The morphology exhibited a split between two strata -
native (including both inherited words and loans from before the immigration into the Byzantine Empire) and
foreign (predominantly loans from Byzantine Greek and some from
Slavic; later borrowings from other languages also join this group in descendant dialects). Words of the two strata were often formed and declined somewhat differently.
Nominal morphology Early Romani nominals had two
genders, masculine and feminine, two
numbers - singular and plural, and eight
cases - nominative, accusative (oblique), vocative, dative, ablative, locative, instrumental and genitive. The nominal phrases also expressed definiteness by means of a
definite article. Partly like other
Modern Indo-Aryan languages, the grammatical morphemes in Romani noun declension are classified into three layers - Layer I (remainders of
Old Indo-Aryan inflectional endings), Layer II (a set of originally separate words turned into new postposed inflectional elements) and Layer III (
adpositions). Layer I suffixes are
portmanteau morphs that simultaneously express
case (nominative,
oblique or
vocative) and number, have different variants according to the gender of the word and exhibit some unpredictable lexical variation that makes it possible to speak of declension classes. Layer II suffixes express only case and have largely the same form.
Layer I The most common endings can be summarised as follows: Native feminine stems had a tendency to exhibit /j/ in front of the vowel of the suffix outside of the nominative singular:
-j-a,
-j-en etc. This was always the case if the nominative singular ended in
-i. The following is a complete list of Early Romani declension classes largely as reconstructed by Viktor Elšík (with terminology adapted for this article): • - The stems formed with the suffixes
-ipen and
-ibe(n) dropped the -
e- before endings: oblique
-ipn-as,
-ibn-as, nominative plural
-ipn-a,
-ibn-a. However, the forms without
-s might be original in words that were of
neuter gender in Greek such as
kókalo 'bone', since these, too, were adapted as masculine words in Romani. Present-day dialects have either only the forms with
-s or only the forms without
-s, but if the latter interpretation is correct, then both rules would be the result of a later generalisation. Note, moreover, that originally neuter Greek words like
kókalo also seem to have retained a Greek plural in
-a:
kókala 'bones'. • - However, the oblique form of the abstract nouns formed with the suffix
-im-o ended in
-im-as. The genitive took the inflectional endings of adjectives and agreed with the modified noun:
-ker-o,
-ker-e, etc (an example of
Suffixaufnahme). The genitive suffix may also have had an optional short variant -
k-/-
g- besides -
ker-/
-ger-, as seen in several modern dialects, with or without a difference in function. If there was a difference, the long form may have been more emphatic and preferred when genitives were placed after the noun or nominalised.
Layer III Layer III words in Early Romani were
prepositions (as they mostly are in contemporary dialects as well). Some inherited prepositions were
andar 'out of',
andre 'in(to)',
angle 'in front of',
astjal 'for, because of',
dži 'until',
karig 'towards', (
ka)tar 'from',
ke 'at, to',
mamuj 'against',
maškar 'between',
pal 'behind',
paš 'next to, by',
perdal 'across, through',
te 'at, to',
tel 'under',
truja(l) 'past, around',
upral/opral 'from the top of',
upre/opre 'above, on, over', and
vaš 'for'. The pairs
andre-
andar,
angle-
anglal,
ke/
te-
katar/
tar formed locative-ablative pairs, but there were no special directive prepositions - the locative ones were used to express direction as well. Certain prepositions ending in vowels dropped them before the definite article: e.g.
ke- +
-o >
ko.
Case use The bare oblique case was used: 1. as an
accusative (
direct object) case with
animate nouns (as well as with pronouns), whereas inanimate nouns used the nominative. 2. It was also used to express possession:
man si kher 'I have a house'. 3. Further, it expressed the
indirect object of the verb 'to give', i.e. functioned as a dative case. The instrumental was used also as a
comitative case, meaning 'together with' as well as 'by means of'. Adjuncts to almost all prepositions required the noun to be in the locative case, at least if animate, but may have taken the nominative case if inanimate, as commonly found in modern dialects. However,
bi 'without' took the genitive and
vaš 'for' took the dative.
Adjective declension Adjectives used attributively or predicatively were normally declined as follows: A small group of adjectives such as
šukar 'pretty' ended in a consonant and were indeclinable. Nominalised adjectives were declined like nouns: e.g.
e phures-ke 'for the old one'. The
comparative and
superlative were expressed by the form constructed with the suffix
-eder. The possessive forms inflected and agreed with the modified noun like adjectives:
tir-o,
tir-i,
tir-e, etc. In the 3rd person, there were two sets of nominative forms - the
emphatic and the
non-emphatic pronouns, the latter being commonly used
anaphorically and encliticised. The reflexive was used only in the third person. The
demonstrative pronouns had a four-term system that contrasted
deictic use (for immediately present referents, expressed by the vowel
a) and
anaphoric use (for discussed referents, expressed by the vowel
o), as well as
plain use (for normal indication, expressed by the consonant
d) and
specific use (for emphasis and contrast with other referents, expressed by the consonant
k). The inflection pattern in the nominative was somewhat unique. The forms were as follows (sources differ on whether the consonants in parentheses were present): and even retain the default function in
Epiros Romani to this day: Corresponding adverbs were
adaj 'here',
odoj 'there',
akaj 'precisely here' and
okoj 'precisely there'. A related temporal adverb was
akana 'now'. 'Such' was
asav-.
