Vol. 8 No. 1 (2024): ROMANIAN STUDIES TODAY

					View Vol. 8 No. 1 (2024): ROMANIAN STUDIES TODAY

As a transdisciplinary journal, Romanian Studies Today has the purpose to maintain a constant scientific interest in the topics related to regional philology and regional studies. Its main domains include: the positioning of Romanian studies as integrating part of contemporary social and humanities subjects, issues related to Romanian as a foreign/non-native language. Romanian Studies Today is a journal for specialists, researchers and instructors in Romanian studies in all universities and research centres, and also for specialists, researchers and instructors in regional studies, history, anthropology, political studies or researchers in other domains with an interest in Romanian language, literature, culture and civilisation.

Published: 2024-12-19

Full Issue

Articles

  • Continual exposure to limited input: DOM in Heritage Romanian

    Larisa Avram, Alexandru Mardale, Elena Soare (Author)

    Abstract

    This paper explores whether there is evidence for reduced input effects on differential object marking in heritage Romanian. The 50 participants (age range 5;07 – 25;07) are all Romanian-French bilinguals born to Romanian families living in France. The analysis of DOM use in their narratives identified three developmental stages. Until age 7, DOM use is monolingual-like, but during the first school years, there is a significant decrease in DOM use followed, in adulthood, by a reversion to monolingual-like use. The adult heritage speakers use DOM similarly to Romanianspeaking adults living in the homeland. The paper discusses these findings in relation to reduced input effects in heritage languages. The claim is that these effects reach their peak after onset of schooling which coincides with a decrease in input amount in the heritage language and a shift in language dominance. The effects of reduced input can, however, be overcome in adulthood, as long as there is continual exposure to the heritage language over time.

  • Nostalgia gustului: Exiluri în Gastroland. Studiu de caz – Sanda Nițescu și Anya von Bremzen

    Oana Băluică (Author)

    Abstract

    Regardless of the reason for the separation from one’s homeland, the food and the collective gastronomic act, the taste, the smell, and the social practices of food in one’s country shall forever remain an object of nostalgia and melancholy for an expat; this fact does not attract a kind of selective memory – expatriates have clear and definite reasons for leaving – but rather a certain emotional attachment impossible to deny or forget. The aim of the present work is to show how two exiled writers – one from Romania and the other from Russia – have built a literary and cultural universe irremediably linked to native culinary practices, how nostalgia and longing bring together ample processes of recollection and dissociation – at the same time –, how the choice of a certain narrative genre inspires the detection of memories and their transmission in the form of complex cultural references. Anya von Bremzen and Sanda Nițescu are both deeply connected to the gastronomic culture of their country of origin, and the volumes that reiterate this connection are, ultimately, processes of cultural and emotional reconnection with a physically inaccessible space. 

  • From “unpleasant” words to intensifiers in present-day Romanian

    Raluca Brăescu, Adina Dragomirescu, Alexandru Nicolae, Irina Nicula Paraschiv (Author)

    Abstract

    In this paper we analyse four patterns attested in present-day non-standard Romanian, in which originally “unpleasant” words, such as rău ‘bad(ly)’, bombă ‘bomb’, belea ‘trouble’, în draci lit. ‘in devils’, etc. come to be used as expressive intensifiers/superlative markers. All these patterns have in common morphosyntactic restrictions on the words involved and a certain degree of semantic bleaching: whereas certain intensifiers are restricted to words (particularly adjectives) expressing negative qualities, others lose their original negative meaning, being compatible with words expressing positive qualities. Our analysis is based on corpus study (on CoRoLa) and on a questionnaire we applied in November 2024.

  • Subordonarea marcată prin conjuncții în producțiile scrise ale studenților străini. Probleme în limba română ca limbă străină

    Enida Cincora (Author)

    Abstract

    This paper aims to illustrate the contexts of conjunctive subordination and to highlight the difficulties existing in texts written in Romanian as a foreign language by non-native students enrolled in the Preparatory Year (Centre for Romanian Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest) in the period 2019–2023, at their examination sessions. The description is based on a corpus analysis. The most striking errors are: mistakes in writing conjunctive connectors (the presence or absence of diacritics), lexical and syntactic "innovations" resulting from the overlap of several conjunctions or conjunctive groups, the absence of the conjunctive connector and the failure to express of the main verb in subordinate clauses. 

  • Învățarea prin rezolvarea de probleme (problem-based learning): aspecte privind româna ca limbă străină

    Valentina Cojocaru, Roxana Magdalena Preda (Author)

    Abstract

    This paper discusses the significance of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as an effective teaching and learning method in classes for Romanian as a foreign language. PBL promotes active learning by immersing students in real-life scenario simulations, allowing them to discover solutions independently, with the teacher acting as a facilitator. This approach has proven particularly beneficial in developing conversational skills, as students create dialogues based on topics relevant to practical situations. However, PBL has been underutilized in teaching grammar, where traditional methods predominantly involve direct instruction of rules. To address this gap, we advocate for the integration of PBL in grammar instruction. We propose a linguistic Olympiad problem model, wherein students receive a set of data from an unfamiliar language and must identify its grammatical rules through critical thinking, analogy, and deduction. This method not only enhances grammatical understanding but also fosters essential analytical skills among students. 

