The Perception of Loan Integration

Strategies in Romanian

Master’s Thesis

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master

of Arts in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

by

Riley D. Wagner

Graduate Program in Linguistics

The Ohio State University

2019

Advising Committee:

Dr. Brian Joseph, Adviser

Dr. Andrea Sims Copyrighted by

Riley Dane Wagner

2019 Abstract

The study of cross-linguistic lexical borrowing is a hot topic today, yet there remain some languages on which there has been little work regarding these words once they have been borrowed. In particular, the borrowing of is of interest due to the amount of information that is encoded on them in the form of morphological endings.

One language that has a rich morphological system and yet seems to have no issues with borrowing is Romanian. Borrowed verbs in Romanian tend to take one of three suffixes during conjugation: -ez, -esc, or -uiesc. These suffixes hold no meaning, and yet seem to be obligatory. This shows some similarity to the claims of Ralli (2016) in her work on verbalizers in Greek; therefore, I use this comparison as a starting point for analysis. In this study, I look to investigate speakers’ perceptions of the use of these suffixes, as well as the function of these suffixes, through the use of a perception study aimed at speakers’ reactions to the use of each suffix on various loan verbs. I also compare the ways in which loan verbs are integrated into Romanian to those in which they are integrated in

Greek.

ii Vita

2017………………………………...B.A. Linguistics, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Linguistics

iii Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………….……….ii

Vita………………………………………………………………………………....iii

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………..iv

List of Tables……………………………………………………………………….v

List of Figures……………………………………………………………………..vi

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………...1

2. Background……………………………………………………………………...3

3. Methodology…………………………………………………………………….9

3.1 Stimuli…………………………………………………………………………12

3.2 Task………………………………………………..…………………………..14

3.3 Participants…………………………………………………………………….16

4. Analysis and Discussion………………………………………………………..17

5. Conclusions…………………………………………………………………….24

References……………………………………………………………………..….26

Appendix A………………………………………………………………………..28

Appendix B………………………………………………………………………..30

iv List of Tables

Table 1. Classes by Theme Vowel……….…………………………………….……..4

Table 2. Present tense indicative conjugation table of a jura…………………...……5

Table 3. Present tense indicative conjugation table of a lucra………………...……..5

Table 4. Present tense indicative conjugation table of a privi………………………..5

Table 5. Test variants of the English verb ‘download’……………….………….….10

Table 6. Responses to “Is this phrase correct?”………………………………….….19

Table 7. Responses to “Is the phrase used?”…………………………….……….….20

Table 8. Usage Tally of Searched Forms………………………….…………….…..28

v List of Figures

Figure 1. Example of a Survey Question………………………………………...…….12

vi 1. Introduction

Language changes in many ways over time, with multiple independent processes that contribute to the overall making and remaking of a given language. Sound change, internal innovations, reanalysis, and intergenerational transmission are but a few examples of these processes. Of particular interest in the study of change in many languages is borrowing, or the process by which a language can adopt terms or phrases from other languages in order to fill a lexical gap. This process can become complicated when researchers pose the question of what a particular language does with the borrowed material. The answer to this question can vary wildly between different languages, and even between parts of speech within one language in particular.

The phenomenon of borrowing is presented by Hock & Joseph (2009) in their introductory textbook on language change as a process that allows any linguistic material to be taken from one language for use in another, albeit with restricting factors on the ease of transmission based on the part of speech of the borrowed material. As they point out, the borrowing of nouns is actually quite simple, as demonstrated by the fact that it is very easy for someone who does not understand a particular language to simply point at an object to inquire about the word for that object. Nouns are generally somewhat concrete in nature, a fact that lends them quite well to borrowing. The borrowing of verbs, though, is much more difficult. Many languages are heavily dependent on the morphological endings applied to verbs in order to convey syntactic information that cannot be conveyed through other means. This makes it all the more curious that some verbs can not only be borrowed with the same or very similar meanings, but that there is variability in whether or not they can also be integrated into the morphological system of the recipient language. These morphological endings are so obligatory within such a

1 language that the possibility of their omission is unthinkable, yet the possibility still exists. As shown by Ralli (2016), different speakers can exhibit a large amount of variation in what they actually do with a borrowing, including in the degree to which they integrate a borrowing into their native language, which is intuitively counter to the previous point. This question of what speakers do with a word once it is borrowed is not always clear, and is therefore a key component to this thesis.

One language on which there has been little said about what speakers do with loan verbs is Romanian. There have been a handful of studies on borrowing in general in Romanian (e.g.

Miklosich, 1861; Leschber, 2012), but there is a gap in the literature regarding the integration of borrowed verbs whereas other languages, such as Greek, have been the subject of work on loan verb integration. The most relevant piece of literature on the subject of Romanian loan word adaptation at all is found in Manea (2005), in which the author discusses the ways in which loan words from English, as seen in a college-level economics textbook purchased in Romania, are adapted morphologically. He found that there are varying degrees of adaptation, ranging from full integration with Romanianized spelling and Romanian inflectional endings, to the wholesale borrowing of the word as it is in English. These findings are generally in line with those presented by Ralli (2016) in her study on variation between borrowing strategies in Greek dialects, which suggests that the findings may be applicable cross-linguistically. Unfortunately,

Manea’s study covered only the integration of nouns in Romanian rather than verbs, although it does highlight the lack of research on loan verb integration in Romanian. The purpose of this study, then, is to remedy this lack of data in order to uncover a previously obscured facet of lexical borrowing.

