3.2.3. Romanian Verb

3.2.3.1. Notes

• VForm:
  Traditionally, Romanian linguistics distinguishes between predicative and non-predicative moods. This distinction may be easily mapped into finite/non-finite dichotomy: indicative, subjunctive and imperative are finite; infinitive, participle and gerund are non-finite (only synthetic (non-compound) moods were mentioned; we use the opposition synthetic-analytic to distinguish between concatenative (synthetic) and compound (analytic) morpho-lexical phenomena). As only synthetic forms were considered, the values conditional and presumptive for the VForm attribute were left out in Romanian. Another value for VForm which was left out is the Supine. It appears mostly with a preposition, except for a few intransitive verbs when they are subordinated to the impersonal verb a trebui (must). Only the preposition allows for differentiating a supine from a participle-masculine-singular.
• Tense:
  The synthetic values for the attribute Tense, as listed in the table below, apply to the indicative mood. The value p (present) is used also for subjunctive and infinitive. All the other moods either have no tense or have compound form tenses.
• Person:
  The following features are pertinent to those moods which permit an adjectival use, i.e. participle and gerund. However, the adjectival use of gerund is extremely rare (o mână tremurndă - a shaking hand) and therefore gender and number apply mainly for the participle.
• Clitic:
  The cliticization phenomenon in Romanian is not restricted to verb-pronoun relationship, but may also be observed with the (main) verb and the auxiliary, the noun or adjective with pronoun, with noun or adjective with copula, pronoun with auxiliary, preposition with (indefinite) article, numeral or (indefinite) pronoun, negative adverb with verb, auxiliary or pronoun, and some others (mainly created through the contracted forms of the verb "a fi"-to be). We restrict ourselves to considering only the graphically marked clicitizations. In such cases, the two, three or (sometimes) four constituents of a cliticized word-form are always separated by a hyphen. Omitting the hyphen in such cases is an unacceptable error in written Romanian. The examples below illustrate the specific types of cliticization we will consider:

  dă-mi-l!	(you give +to me+it/him = give it/him to me)
  lăsatu-ne-ai	(left + us+ you have = you have left us)
  sparge-ţi-s-ar lampa	(break + your + s-part-conj + has lamp = I wish your lamp would break)
  soră-mii	(sister + my = to my sister)
  faţa-i	(his/her face | the face is)
  roşu-i	(his/her red | the red is)
  m-au	(me + they have)
  într-o gaură	(in + a hole)
  într-o oră	(in + one hour)
  într-unele	(into + some of)
  n-aud	(not + I hear = I do not hear)
  n-am	(not + I/we have = I have not)
  nu-mi	(not + to me).

  The order in which different constituents of a cliticized form appear is governed by precise morphological rules. For instance, the auxiliaries always appear in the last position. The main verbs, except those beginning either with the letter "a" or the letter î and the contracted forms (-s and -i) of the verb "a fi"- to be, always appear in the first position, nouns and adjectives always precede the cliticized pronouns, the negative adverbial particles nu- and n- only appear in the first position, and so on. However, in order to reduce spurious ambiguity in morpho-lexical encoding, we considered the attribute Clitic as relevant only in those cases where the clicitization phenomenon resulted in graphemic modification of the cliticized term (e.g. the epenthetic u in the gerund form ªridicându-lº)