  • Metafora conceptuală în predarea limbii române ca limbă străină

    Ramona Cătălina Corbeanu (Author)

    Abstract

    The paper contains two parts, a theory, in which I will try to show what is the role of the conceptual metaphor in the process of learning and teaching a foreign language and how this topic has been treated in specialized research. In the second part I will point out the importance of teaching conceptual metaphor to foreign students learning Romanian and I will propose a set of metaphorical competence exercises.

  • „Multiplicitățile interbelice” și piața reinvenției de sine

    Caius Dobrescu (Author)

    Abstract

    The study starts from a concept of ‘multiplicities’ that sheds light on the dispersive imaginaries, commitments, projects of the Romanian interbellum political-cultural life. The concept was devised by Sorin Alexandrescu, a prominent literary scholar who reconnected to Romanian academe after a decades-long exile in Holland through a trilogy dedicated to cultural and intellectual
    modernization in our part of the world. His vision runs against the grain of an external and domestic scientific discourse, which tends to construe the Romanian civilizational process of the decisive third and fourth decades of the 20th century as essentially homogenous – irrespective of the auspicious or malign, progressive or reactionary overall meaning projected on the said process.
    Through the methodological instrumentalization and further elaboration of Alexandrescu’s conceptual breakthrough, the present inquiry surveys a diversity of forms of collective and utopian self-invention that, through their market-like competition and conflict, articulate the Romanian public sphere, in the short but highly intense historical period compressed between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII. 

  • Despre sufixul -isim în limba română: sincronie și diacronie

    Ionuț Geană (Author)

    Abstract

    This article, which is part of a larger collective project on Romanian suffixation at the Romanian Academy’s “Iorgu Iordan – Alexandru Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics under Blanca Croitor’s coordination, puts forth a both diachronic, and synchronic presentation of the suffix -isim (and its alternate/etymological spellings -issim, -isimo and -issimo) in Romanian. While at first it
    was present in words loaned mostly from Italian (sometimes doubled by scholarly Latin loans), the suffix -isim came to be affixed also to typical Romanian words. Its frequency and productivity have never been too extended, as proved by the examples taken from the literature (mostly dictionaries) and corpora (with examples taken with the use of RoTenTen21/Sketch Engine). In
    terms of style and register, this suffix has always been used in specialised languages (e.g., music, military, religion), with most recent uses also in (or imitating) slang, irony or sarcasm. 

  • Predarea gramaticii limbilor străine către copii: o analiză comparativă

    Raluca Levonian, Ioana-Cristina Joița (Author)

    Abstract

    This paper investigates whether and how grammar is introduced in foreign language textbooks for children in primary schools in Romania. We propose a comparative analysis of two German language textbooks and of two textbooks for Romanian as a foreign language, addressing children from ethnic minorities. The case study is represented by the category of adjectives, whose flexion may prove difficult for foreign learners of German or Romanian, since in both languages the correct endings of adjectives depend on the gender, number and case of the noun. In our analysis, we have taken into account the lessons where adjectives are used in both textbooks, the number of adjectives introduced, the clarity of their meanings and the sentences given as examples. The
    findings show that the introduction of adjectives proceeds slower in the German textbooks than in the Romanian ones, the utterances are more simple, and predicative adjectives are more frequent, which avoids their declension. In contrast, the Romanian textbooks contain a higher number of adjectives that are declined, while the examples are sometimes not clear enough. The Romanian textbooks appear therefore to be more suitable for children with previous knowledge of Romanian.

  • Straturi epice și lirice din literatura română pornind de la proza scurtă O primblare la munți de V. Alecsandri

    George-Florian Neagoe (Author)

    Abstract

    Between the two levels of Romanian prose – one folkloric and the other cult –, there is the romantic epic works, in which the narrators, under the charade of calling on to archaic memory, master strategies such as telling a story in a frame, qui-pro-quo and the anticlimax. An example is O primblare la munți [A walk in the mountains] (1844) by V. Alecsandri. The four hikers, leaving in search of a legendary portrait depicting Alexandru Lăpușneanu, which the narrator claims to have known – from undisclosed sources – that was at a monastery founded the Moldavian ruler, go through a series of delays. However, the declared purpose of the trip raises some questions. A key point in the epic development of this short story is the subtle fable about a woman who was attracted by a so-called bear. That allusion helps us to draw a series of remarks about the euphemism on romantic relations in the writings of M. Eminescu, I. Creangă, Ion Barbu, Mihail Sadoveanu and mostly of Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu.

