Reviewed by Thomas Schares, Arbeitsstelle Hamburg, Germany
The Academia Româna has the task of setting the standards for Romanian orthography, grammar, and lexicography. The present two volumes replace the previous version, which, for more than forty years, has set normative standards for the Romanian language. Under the editorial supervision of Valeria Guţu Romalo, this version of the grammar takes a remarkable turn from normative to descriptive linguistic treatment. This grammar describes the standard literary variety of contemporary Romanian. The linguistic melting pot situation in the Balkans region necessitates standardization, and although Romanian has considerable regional variation, these volumes provide a literary variety that is free of regionalisms.
Volume 1, ‘Cuvântul’ (‘The word’), is dedicated to the word classes from a lexico-grammatical viewpoint, and Volume 2, ‘Enunţul’ (‘The phrase’), is dedicated to discourse-analytical matters of text-stylistics, describing the organization and function of words within syntactic groups.
Volume 1 begins with a preface (vii–xii), a list of abbreviations and symbols (xiii–xvi), and an introduction (1–3). Ch. 1, ‘Unităţile limbii’ (5–35), outlines the parts of speech and describes the relations between the lexical unit, inflection, and syntax (i.e. word, morpheme, phrase). Ch. 2, ‘Clase de cuvinte’ (37–60), summarizes the use of pronouns, numerals, articles, and other word classes with grammatical functions. The following chapters describe the other word classes: the noun, ‘Substantivul’ (61–139); the adjective, ‘Adjectvul’ (141–78); the pronoun, ‘Pronumele’ (181–288); the numeral, ‘Numeralul’ (289–322); the verb ‘Verbul’ (323–583); the adverb, ‘Adverbul’ 585–605); the preposition, ‘Prepoziţia’ (607–30); the conjunction, ‘Conjuncţia’ (631–54); and the interjection, ‘Interjecţia’ (657–84).
Volume 2 describes the Romanian language from the perspective of the phrase and the text. It is divided into two parts. Part 1 is dedicated to syntax: it explores syntactic structures, ‘Structuri sintactice’ (47–231), and syntactic functions, ‘Funcţii sintactice’ (238–619), such as subject-predicate-relations, complements, and case relations. Part 2 explores aspects of textual grammar and stylistics as well as types of discourse (i.e. genres) in ‘Organizarea discursivă’ (635–947). It also contains a chapter on intonation and accent (902–47) and a chapter on punctuation (947–56). Overall, only a chapter on phonology is missing, but, since Romanian has a very phonetic orthography (like Spanish in many respects), a chapter on phonology may not be necessary.
Each volume contains a thematic bibliography and a detailed table of contents, which enables quick reference. Volume 2 also contains a general bibliography and a brief subject index.
These volumes, which are designed for native speakers of Romanian, define a standard for national education as well as a framework for academic study. Additionally, due to the lack of detailed and elaborate grammatical reference works for Romanian, advanced second language learners and Romance language scholars will also find this to be a coherent reference for the language.
Because these volumes are essential to scholars of Romanian and because it is difficult to purchase copies abroad, it would be helpful if the Academia Româna would consider publishing pdf-versions of these volumes that could be distributed via its homepage on the internet. This would certainly increase the national and international consideration and esteem this important grammar deserves.