2 2. Background

In order to be clear about the phenomena that I discuss throughout this thesis, I begin with some background on the terms and processes that are relevant to this study. Loan verb integration strategies are the processes by which languages borrow verbal material from other languages and add morphological material from the recipient language. This phenomenon was observed and analyzed by Wichmann & Wohlgemuth (2008) and Wohlgemuth (2009) to first show that there are multiple strategies that are employed by various languages in order to handle borrowed verbs and integrate them into their morphological systems, and then subsequently show that more than one of these strategies can be employed by one language. In a broader sense, these strategies are subsumed under the banner of nativization, or adaptation, which is the process by which words are assimilated into any given part of a linguistic system so as to appear to be a native form of the language (Hock and Joseph, 2009).

In order to more concretely discuss the issue at hand, I introduce first the conjugation classes of Romanian, as well as the integration strategies with a bit of their history and a few examples of these as they appear in the modern language. The debate over the exact number and function of the conjugation classes in Romanian is a hotly contested matter; therefore, as this distinction is not a key factor in my study1, I default to the traditional view of the issue, as presented by Șulea (2012), as it suffices to explain the basics of the situation. Each class is indicated by a particular theme vowel, or the vowel that terminates the infinitive form of the verb. Table 1 indicates each class by use of its corresponding theme vowel.

1 The key factor here is the distinction between how these verbs are conjugated, rather than the fact that there are different classes. The classes dictate how the verb is conjugated, which makes a speaker’s choice of class in which to place a loan verb an important one.

3 1 2 3 4 -a -ea -e -i/î Table 1. Classes by Theme Vowel. Taken from Șulea (2012).

There is heated debate over the number of subclasses within this system, as evidenced by the fact that there are particular verbs that receive alterations in their conjugations, even though they may fall under one of these more general categories. Of most particular interest to this study are the first and fourth classes, as these include verbs that are conjugated in the regular fashion, as well as verbs that take one of two suffixes to the stem before being conjugated. In the case of the first class, these verbs take the -ez suffix, while these verbs in the fourth class take either the -esc or - uiesc2 suffix3. Also of note is the fact that verbs in the fourth class are required to take the suffix; however, this requirement is not present in the first class (Example conjugation paradigms are given in Tables 2, 3, and 4).

2 Both the -esc and -uiesc suffixes appear on class four verbs with identical functions, so for the purposes of this example I will be treating them as the same suffix, despite a clear difference in their distributions. This difference is discussed in more detail below. 3 It should be noted that both suffixes have conditioned allomorphs throughout the conjugation paradigms. -esc is realized as -eșt when it precedes e and i, while -ez is realized as -eaz when it precedes a.

4 a4 jura ‘to swear’ singular plural 1st person jur jurăm 2nd person juri jurați 3rd person jură jur Table 2. Present tense indicative conjugation table of a jura.

a lucra ‘to work’ singular plural 1st person lucrez lucrăm 2nd person lucrezi lucrați 3rd person lucrează lucrează Table 3. Present tense indicative conjugation table of a lucra.

a privi ‘to watch’ singular plural 1st person privesc privim 2nd person privești priviți 3rd person privește privesc Table 4. Present tense indicative conjugation table of a privi.

As shown by the above tables, these verbs fit into the Romance verb classification of N-pattern verbs, as described by Maiden (2005). This fact is important in this instance, as it shows that the

-esc and -ez suffixes follow the same pattern as their counterparts in other .

4 The infinitive form of a verb is marked with a preceding a to differentiate it from the third-person singular form.

5 Furthermore, it can be inferred from this fact that the suffixes have also lost their inflectional meanings in the transfer from , just as they did in the other Romance languages.

According to Costanzo (2011) there are three possible ways to integrate borrowed verbs into Romanian. The first is the integration of a verb in the -a class, or -ez class, meaning that the verb is given the theme vowel -a and takes the -ez suffix when it is inflected in the present tense indicative, with the exceptions of the first- and second-person plural forms. For example, the

Romanian word that was originally borrowed from French, a fuma (‘to smoke’) is in this class, and the first-person singular form is fumez. The second strategy is the integration of the verb into the -i class, or -esc class, meaning that the verb is given -i as its theme vowel and takes the -esc suffix when it is inflected in the present tense. An example of this class is the originally Slavic verb a vorbi (‘to speak’), with the first-person singular form vorbesc. The third method introduced by Costanzo is the addition of the -ui- suffix5, which automatically puts the verb into the -i class and forces it to take the -esc suffix as well (with the same distribution as -ez). There also exist two other possible integration strategies: the null morpheme, as shown in Table 5, and the use of a periphrastic form based on the borrowing of a noun, which is excluded from this study. Periphrastic strategies usually involve the use of the native word for do or make plus the borrowed noun (Hock and Joseph, 2009), which keeps all of the morphological work on native words, running counter to the purpose of this study. An example of this in Romanian is the word click, which takes the form fac click (‘I click’, or literally ‘I make a click’). This strategy and its exclusion from the study are discussed at greater length in the Analysis and Discussion section below.

5 This suffix was originally a borrowing from Slavic, which explains its restriction to use with loan verbs.

6 Throughout the history of Romanian, the use of particular integration strategies has been variable among different populations of speakers. Costanzo (2011) cites both Codicele

Voronețean and Codice Todorescu (both dated to the sixteenth century) as early evidence for this variation. These manuscripts both show more variation in the use of the -esc and -ez suffixes across verbs than that displayed in the modern language, as well as some variation between the two texts themselves. Costanzo did not conduct a thorough investigation of this variation with other manuscripts, though, so the extent of the variation is unknown.

