of genitive and noun. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/86. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013c. Order of relative clause and noun. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/90. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013d. Relationship between the order of object and verb and the order of adposition and noun phrase. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/95. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013e. Relationship between the order of object and verb and the order of relative clause and noun. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/96. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Dryer, Matthew S. 2013f. Relationship between the order of object and verb and the order of adjective and noun. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/97. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Elšík, Viktor. 2000. Inherited indefinites in Romani. Paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Romani Linguistics, Sofia, 14–17 September 2000.
Elšík, Viktor, and Yaron Matras. 2006. Markedness and language change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Elšík, Viktor, and Yaron Matras. 2009. Modality in Romani. In Modals in the languages of Europe, ed. Björn Hansen and Ferdinand de Haan, 267–324. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Friedman, Victor A. 1985. Balkan Romani modality and other Balkan languages. Folia Slavica 7: 381–389.
Friedman, Victor A. 2000. Proleptic and resumptive object pronouns in Romani: A Balkan noun phrase perspective. In Grammatical relations in Romani: The noun phrase, ed. Yaron Matras and Viktor Elšík, 187–204. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Friedman, Victor A. 2001. The Romani indefinite article in its historical and areal context. In Was ich noch sagen wollte… A multilingual festschrift for Norbert Boretzky. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Beihefte, Studia typologica 2, ed. Birgit Igla, and Thomas Stolz, 287–301. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Haig, Geoffrey, and Stefan Schnell. 2016. The discourse basis of ergativity revisited. Language 92 (3): 591–618.
Holzinger, Daniel. 1993. Das Rómanes. Grammatik und Diskursanalyse der Sprache der Sinte. Innsbruck: Verlag des Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.
Iggesen, Oliver A. 2013. Number of cases. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/49. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Igla, Birgit. 1996. Das Romani von Ajia Varvara. Deskriptive und historisch-vergleichende Darstellung eines Zigeunerdialekts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Keenan, Edward, and Bernard Comrie. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 63–99.
Kolliakou, Dimitra. 2004. Monadic definites and polydefinites: Their form, meaning and use. Journal of Linguistics 40: 263–333.
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 2000. Romani genitives in cross-linguistic perspective. In Grammatical relations in Romani: The noun phrase, ed. Yaron Matras and Viktor Elšík, 123–149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Leggio, Viktor D. 2011. The dialect of the Mitrovica Roma. Romani Studies, 5th ser., 21 (1): 57–113.
Leggio, Viktor D., and Yaron Matras. 2017. Variation and dialect levelling in the Romani dialect of Ţăndărei. Romani Studies, 5th ser., 27(2):173–209.
Malchukov, Andrej, Martin Haspelmath, and Bernard Comrie. 2010. Ditransitive constructions: A typological overview. In Studies in ditransitive constructions: A comparative handbook, ed. Andrej Malchukov, Martin Haspelmath, and Bernard Comrie, 1–64. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Matras, Yaron. 1994. Untersuchungen zu Grammatik und Diskurs des Romanes. Dialekt der Kelderaša/Lovara. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Matras, Yaron. 1995. Connective (VS) word order in Romani. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung. 48: 189–203.
Matras, Yaron. 1999a. The speech of the Polska Roma: Some highlighted features and their implications for Romani dialectology. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Fifth ser., 9(1): 1–28.
Matras, Yaron. 1999b. Subject clitics in Sinti. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 46: 147–169.
Matras, Yaron. 2002. Romani: A linguistic introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matras, Yaron, and Anton Tenser. 2016. Complementizers in Romani. In Complementizer semantics in European languages, ed. Kasper Boye and Petar Kehayov, 341–375. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nichols, Johanna, and Bickel, Balthasar. 2013. Locus of marking in possessive noun phrases. In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/24. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Payne, John. 1995. Inflecting postpositions in Indic and Kashmiri. In Double case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme, ed. Frans Plank, 283–298. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plank, Frans. 1995. (Re-)introducing Suffixaufnahme. In Double case: Agreement by Suffixaufnahme, ed. Frans Plank, 3–110. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rusakov, Alexandr, and Olga Abramenko. 1998. North Russian Romani dialect: Interference in case system. Grazer Linguistische Studien 50: 109–133.
Sampson, John. 1926 (1968). The dialect of the Gypsies of Wales, being the older form of British Romani preserved in the speech of the clan of Abram Wood. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1995. ‘Theticity’ and VS order: A case study. Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung. 48: 3–31.
Stolz, Thomas, Cornelia Stroh, and Aina Urdze. 2013. Comitatives and instrumentals In The world atlas of language structures online, ed. Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available at http://wals.info/chapter/52. Accessed on 25 July 2017.
Tenser, Anton. 2005. Lithuanian Romani. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Tenser, Anton. 2008. Northeastern group of Romani dialects. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Manchester.
Tenser, Anton. 2016. Semantic map borrowing—Case representation in Northeastern Romani dialects. Journal of Language Contact 9: 211–245.
Verhoeven, Elisabeth. 2010. Agentivity and stativity in experiencer verbs: Implications for a typology of verb classes. Linguistic Typology 14: 213–251.
Wogg, Michael, and Dieter W. Halwachs. 1998. Syntax des Roman. Oberwart: Verein Roma.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Adamou, E., Matras, Y. (2020). Romani Syntactic Typology. In: Matras, Y., Tenser, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Romani Language and Linguistics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28105-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28105-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-28104-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-28105-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)