Interrogative pronouns were
kon (obl.
kas-) 'who',
kaj 'where' (
katar 'where from?'),
kana 'when',
so 'what',
sav- 'which, what sort of' (declined as an adjective),
sar 'how' and
keti 'how much'. For 'why' the dative of
so was used:
sos-ke. There may also have been an interrogative
kibor 'how big'. The interrogatives could also be used as
relative pronouns, especially
kaj, which also occurred in the sense of 'which' as well as 'where' and thus as a more or less general 'subordinator' and 'relativiser' of clauses (as well as in the sense of 'that' as a complementiser: 'I think that ...').
Indefinite pronouns could be formed in several ways. The word
kaj (rarely
daj) 'some, any' could be preposed to other expressions to express indefiniteness (e.g.
kaj-jekh 'anyone > anybody',
kaj-či 'anything'). The word
či 'something, anything' could apparently be postposed to other expressions (still retaining the same meaning), as seen in
kaj-či and
kaj-ni-či 'anything'. So could, possibly, an indefinite particle
-ni, as seen in
kaj-ni 'wherever' and in
kaj-ni-či. The postposed particle
-moni expressed free-choice indefinite constructions such as
kon-moni 'whoever',
či-moni 'whatever',
kajmoni 'wherever'. Finally, there may have been a preposed particle
vare-, which had been borrowed from
Romanian - unusually for Early Romani - and was added to interrogative pronouns:
vare-so 'something'.
Totality was expressed by the particle
sa 'everything, all, always',
savořo 'all' and the Slavic-derived
vsako 'every'.
Definite article Early Romani had a definite article, which was also used, as in Greek, with
proper nouns and to express generic reference in various constructions (e.g. content or origin, lit. 'made out of
the X'). The exact forms are difficult to reconstruct due to great dialectal variation. According to Yaron Matras' account, the Early Romani forms were: The numeral
jekh 'one' could be used to express indefiniteness, but its use was not obligatory.
Numerals The numerals from 1 to 10 were: The teens were formed according to the pattern 'ten-and-unit' except for teens containing the Greek-derived units 7, 8 and 9: thus
deš-efta for 17. Thus: Of the tens, 30 and probably 40 and 50 were borrowed into Early Romani from Greek, while the others were formed with native roots, mostly with the morpheme -
var meaning 'times', i.e. 'X times 10': Combinations of tens between 30 and 90 and single digits were formed not with -
u- but with
thaj 'and' (the usual Romani conjunction with that meaning):
trianda-thaj-jekh for 31, if a conjunction was used at all. The combinations with
biš (20) also used -
thaj- according to Peter Bakker, while Viktor Elšík and Yaron Matras consider -
u- to be a possibility as well. The native
cardinal numerals, namely the ones for 1-6, 10, 20 and 100, inflected in
modifier position like adjectives ending in a consonant: e.g.
deš-e 'ten (oblique)'. The Greek-derived ones (7-9 and 30-50) did not.
Ordinal numerals, apart from
avgo 'first', were regularly derived from the cardinals with the suffix
-to: e.g.
efta-to 'seven-th' and even
duj-to 'second'; The ordinals in
-to were declined as foreign-stratum adjectives.'' For the stem-forming suffixes in slots 2-3, see the section on
Word Formation below.
Stems Each verb had two stems: a
present (
imperfective) one and a
past (
perfective) one. The overwhelming majority of
present stems ended in a consonant (e.g.
ker- 'do') and some could consist only of a consonant (e.g.
l- 'take'), while a small number ended in a vowel, which was normally /a/, e.g.
xa- 'eat'). The
past stems, which were originally the Old Indo Aryan past participles, were usually formed by adding one of several suffixes to the present stem. Usually, they were: • after vowels:
-l-; e.g.
xa-l- 'eat' • after /v/ and the voiced dental sonorants /r/, /l/ and /n/:
-d-; e.g.
ker-d- 'do' • after other consonants (e.g. //, /tʃ/, /s/, /ʃ/):
-t-; e.g.
dikh-t- 'see',
beš-t- 'sit' • in motion verbs (
av- 'come',
ačh- 'stay',
ušt- 'stand'):
-il-, e.g. av-il- 'come' • if the present stem was formed with the mediopassive suffix
-jov-, that suffix was replaced by
-il-, e.g.