In terms of variation in more contemporary usage, Costanzo collected a few samples of text communication containing borrowed forms from the internet. This section of his dissertation is not a complete or intentionally focused look at the phenomenon, but it does show an interesting observation that Costanzo makes, in that modern speakers of Romanian are fairly inconsistent in their choice of integration strategy; that is to say, even though many of the older borrowings have settled onto one integration strategy in particular in the modern standard language (with some exceptions), more recent borrowings are subject to variability, similar to the borrowings found in the two manuscripts.

The subject of loan verb integration is not solely an issue in Romanian. A study in a similar vein to this one was conducted by Ralli (2016) on Greek dialects, in order to determine the differences in how speakers choose an integration strategy based on several parameters that she outlines in her paper. The first two parameters are not particularly relevant to the current study; however, much more relevant to the purpose of this study is the fourth parameter, the degree of contact between the two languages in question and the speakers’ perceptions of the language from which a word is borrowed. To a much lesser extent, the third parameter is also

7 relevant to this study, in that it asserts that phonological similarity between borrowed words and native words can have an effect on a speaker’s choice of integration strategy. Specifically, this issue arose during the pilot survey as a result of a gap in my knowledge of the Romanian lexicon and is discussed in more detail below.

This study aims to explore similar factors in Daco-Romanian (the variety spoken by the speakers from Romania itself). There has been little inquiry and even less to be said on this topic, so the foremost purpose of this study is to open the door on the issue. My goal is to provide a descriptive account of the current state of the usage of the -esc/-ez verbal suffixes as a basis for future study, either by myself or others. I also give an analysis of speakers’ perceptions of the use of each verbal extension in order to gauge the acceptability of each in informal speech, as well as give a comparison between the usage strategies employed in Romanian and Greek.

I can then summarize my intended inquiry into two research questions. First, how do speakers of modern Daco-Romanian view the integration of recent English loan verbs into their language? More specifically, I want to determine speakers’ perceptions of the use of each strategy. Second, how do the integration strategies employed by Romanian speakers compare to those of speakers of other languages? In particular, I am interested in comparing these results with those presented by Ralli in her 2016 study.

8 3. Methodology

The experimental portion of this study was conducted in two parts: first, the collection of usage data on social media, and second, the presentation of a survey to native Romanian speakers. The intention of the survey was to record the reactions of speakers to non-Romanian verbs being integrated into the Romanian morphological system in terms of acceptability and probability of use. This addresses my first research question directly: How do Romanian speakers react to being integrated into their language? The first portion was then a necessary stepping stone to the creation of the survey. As I am not a native speaker of Romanian, it was necessary to collect data on the usage of English borrowings in Romanian in order to formulate a test list that would accurately reflect words that are and are not used in contemporary

Romanian speech.

In order to determine which English verbs are and are not borrowed in Romanian speech, a list of recently6 coined words and words with recently coined meanings in the context of online discussion or technology was drawn up through my own knowledge of online discussions and slang, as well as through various lists of and articles on recently coined terms (a full list of the utilized resources is found in Appendix A). These terms were ensured to be recent coinages by checking resources that track word usage online, such as Merriam-Webster and Urban

Dictionary.

This preliminary list of terms was then used to check for previous tokens of the type of borrowing in question; more specifically, each verb was inflected in the first-person singular form, assuming a different integration strategy for each iteration.

6 ‘Recently’ does not correspond to a definite range of dates, but instead to the general time period during which the use of personal computers and related technology began to become mainstream until the present.

9 English -esc -ez -uiesc Null morpheme download downloadesc downloadez downloaduiesc download Table 5. Test variants of the English verb ‘download’.

Each of these inflected forms was then input into the search functions of both Twitter and Reddit in order to collect as many unique tokens of each verb and integration strategy pair as possible7.

The collection of data was then performed as a simple cut-and-paste operation of the token and its surrounding environment into a spreadsheet, which was then used to tally the total number of tokens of each form that was found on each website. Every token on each post was collected, meaning that it was possible for multiple tokens to be attributed to the same user; however, usernames were not collected in order to preserve users’ privacy, so it was impossible to determine the exact number of users who contributed to the data set. The surrounding environments were then put aside in case they would be relevant for later analysis. Using the tally of the total number of tokens for each form (shown in Table 8), a test list that would be used for the survey was created. The average number of tokens for all forms (20.6 tokens) was used as

7 Due to the sparse nature of the applicable data, it was not possible to automate this search using Twitter’s under- the-hood access to tweet data. The Twitter API only allows the collection of what is loosely defined by the website as “recent data”, meaning tweets that have been posted within roughly a week of the search date. As the total usage of the majority of these forms, at least in the case of Twitter, can date back to early 2012, with nearly all tokens being more than a week old, it was simply impossible to collect tokens in any way but manually. In the case of

Reddit, there are no such data collection functions for the purpose of research, and therefore the search for tokens was also manual out of necessity.

10 the cutoff point to separate the verbs into the categories of high usage and low usage. The verbs that displayed a relatively high number of tokens (greater than twenty) and the verbs that displayed a relatively low number of tokens (twenty or less) were tallied separately in order to find which list contained less words. In this case, it turned out that the test list was evenly split between high and low numbers of tokens, negating the need to remove test words. The intention of maintaining this balance was to ensure that the participants would be equally tested with frequent and infrequent/unused words, in order to determine the effects of word usage frequency on the choice of integration strategy. The test list consisted of eighteen verbs: ‘blog’, ‘download’,

‘upload’, ‘tweet’, ‘print’, ‘spam’, ‘brick’, ‘derp’, ‘like’, ‘post’, ‘troll’, ‘ghost’, ‘block’, ‘follow’,

‘hack’, ‘sleep’, ‘binge’, and ‘react’.