  • Tema paternității în teatrul lui Ion Băieșu

    Irina-Nicoleta Nechifor (Author)

    Abstract

    This article aims to highlight the significances of the symbolic father figure in Ion Băieșu’s theater, approaching family life, as well as the social environment, in order to demonstrate that the lack of paternal authority, the father’s estrangement from his wife and children and his detachment can have devastating effects on individual and social evolution. On the one hand, the father’s
    indifference will create a strange feeling of not belonging to any emotional context. The author manages to capture the decline of some communities, influenced by the father’s absence. The family falls apart, and carelessness becomes a moral and hereditary vice. On the other hand, Băieșu creates an illusion of tacitly assumed but not honored paternity. The father, present in the family, is passive or overreacts, has many complexes, but persists in his attitude, complains of pity, the reflection on fatherhood clarifying the impact society has on the parents’ mentality. Therefore, I intend to demonstrate that in Băieșu's theater, the father’s image is equivalent to that of a failed authority, marking a fissure in the domestic universe that will implicitly generate an imminent division of the group, but also of the community on which it is based.

  • Structuri alternante cu sau fără prepoziția de în limba română – o analiză sintactico-semantică și pragmatică

    Isabela Nedelcu (Author)

    Abstract

    The article examines from a semantic-syntactic and pragmatic point of view a series of alternative structures with or without the preposition de in the verb, noun, adjective and adverb phrase (examples: Am aflatV (de) intenția ta ‘I’ve found of your intention’, noțiuneaN (de) iertare ‘notion of forgiving’, capabilADJ (de) a învăța ‘capable of learning’, indiferentADV (de) ce a făcut ‘irrespective of what he has done’). From a syntactic point of view, more often than not, the presence of the preposition de can change the syntactic position of the constituent it precedes. In the same line, de occurrence presupposes certain grammatical or semantic conditions of the matrix word (for example, only certain reflexive verbs enter combinations with the preposition de) or of the constituent it introduces (for example, [+human] feature of the complement of a plăcea ‘like’). There are cases when the preposition is optional, displaying a very weak syntactic subordinating role (as in structures with infinitive). From a pragmatic point of view, the structure with the preposition de shows a different role than that with no preposition. In the structure with the preposition de, the latter can mark the prominence of the constituent it introduces or the salience of the referent designated by the noun it precedes. Another function the preposition de displays is that of focalizing the intensity of the property expressed by the adjective (in the structure with the adverbial intensifier așa ‘so’). 

  • Comportamente culturale și identități multiple

    Nicoleta Neșu (Author)

    Abstract

    The present study is an integral part of a research project which has as its motivation and starting point a series of didactic and methodological aspects, difficulties and challenges encountered in the teaching of Romanian as a foreign language (RLS) in universities abroad, in particular to Romanian origin students.
    My interest in these issues is relatively recent and focuses mainly on them not from a strictly sociological and/or sociolinguistic point of view, as phenomena in themselves, but rather I study and analyze them from the perspective of trying to define some theoretical coordinates for the context behind the teaching reality I am facing – a constantly increasing number of students of Romanian origin, who came to Italy at a young and very young age or even born here, who belong to the Romanian community and are therefore basically native speakers (heritage language), and who nevertheless enrol to study the specialization "Romanian language" at Sapienza University, where Romanian is taught as a foreign language. I will try to analyze to what extent the linguistic-cultural behavior is determined, in the case of these students, by their multiple ethnic and/or linguistic identity due to the migration phenomenon.

  • Tinerețe fără bătrânețe și viață fără de moarte: o recontextualizare teatrală

    Ileana Alexandra Orlich (Author)

    Abstract

    The play Lexiconul amar proposes an oblique thematic connection between a well-known tale and an innovative and stimulating staging that frames the strands of the mythical characters and storyline. The alternative artistic vision of the play incorporates the separation of time and space, of youth and old age, of grotesque female monsters and enchanting realms inhabited by fair
    maidens, and of the dramatic dialogue and an elaborate linguistic register. The lexicon brings into relief the story’s mystical content as well as the apprehension of an inner fantastic world that parallels the real and the immediate seen as counterpoints to the tale. Skillfully interwoven, vision and reality ballance against each other with undercutting irony that results in spontaneous stage
    combustion enriched by Gothic paraphernalia, riddles, apparitions, the inadequacy of language to express a deeper reality and abrupt switches to hypochritical current verbosity. 

  • Echivalențe semantice în câmpul lexical al fenomenelor atmosferice din limba română

    Antalia-Celestina Stănescu (Author)

    Abstract

    Through the present paper, we aim to analyse and describe at the same time the paradigmatic relationship of semantic equivalence within the terminology of atmospheric phenomena in the Romanian language, starting from the descriptive theories of Coșeriu (2000, 2002) and Bidu-Vrănceanu (1984, 2005, 2008). The study includes the componential, semantic and morphological analysis of a wide inventory of terms, starting from the work Dicționarul fenomenelor atmosferice (Florescu ed., 2015). In order to follow the purpose of this study, the terms were divided according to the typology of the equivalence relation in which they fall and according to the way the terms are formed. We emphasize the fact that in our analysis we used the functional categorization already displayed in DFA by language registers (scientific and popular). 

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