It is not disputed that Slavonic languages have influenced the inflexional morphology of Romanian and its closely related Daco-Romance varieties. For example, Romanian vocatives in -o, Istro-Romanian perfective verb-roots, and probably the Megleno-Romanian first and second person singular endings -um and -iʃ, are all attributable to Slavonic. These cases generally involve loans of ‘morpheme’-like entities, phonological strings associated with a particular grammatical meaning. However, it has recently been suggested (e.g., by ) that certain Romanian paradigmatic patterns of root allomorphy in the verb, notably those involving the effects of palatalization, are influenced by Slavonic models. Some of these patterns appear to be of a qualitatively different kind from run-of-the-mill ‘morphemic’ loans, in that they are autonomously morphological, and cannot be associated within any coherent grammatical meaning. The borrowing of such purely morphological patterns under conditions of language contact has not hitherto been attested in the literature on language contact, and the evidence for such cases in Romanian deserves careful scrutiny. Unfortunately, the arguments provided for these putative borrowings can be shown to be rest on seriously flawed assumptions. Examination of those arguments serves to focus our attention on the kind of criteria that need generally to be met if the effects of language contact in morphology (or any other domain) are to be plausibly demonstrated. In particular, I shall emphasize the need for appeals to language contact carefully to exploit the full range of available comparative evidence, and to establish rigorous criteria to exclude the possibility that apparent contact effects are explicable by factors internal to the history of the recipient language.

毫无疑问，斯拉夫语言影响了罗马尼亚语及其密切相关的达科罗曼语变体的屈折形态。例如，-o 中的罗马尼亚语呼格、Istro-罗马尼亚语完成时动词词根，以及可能的 Megleno-罗马尼亚语第一和第二人称单数词尾 -um 和 -iʃ，都可归因于斯拉夫语。这些案例通常涉及“语素”类实体的借用，即与特定语法意义相关的音韵串。然而，最近有人建议（例如，由 ）动词中某些罗马尼亚语同形异形的范式，特别是涉及腭化效果的那些，受斯拉夫模型的影响。其中一些模式似乎与普通的“语素”借词在性质上不同，因为它们是自主的形态学，并且不能与任何连贯的语法含义相关联。在语言接触的条件下借用这种纯粹的形态模式迄今尚未在语言接触的文献中得到证实，罗马尼亚语中此类情况的证据值得仔细审查。不幸的是，为这些假定的借款提供的论据可以证明是基于严重有缺陷的假设。如果要合理地证明语言接触在形态学（或任何其他领域）中的影响，则对这些论点的检查有助于将我们的注意力集中在通常需要满足的标准类型上。特别是，我将强调需要谨慎地呼吁语言接触，以利用所有可用的比较证据，