On the stages of the iotacization in Crişana’s local idioms. With a special regard to the vitality of the form poci(u) ʻI canʼ

Notwithstanding its risking an appearance of commonplace and repetition, our research is a synthesis of the essential historical directions, as well as the specific dialectal configurations of the verbal forms belonging to the phenomenon called „iotacization”; it follows in particular the history of the most atypical form of the whole domain, i.e. (să) poci(u) „(that) I can”, in order to highlight the association of irregular features on three completely different levels: phonetic (atypical evolution of Latin [t] followed by an [e] / [i] which became yod), morphological (atypical evolution compared to other paradigms with iotacization) and dialectal („reversed” dialectal distribution of iotacized forms, i.e. absence of the latter in the area which preserves regular iotacized paradigms). Having performed this historical insight in a phenomenon too easily supposed to be a multiple chain of symmetric developments, we have managed to establish the conservation status of iotacization in a dialectal area ‒ (north-)western Romania ‒ which is not commonly regarded as a conservative one from this point of view. On the other hand, we have proposed a pattern of morpho-phonetic changes in Late Latin, as a chronologically requisite mechanism leading to the oldest forms attested in Romanian.