A current trend or a historic remnant? The case of a Lovari verb-forming suffix

The Romany language, due to the circumstances in which it is used, frequently borrows lexical items. This mostly happens from the local language, that is, the one spoken by the majority society surrounding the given Roma community. The verbal system seems to be of particular interest, as well as the phenomena and the ongoing processes in the verbal paradigms in relation to the adaptation of loan verbs. One of the most important elements of loan-verb adaptation in Hungarian Lovari is the derivational marker -sar, as opposed to Austrian Lovari, where the dominant marker used for the same function is in. Te marker -sar can be viewed as one single unit, but it is possible to break it down into two parts, namely -(V)s- and -ar, on a historical basis – both possibilities can be justified. Therefore the question arises as to which is worth more, but as we will see, the changes that have happened and are happening in the language may make the strictly diachronic approach unnecessarily complicated, whereas, at the same time, it can be difficult to handle them within a traditional synchronic framework. However, if we look at the analogy-based processes which have taken place and are taking place, the change can easily be made part of the model and the question loses its significance.