A linguistic description of Istro-Rumanian

Thesis

This work is a synchronic linguistic description of Istro-Rumanian, in accordance with certain principles of functional linguistics, as developed by the neo-Prague school. Although the work does not set out to be a linguistic theory, certain of the linguistic concepts which I have borrowed have, in the interests of the description, been extended and adapted, and in one case a new notion has been introduced.

The description is in two parts, which correspond to Martinet's distinction between the first and the second articulations of language; the two parts are respectively the grammar and the phonology. The concepts which I have borrowed, and in some cases adapted and extended, are those of the phoneme, the simultaneous bundle, the distributional unit, the position, the moneme and the grammateme. These concepts are used extensively throughout this work.

Istro-Rumanian is the language, or closely related group of dialects, spoken in two small "linguistic islets" in the Istrian peninsula in Yugoslavia. In cases where there is linguistic divergence between the two "islets", I have taken the forms of the Northern one as representing the "standard" dialect, and noted the divergent Southern forms where appropriate. As its name suggests, Istro-Rumanian is a Romance language, from the historical point of view a dialect of Daco-Rumanian, but one which has been heavily contaminated by other languages, particularly by Serbo-Croat. The latter language is spoken by virtually all of the speakers of Intro-Romanian, and is the language in which the children are being currently schooled. Istro-Rumanian, even for its native speakers, is not a written language, and this factor is an important agent contributory to the decline of the language and to its presumed eventual demise. The written representations of Istro—Rumanian speech occurring throughout this work are therefore in my own notation and are based on the "broad" transcription of recorded material collected by me. The recordings were obtained during two separate periods of field research in Istria during the Long Vacations of 1966 and 1967; they amount to forty hours of recorded Istro-Rumanian speech taken from thirty six informants, all of whom are native speakers. My "broad" transcription derives from the "narrow" transcription which I first made from my field recordings.

Authors: Hurren, H

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: dialect; linguistic; Istro-Romanian
• Subjects: Istro-Romanian dialect