11 3.1 Stimuli

The second part of this study consisted of a survey that was presented to native speakers of

Romanian. This created a survey body that consisted of seventy-two unique sentences (18 verbs x 4 possible integration strategies), each with two Likert scales (example in Figure 1).

Figure 1. Example of a Survey Question. Translation: “I want to blog about something”, Side: This sentence is correct”/”This sentence is used”, Top: “Yes – I think so – I don’t know – I don’t think so – no”.

The rationale behind the use of two scales stems from the example of the English “ain’t”; that is, speakers are aware of the form and generally do not consider it to be a correct English word, but some speakers still insist on using it, despite the stigma. A similar situation is being tested here – are speakers aware that these forms are used despite their perceived incorrectness, or vice versa?

Speakers were shown all variations of all verbs in a randomized order and were asked to rate the correctness of the sentence, as well as whether or not that sentence is used by a native

12 speaker, on five-point Likert scales. Once this section was completed, the speakers were then given one final question that asked if they had any further thoughts on the survey they had just completed, as well as any thoughts on the structure of the survey itself.

13 3.2 Task

The task itself was quite simple – participants were asked to complete and submit the survey form. This survey was created using the Qualtrics data collection platform. The first section of the survey asked speakers to give some basic demographic information; namely age, gender, region of origin, and current city of residence8. The following section then moved on to the experimental portion of the survey, as detailed above.

The survey was distributed in a pilot study to the members of the Romanian Club at Ohio

State who either grew up in Romania or speak it at home, as well as to a sample population of

Reddit users who are subscribed to the /r/Romania community. This community is mainly populated by who currently live in Romania or have moved out of the country and wish to maintain a connection with the politics and daily news of their home country. Many of the responses to this pilot study pointed out grammatical and spelling errors that could affect the collection of data as intended, which prompted a re-evaluation and reformulation of the survey before its live run. The pilot survey was locked after ten days to prevent further responses, at which point there were a total of 413 response forms, 187 of which were filled out to completion.

Two native speakers of Romanian were asked to give feedback regarding the syntax and word choices in the survey sentences, after which the sentences were altered to ensure a more natural reading. As noted by a handful of participants in the post-survey comments, there were also two test verbs that were removed from the survey entirely due to strong similarities to native

Romanian verbs that influenced the speakers’ responses involving those verbs, bringing the total

8 In designing the survey in this manner, I was working under the assumption that the introduction to the survey would indicate that only native speakers were to complete the survey; however, this detail was omitted in the final version of the survey, a flaw which will be discussed in more detail below.

14 number of test verbs to sixteen (listed in Appendix A). In the case of the English verb post, the corresponding form under the assumption of integration into the -esc class was removed from the study at the suggestion of one of the informants, as it is a colloquial term used in Moldova.

The second run of the survey was completed in exactly the same way as the pilot study; a link to the survey was distributed via email and through a post on the /r/Romania subreddit. This run yielded a total of 128 responses, of which sixty-six were filled out to completion. The results were then exported from Qualtrics as a tab separated value file, which was then imported into

LibreOffice Calc in order to begin analysis. Once imported, the total response to each question for each token was tallied up and recorded. Then, the percentage of speakers who gave a particular response to each question was calculated and recorded. The full listing of the calculated results can be found in Appendix B.

15 3.3 Participants

The participant pool consisted of sixty-six Romanian speakers. There was no survey question in which the participants were asked to indicate whether they were native speakers or not; however, every one of the participants was born in either Romania or the Republic of

Moldova, both of which use Romanian as their national language. Twelve of the participants were female, with the remaining fifty-four being male, ranging in age from 16 to 43. The participant pool contained speakers from all over Romania and Moldova, with a slightly higher concentration (33%) of speakers being from the capital of Romania, Bucharest. The remaining population was more evenly dispersed among other major cities, with one participant living in

England and one living in Sweden.

16 4. Analysis and Discussion

To begin, I add a note on the experimental design of this study. Upon further reflection and discussion of the survey, several components have been found to be imperfect and pose the threat of confounding the findings unless addressed and taken into account. As shown by the

Survey Sentences list in Appendix B, each iteration of each verb had its own distinct carrier phrase. This design choice was made with the intention of keeping the participant more engaged with the task at hand, but unintentionally allows unnecessary room for error in the grammar of the sentence, which could in turn influence the participant to give the sentence a negative rating based on the grammaticality of the sentence rather than the test verb. However, I believe that the participants were unhappy with the grammar of the sentences no matter what because they believed that the sentences were generated by a non-native speaker. This observation is supported by the fact that both the pilot run and live run of the survey received comments that the grammar was horrible, despite the fact that two native Romanian speakers checked the grammar prior to the launch of the live run.

The results of the data scraping portion of the study present a dominant case that the - uiesc suffix is the most preferred integration strategy, with 201 total hits on Twitter alone (in comparison to the 156 total for -ez across both Twitter and Reddit), making it the most favored suffix despite the fact that it did not appear in any searches on Reddit9. The -esc suffix fared poorly, receiving only 48 total hits on Twitter and zero hit on Reddit.