ker-d-jov- >
ker-d-(j)-il- 'be done' • in foreign-stratum intransitive verbs:
-il-:
-is-áv-il- >
-is-á-jl- • after roots consisting of a single consonant (including original compounds ending in
-d- 'give'): variably
-in- or
-∅-:
d-in- or ''d- 'give''' • In verbs expressing psychological state ending in /a/: variably
-n-,
-n-il-,
-n-d-il-, etc.:
dara-n/
nil/
ndil- 'fear'. After /m/, the original
-t- may have begun to be gradually replaced by
-l- already in Early Romani, as it is replaced after other consonants as well in many descendant dialects. The copula varied between using the stem
s-/h- and the extended
s/h-in- in the present tense, according to some scholars, whereas others believe that the short forms are the original ones. However, it used
suppletive stems in the subjunctive and future tense: usually
ov- 'become' and occasionally
av- 'come'. It can be said to also have a suppletive past stem
ul-, although the regularly constructed imperfect forms (see below) could be used in a past sense.
Person and number agreement The agreement markers used with the present and with the past stem were different:
ker-av '(that) I make', but
kerd-j-om 'I made'. The
present agreement markers were as follows: The initial vowel of the endings was omitted after verb stems ending in a vowel:
xa-s '(that) you eat'. The
past agreement markers were as follows: The past agreement markers were preceded by -/j/- (1st sing.
kerd-j-om 'I made', etc.) except for the endings of the 3rd person plural and intransitive singular
-e, -o, and
-i (e.g. 3rd pl.
kerd-e 'they made'), which are, in fact, identical to the forms of the past participle. Like a participle, the intransitive singular ending agrees with the gender of the subject (masc.
gel-o 'he went', fem.
gel-i 'she went'). It is also thought possible that the element
-in- may have occurred optionally before 3rd plural ending
-e. Exceptionally, the copula used the past agreement markers in the present tense:
s-(in-j)-om 'I am', etc., except for the third person form, which was
si for both numbers. It has been speculated whether there might have been a set of 3rd person object agreement markers of the form
-os 'him',
-i 'her' and
-e 'them' appended to the subject agreement markers (e.g.
dikht-jas-os 'she saw him') and used in cases when there was no emphasis on the object. Such a system is preserved today in a single dialect,
Epiros Romani, but is also similar to the ones found in Domari and the Dardic languages. However, a plausible phonetic development leading to this is not easy to reconstruct.
Tenses and moods The last slot in the verb chain could be either empty or occupied by the present-future indicative particle
-a or the remoteness particle
-asi. By combining different stems and ending sets with different particles, the following forms were produced: The
Imperative consisted of the present stem alone in the singular (
ker!) and coincided with the 2nd plural subjunctive for the plural (
kerén!). The Pluperfect apparently used the 'transitive' 3rd singular ending
-jas before
-asi even with intransitives (
gel-jás-asi). The Subjunctive was used in clauses expressing purpose, constructions expressing wishes and the like:
te keráv 'that I do' (in function where many languages use an
infinitive, a feature of the
Balkan Sprachbund). The Past could be used to express a completed action in the future as well:
dži kaj kerdjám 'until we have done it', so its meaning has been described as
perfective and
aspectual rather than
temporal. The 'remote' tenses Imperfect and Plurperfect could also be used to express meanings such as conditional, hypothetical or counterfactual actions:
te džanélasi 'if he knew it',
mangdjómasi 'I would like to ask',
te džandjásasi if he had known it.
Non-finite forms The
past participle of native-stratum verbs consisted of the past stem and the usual adjective endings:
kerd-o 'done',
bešt-o 'seated, sitting'. The meaning was passive in transitive verbs. The past participle of foreign-stratum verbs ended in
-(i)men, which was originally indeclinable. There were two
gerunds, both expressing actions simultaneous with that of the main verb: The
inflected gerund consisted of the present stem, the suffix
-(i)nd- and adjective endings:
ker-ind-o 'doing'.
Other expressions of modality For ability, an impersonal verb was used: an inherited word
ašti and the Persian
šaj 'it is possible' appear to have co-existed. The negation was
našti. For volition, the verb
kam- 'to want' was used. For necessity, the copula
s- was inflected and combined with
te and the subjunctive:
ol si te soven 'they have to sleep',
me s(inj)om te sovav 'I have to sleep'. There were two negating particles: an indicative one,
na, and a subjunctive-imperative one,
ma: na sovela 'he doesn't sleep' vs
ma sov 'don't sleep!' and
ma te sovel 'may he not sleep!'. The copula is likely to have acquired a suppletive negative counterpart already in Early Romani:
si 'is' vs (
na)
naj 'is not', although the original Early Romani form may have been the regular
na si (>
na-hi >
naj). == Word formation ==