The results of the survey (Tables 6 and 7 below) show that the participants exhibit a preference for the -ez suffix and begrudgingly use the -uiesc suffix in some cases, but are 9 An important fact to note here is that the lack of forms found on Reddit could be due to the timing of the search. At the time of data scraping, the /r/romania subreddit was in a heated political debate, which dominated the subreddit’s front page. Unfortunately, the built-in search function on Reddit only pulls from so far back in its posts, meaning that the hits that I was in search of could have been overrun by political discussions.

17 adamantly against the plain -esc suffix. Based on the recorded responses for correctness, -ez is preferred for download (82% rated it as correct), upload (76%), print (83%), spam (68%), post

(88%), and troll (56%), while -uiesc seems to be the lesser evil, so to speak, over the other strategies for blog (23% rated it as correct), tweet (24%), brick (20%), derp (9%), like (12%), follow (11%), hack (52%), and binge (24%)10. The verbs ghost and sleep were adamantly rejected, being the only verbs to receive a nearly unanimous rating of being both incorrect (0% rated the variations of sleep as correct in three out of four forms, 6% in the last) and unacceptable (0% rated the variations of sleep as correct in three out of four forms, 1.5% in the last) in all forms, with the other responses being restricted to I don’t know, I don’t think so, and no.

10 The forms that are classified as having a preference for -uiesc are so grouped due to having the highest correctness rating for that verb when paired with the -uiesc strategy. All but one of the verbs (hack) had low correctness ratings across the board, but each one showed a jump in rating when paired with -uiesc.

18 Yes I think so I don’t know I don’t think so no bloghez 10 6 2 9 38 bloghesc 0 0 5 4 57 bloguiesc 15 14 4 6 25 blog 0 0 3 1 62 downloadez 54 3 1 4 4 downloadesc 1 2 0 4 58 downloaduiesc 0 2 0 2 54 download 8 4 1 3 50 uploadez 50 8 1 3 3 uploadesc 2 1 1 3 59 uploaduiesc 1 1 0 4 58 upload 0 1 0 3 61 tweetez 4 5 3 8 45 tweetesc 2 1 1 4 57 tweetuiesc 16 11 2 6 28 tweet 0 1 2 4 57 printez 55 5 0 1 4 printesc 1 1 1 3 60 printuiesc 0 2 0 1 62 print 3 1 0 4 56 spamez 45 7 2 4 8 spamesc 0 2 1 4 58 spamuiesc 13 7 1 8 36 spam 0 1 0 2 62 brickez 3 4 3 3 52 brickesc 2 1 2 3 58 brickuiesc 13 10 5 6 30 brick 1 1 2 2 60 derpez 3 2 2 5 53 derpesc 2 0 2 4 57 derpuiesc 6 9 3 4 43 derp 1 0 2 0 62 likez 1 1 2 1 61 likesc 1 1 1 1 61 likeuiesc 8 8 3 3 43 like 0 1 0 2 63 postez 58 2 1 0 4 postuiesc 0 1 0 6 58 post 0 2 0 2 61 trollez 37 11 1 7 9 trollesc 1 3 0 4 57 trolluiesc 7 4 0 9 45 troll 2 0 0 0 63 ghoestez 6 4 6 5 44 ghostesc 1 2 2 7 53 ghostuiesc 5 7 3 5 44 ghost 1 1 3 0 60 followez 0 2 1 4 57 followesc 3 2 2 4 55 followuiesc 7 6 2 4 47 follow 3 4 1 5 52 hackez 3 0 1 4 57 hackesc 2 1 0 0 63 hackuiesc 34 13 4 2 12 hack 0 1 2 0 62 sleepez 0 2 0 1 62 sleepesc 0 0 1 0 65 sleepuiesc 4 2 2 0 56 sleep 0 0 1 1 63 bingez 1 3 3 6 53 bingesc 1 1 1 4 58 bingeuiesc 16 11 4 6 28 binge 3 6 1 8 57

Table 6. Responses to “Is this phrase correct?”.

19 Yes I think so I don’t know I don’t think so no bloghez 12 3 8 7 36 bloghesc 1 1 6 2 55 bloguiesc 16 14 6 10 20 blog 0 2 2 5 57 downloadez 66 0 0 0 0 downloadesc 9 4 1 6 44 downloaduiesc 2 0 0 7 57 download 50 8 1 3 3 uploadez 58 6 1 0 0 uploadesc 4 2 5 3 52 uploaduiesc 5 3 0 8 49 upload 8 3 1 3 51 tweetez 6 6 3 8 42 tweetesc 1 2 6 5 50 tweetuiesc 15 13 8 4 25 tweet 0 5 1 5 53 printez 60 2 1 1 1 printesc 8 5 0 3 50 printuiesc 5 6 3 3 47 print 8 4 2 3 47 spamez 44 13 1 2 5 spamesc 5 3 2 6 49 spamuiesc 21 9 2 6 28 spam 1 7 2 6 49 brickez 4 7 4 4 46 brickesc 5 2 5 2 52 brickuiesc 19 7 5 6 29 brick 2 2 3 3 56 derpez 2 3 1 8 51 derpesc 0 0 4 3 57 derpuiesc 3 3 9 6 44 derp 1 1 1 0 62 likez 1 2 4 3 56 likesc 3 3 0 3 56 likeuiesc 13 8 4 4 35 like 6 1 2 4 53 postez 63 1 0 0 1 postuiesc 5 6 2 5 46 post 7 2 0 6 50 trollez 51 11 0 0 3 trollesc 8 7 2 3 45 trolluiesc 12 10 1 8 34 troll 6 3 1 2 53 ghoestez 3 5 7 7 43 ghostesc 2 1 2 4 56 ghostuiesc 3 4 9 7 42 ghost 1 0 3 6 54 followez 4 2 1 6 51 followesc 5 5 2 4 50 followuiesc 11 4 4 6 41 follow 7 4 4 5 44 hackez 8 2 4 5 46 hackesc 4 3 4 2 53 hackuiesc 41 13 3 2 6 hack 4 3 1 4 53 sleepez 0 0 2 2 61 sleepesc 1 0 2 1 61 sleepuiesc 0 0 1 3 60 sleep 0 1 4 1 59 bingez 3 3 6 9 45 bingesc 4 3 2 11 41 bingeuiesc 15 17 3 5 25 binge 5 6 3 9 41

Table 7. Responses to “Is this phrase used?”.

20 These findings show a departure from the preliminary results that were collected through the data scraping portion of the study. According to the preliminary results, it was expected that - uiesc would be the most acceptable suffix, with -ez being secondary with a smaller range of use.

Despite this early indication, it seems from these survey results that -uiesc is actually barely acceptable, while -ez is the most acceptable suffix. The fact that the participant group did not show a clear preference between the strategies for two of the test verbs is also interesting because it is in line with the previous claim by Costanzo that certain sections of the population are more inclined to use a particular integration strategy than other groups.

Due to the near-universal rejection of -esc across both the preliminary results and the survey results, it appears necessary to re-evaluate the suffix’s role in loan verb integration. The

Romanian language contains plenty of verbs that take this suffix (a privi ‘to watch’ - privesc ‘I watch’ , for example), yet speakers seem to ignore its existence for the most part in terms of loan verb integration. Because of this, I make the claim that the similar -uiesc has not only taken the place of -esc when applied to loan verbs, but that it is in fact an innovation on -esc, in actuality the same suffix with the addition of the -ui suffix and is obligatorily used with loan verbs in place of its older counterpart. This provides an explanation for the lack of -esc in both the data scraping and survey results.

In order to further understand the discrepancy between the preliminary results and the survey results, I look to the exact wording of the survey as a guide. The task required participants to rate each sentence on whether or not it was correct, which leads to the implication that the participants based their responses on how strictly they interpreted the word ‘correct’. A strict viewpoint would lead the participant to answer as if the question were asking if the sentence is

21 correct in the standard language, while a relaxed viewpoint would be the assumption that the question is asking whether the sentence is valid within the language as a whole. This formal versus informal distinction becomes even more pronounced when considering the sources of data in the preliminary data scraping. All 201 tokens of -uiesc appeared on Twitter, which is, in general, a very informal platform. On the other hand, while Reddit can be an informal platform as well, it hosts fora for topics that can be considered formal; furthermore, during the data scraping, the subreddit in question (/r/romania) was embroiled in heated political debate, which is a formal topic. This correlation of -uiesc to informal usage fits the results of the survey, assuming that the participants were working under a strict interpretation of correctness. It also explains the lack of tokens of -uiesc found on Reddit in comparison to Twitter.

Further analysis of the list of test words also shows a correlation between integration strategies and usage frequency. The words that showed above-average frequency of use (21 or more tokens in the data scraping) were more likely to be rated as correct with the -ez suffix than the other suffixes, while the below-average words (21 or fewer total tokens) were more likely to be rated as correct with the -uiesc suffix. This implies that the integration strategy of choice for a particular verb is determined by both the implicit formality of the word, as well as by the frequency with which the word is used. The more formal or frequent a verb is, the more likely it is to take the -ez suffix. Similarly, the less formal or frequent a verb is, the more likely it is to take the -uiesc suffix.

With the distribution of the -ez and -uiesc suffixes settled, a natural following question is that of what these suffixes actually are and what their function is within the language. Both suffixes attach to verbs, but only when those verbs are conjugated in the present indicative tense,

22 and only in the singular and third-person plural forms at that. If these suffixes are truly the integration strategies that determine to what extent a verb is integrated into the language, it would be expected that all forms of the verb would require the suffix; however, this omission appears to be a form of integration in and of itself. The -ez and -esc suffixes also appear on native Romanian verbs in the same N-pattern (Maiden, 2005) shown by the borrowed verbs. This introduces a clash between two notions of integration of verbs, at least in the case of Romanian: the addition of a suffix to indicate integration, and the requirement for a borrowed verb to fit the standard conjugation paradigm of the language.

A plausible assumption to make of the two suffixes, then, given that they attach to verbs in order to make them better fit the Romanian conjugation classes, is that these suffixes are verbalizers, similar to those described by Ralli (2016) for Greek. In contrast to Ralli’s claims, though, is the fact that the Romanian verbalizers are used only in finite forms of the verb and do not fully spread throughout the paradigm. This leads to the assumption that, in the vein of an

Optimality Theoretic approach, the requirement for verbs to fit the standard conjugation paradigm is a more highly-valued constraint than the constraint that requires loan verbs to take a verbalizer in Romanian.

23 5. Conclusions

In this study, the previously under-explored realm of verbal borrowings in Romanian took the forefront as a much-needed source of data and further information. The preliminary research showed that the -uiesc suffix is the most dominant integration strategy; however, the survey portion of the study showed a different picture, in which -ez is the dominant integration strategy and -uiesc has low acceptability ratings. These results highlight the observation that speakers are aware of the formality of a word and try to use the most precriptively correct form when in a formal situation, but do not necessarily do so in an informal situation. Further work will be necessary to determine more about the findings made here, namely the exploration of how participants would react to borrowings from various other languages rather than all English.

The reaction to the survey was generally negative for reasons that could not be ascertained through the limited run time of both the pilot and main run of the survey, though it stands to reason that there are sociolinguistic factors at play here, such as strongly adhered-to prescriptivism, that could be contributing to the negative reaction. It would be worthwhile to replicate this study under different conditions in order to determine whether this is the cause or not.

I return now to my research questions. 1: What are speakers’ perceptions of English loan verbs being integrated with the different strategies? Through the analysis of survey results, it was found that participants favored the -ez suffix for more frequently used borrowings and found it to have a high degree of acceptability, while the -uiesc suffix was rated poorly in terms of acceptability, even though it exhibited strong usage numbers in informal situations. This leads me to conclude that the choice of integration strategy is dependent on both the usage frequency

24 of the verb, as well as the formality of the situation in which it is being used. 2: How do the integration strategies compare to those employed by speakers of other languages? Further analysis of the -ez and -uiesc suffixes shows that they are similar to the Greek verbalizers described by Ralli (2016); however, a further integration requirement in Romanian forces the borrowed verbs to drop the integration suffix in all but the present indicative (sans the first- and second-person plural forms) in order to conform to the standard conjugation paradigm of the language. This sets the stage for further inquiry into the subject of loan verb integration strategies and verbalizers in other languages. Through this study, the extent to which these phenomena are present and interact is shown to be much deeper and complex than one would believe from

Ralli’s (2016) account, despite their cross-linguistic similarities between Greek and Romanian, which raises the question of just what is possible in other languages. This direction of inquiry is far from being covered by this study, but the results provide a starting point from which to begin digging into the issue in more detail.

25 References Chitoran, I. (2013). The phonology of Romanian: A constraint-based approach. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Cinque, G., & Giusti, G. (1995). Advances in Roumanian linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Costanzo, A. R. (2011). Romance conjugational classes: Learning from the peripheries (Unpublished doctoral dissertation).

Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America's most-trusted online dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved August 17, 2019, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/

Dindelegan, G. P., & Maiden, M. (2013). The grammar of Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Georgescu, V., & Călinescu, M. (1991). The Romanians: A history. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Hock, H. H., & Joseph, B. D. (2009). Language history, language change, and language relationship: An introduction to historical and comparative linguistics (2nd ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Maiden, M. (2005). Morphological autonomy and diachrony. In Yearbook of Morphology 2004, eds. Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle, 137-175. Springer.

Manea, C. (2005). Remarks on the Recent English Loanwords in the Romanian Vocabulary of Economics. Petru Maior University Press. Accessed at diachronia.ro on 11-13-2018.

Ralli, A. (2016). Strategies and Patterns of Loan Verb Integration in Modern Greek Varieties. In Angela Ralli (ed.) Contact Morphology in Modern Greek Dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press 2016, 73-108

Șulea, O. (2012). Alternations in the Romanian Verb Paradigm: Analyzing the Indicative Present(Unpublished master's thesis). University of Bucharest.

Urban Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved August 17, 2019 from https://www.urbandictionary.com/

Wichmann, S. and Wohlgemuth, J. 2008. “Loan verbs in a typological perspective. In Aspects of language contact. New theoretical, methodological and empirical findings with special focus on Romancisation processes”, ed. Thomas Stolz, Dik Bakker, and Rosa Salas Palomo, 89-121. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

26 Wohlgemuth, J. 2009. A typology of verbal borrowings. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

27 Appendix A: Preliminary Data Collection

Word List Resources

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/17/tom-chatfield-top-10-internet-neologisms

https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/dictionary-words-from-internet/

https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/73137703/null

https://www.thoughtco.com/information-technology-vocabulary-1210141

English Verb Twitter -ez Reddit -ez Twitter -esc Reddit -esc Twitter -uiesc Reddit -uiesc Total uses blog 39 0 0 0 36 0 75 download 25 10 1 0 1 0 37 upload 22 3 1 0 0 0 26 tweet 0 0 9 0 42 0 51 print 4 20 0 0 0 0 24 spam 0 2 0 0 40 0 42 brick 0 0 0 0 10 0 10 derp 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 like 0 0 0 0 11 0 11 post 0 31 N/A N/A 0 0 31 troll 0 2 9 0 9 0 20 ghost 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 block 4 0 0 0 1 0 5 follow 0 0 28 0 22 0 50 hack 0 0 0 0 36 0 36 sleep 0 0 0 0 3 0 3 binge 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 react 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 total uses 94 68 48 0 201 0

Table 8. Usage Tally of Searched Forms.

28 Final Survey Test List blog - ‘to write or have a blog’ download - ‘to transfer (data, files, etc.) from one location (such as a large computer or the cloud) to another (such as a smaller computer, smartphone, or storage device)’ upload - ‘to transfer (something, such as data or files) from a computer or other digital device to the memory of another device (such as a larger or remote computer) especially via the internet’ tweet - ‘to make a posting on the Twitter online messaging service: to post a tweet’ print - ‘to make a copy of by impressing paper against an inked printing surface’ spam - ‘to perform an action in a repeated, aggressive manner’ brick - ‘to render (an electronic device, such as a smartphone) nonfunctional (as by accidental damage, malicious hacking, or software changes)’ derp - ‘to do something foolish, clumsy, or silly’ like - ‘to electronically register one’s approval of (something, such as an online post or comment) for others to see (as by clicking on an icon designed for that purpose)’ post - ‘to publish (something, such as a message) in an online forum (such as an electronic message board’ troll - ‘to antagonize (others) online by deliberately posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive content’ ghost - ‘to cut off all contact with (someone): to subject (someone, such as a former romantic partner) to ghosting’ follow - ‘to subscribe to the feed of (someone or something), especially on social media’ hack - ‘to gain illegal access to (a computer network, system, etc.)’ sleep ‘to rest in a state of sleep’ binge - ‘to excessively do something’

(Definitions provided by merriam-webster.com and urbandictionary.com)

29 Appendix B: Survey Sentences

Survey Sentences Vreau să bloghez despre ceva. - ‘I want to blog about something’ Bloghesc despre alimente zilnic. - ‘I blog about food every day’ Nu vreau să bloguiesc. - ‘I don’t want to blog’ Vrei ca eu să blog despre ceva? - ‘Do you want me to blog about something?’ Am inceput să downloadez un film. - ‘I started to download a film’ O să downloadesc cartea necesară pentru cursul meu de matematică. - ‘I will download my required math textbook’ Vreu să downloaduiesc cântece. - ‘I want to download songs’ Eu download filme uneori. - ‘Sometimes I download films’ O să uploadez fotografii pe Instagram. - ‘I’m going to upload pictures to Instagram’ Uploadesc tema mea zilnic înainte să mă duc la curs. - ‘I upload my homework before I go to class’ Nu o să uploaduiesc filme pe YouTube. - ‘I don’t upload movies to YouTube’ Eu upload fotografii pe Feisbuc. - ‘I upload pictures to Facebook’ Eu tweetez zilnic. - ‘I tweet every day’ O să tweetesc maîne. - ‘I will tweet tomorrow’ Nu tweetuiesc când mă simt rău. - ‘I don’t tweet when I feel poorly’ Eu tweet uneori. - ‘I tweet sometimes’ O să printez tema mea. - ‘I will print my homework’ Printesc biletele înainte să mă duc la concert. - ‘I print the tickets before going to the concert’ O să printuiesc referatul meu. - ‘I will print my essay’ Vreau să print fotografii. - ‘I want to print pictures’ Îl spamez pe profesorul meu cu întrebări. - ‘He spams the professor with questions’ Nu spamesc comentarii pe Reddit. - ‘I don’t spam comments on Reddit’ Spamuiesc butoanele. - ‘I spam the button’ Vrei să spami forumul cu întrebări? - ‘Do you want to spam the forum with questions?’ O să brickez telefonul meu. - ‘I’m going to brick my phone’ Nu vreau să brickesc calculatorul meu. - ‘I don’t want to brick my computer’ Nu o să brickuiesc telefonul tău. - ‘I won’t brick your phone’ Nu o să brick telefonul meu. - ‘I won’t brick my phone’ Vreau să fac bine tema dar derpez fiecare dată. - ‘I want to do my homework well, but I derp every time’ Vreau să știe dacă derpesc. - ‘I want to know when I derp’ Derpuiesc foarte mult. - ‘I derp a lot’ Nu vreau să derp când vorbesc. - ‘I don’t want to derp when I talk’ Likez multe tuituri. - ‘I like many tweets’ Likesc multe posturi pe Feisbuc. - ‘I like many posts on Facebook’ Likeuiesc multe posturi pe Feisbuc. - ‘I like many posts on Facebook’ Eu like multe pagine pe Feisbuc. - ‘I like many pages on Facebook’ Postez imagini pe Instagram. - ‘I post pictures on Instagram’ Postuiesc pe Feisbuc zilnic. - ‘I post on Facebook every day’ Uneori eu post pe Reddit. - ‘Sometimes I post on Reddit’ Trollez prietenii mei. - ‘I troll my friends’ Trollesc pe forumul. - ‘I troll on the forum’

30 Nu vreau să trolluiesc. - ‘I don’t want to troll’ Uneori eu troll pe forumul. - ‘Sometimes I troll on the forum’ Eu ghostez multe persoane. - ‘I ghost a lot of people’ Nu vreau să te ghostesc. - ‘I don’t want to ghost you’ Întotdeaună am multe persoane pe care le ghostuiesc. - ‘I always have people to ghost’ Vrea să ghoste toată lumea. - ‘I want to ghost everyone’ Followez multe persoane pe twitter. - ‘I follow many people on Twitter’ Followesc multe podcasturi. - ‘I follow many podcasts’ Nu vreau să te followuiesc. - ‘I don’t want to follow you’ Vreau să follow multe persoane pe YouTube. - ‘I want to follow many people on YouTube’ O să hackez un pagină de web. - ‘I’m going to hack a website’ Vreau să hackesc telefonul tău. - ‘I want to hack your phone’ Hackuiesc telefonul tău. - ‘I hack your phone’ O să hack un calculator. - ‘I’m going to hack a computer’ Sleepez fiecare noapte. - ‘I sleep every night’ Nu sleepesc noaptea. - ‘I don’t sleep at night’ Vreau să sleepuiesc in mașina mea. - ‘I want to sleep in my car’ Nu vreau să sleep pe patul. - ‘I don’t want to sleep on the bed’ Vreau să bingez filme. - ‘I want to binge movies’ Am inceput să bingesc multe programe. - ‘I want to binge several shows’ Bingeuiesc multe filme zilnic. - ‘I binge several movies every day’ Vreau să binge ceva pe Netflix. - ‘I want to binge something on Netflix’

31