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Most Romance languages are [[null subject language]]s. The subject pronouns are used only for emphasis and take the stress, and as a result are not clitics. In French, however (as in [[Friulian language|Friulian]] and in some [[Gallo-Italian languages]] of northern Italy), verbal agreement marking has degraded to the point that subject pronouns have become mandatory, and have turned into clitics. These forms cannot be stressed, so for emphasis the disjunctive pronouns must be used in combination with the clitic subject forms. Friulian and the Gallo-Italian languages have actually gone further than this and merged the subject pronouns onto the verb as a new type of verb agreement marking, which must be present even when there is a subject noun phrase. (Some non-standard varieties of French treat [[disjunctive pronoun]]s as arguments and [[clitic|clitic pronouns]] as agreement markers.<ref>[[Henri Wittmann]]. {{PDFlink|[http://homepage.mac.com/noula/ling/1998a-fpparis.pdf "Le français de Paris dans le français des Amériques."]|52.1 KB}}, ''Proceedings of the International Congress of Linguists'' 16.0416 (Paris, 20–25 juillet 1997). Oxford: Pergamon (CD edition).</ref>)
====Artikli====
Latin had no articles as such. The closest definite article was the non-specific demonstrative ''is, ea, id'' meaning approximately "this/that/the". The closest indefinite articles were the indefinite determiners ''aliquī, aliqua, aliquod'' "some (non-specific)" and ''certus'' "a certain".
Romance languages have both indefinite and definite articles, both none of the above words form the basis for either of these. Usually the definite article is derived from the Latin demonstrative ''ille'' ("that"), but some languages (e.g. [[Sardinian language|Sardinian]], and some dialects spoken around the Pyrenees) have forms from ''ipse'' (emphatic, as in "I myself"). The indefinite article everywhere derives from the number ''ūnus'' ("one").
Some languages, e.g. French and Italian, have a [[partitive article]] that approximately translates as "some". This is used either with [[mass noun]]s or with plural nouns — both cases where the indefinite article cannot occur. A partitive article is used (and in French, required) whenever a bare noun refers to specific (but unspecified or unknown) quantity of the noun, but not when a bare noun refers to a class in general. For example, the partitive would be used in both of the following sentences:
:* I want milk.
:* Men arrived today.
But neither of these:
:* Milk is good for you.
:* I hate men.
The sentence "Men arrived today", however, (presumably) means "some specific men arrived today" rather than "men, as a general class, arrived today" (which would mean that there were no men before today). On the other hand, "I hate men" does mean "I hate men, as a general class" rather than "I hate some specific men".
As in many other cases, French has developed the farthest from Latin in its use of articles. In French, nearly all nouns, singular and plural, must be accompanied by an article (either indefinite, definite, or partitive) or demonstrative pronoun. Due to pervasive sound changes, most nouns are pronounced identically in the singular and plural, and there is often heavy homonymy between nouns and identically pronounced words of other classes.
For example, all of the following are pronounced {{IPA|/sɛ̃/}}: ''sain'' "healthy"; ''saint'' "saint, holy"; ''sein'' "breast"; ''ceins'' "(you) put on, gird"; ''ceint'' "(he) puts on, girds"; ''ceint'' "put on, girded"; and the equivalent noun and adjective plural forms ''sains, saints, seins, ceints''. The article helps identify the noun forms ''saint'' or ''sein'', and distinguish singular from plural; likewise, the mandatory subject of verbs helps identify the verb ''ceint''. In more conservative Romance languages, neither articles nor subject pronouns are necessary, since all of the above words are pronounced differently. (In Italian, for example, the equivalents are ''sano, santo, seno, cingi, cinge, cinto, sani, santi, seni, cinti'', where all vowels and consonants are pronounced as written, and ⟨s⟩ and ⟨c⟩ are clearly distinct from each other.)
Latin, at least originally, had a three-way distinction among demonstrative pronouns (''hic'' ''iste'' ''ille'') corresponding to first, second and third persons. Such a distinction is not reflected in modern English, but formerly existed as "this" vs. "that" vs. "yon(der)". In urban Latin of Rome, ''iste'' came to have a specifically derogatory meaning, but this innovation apparently did not reach the provinces and is not reflected in the modern Romance languages. A number of these languages still have such a three-way distinction, although ''hic'' has been lost and the other pronouns have shifted somewhat in meaning. For example, Spanish has ''este'' "this" vs. ''ese'' "that (near you)" vs. ''aquel'' (fem. ''aquella'') "that (over yonder)". The Spanish pronouns derive, respectively, from Latin ''iste'' ''ipse'' ''accu''-''ille'', where ''accu-'' is an emphatic prefix derived from ''eccum'' "behold it!", possibly with influence from ''atque'' "and".<ref>''ipse'' originally meant "self", as in ''ego'' ''ipse'' or ''egomet'' ''ipse'' "I myself". ''ipse'' later shifted to mean "the" (still reflected in Sardinian and in the Catalan spoken in the [[Balearic Islands]]), and still later came to be a demonstrative pronoun. From ''-met'' ''ipse'' the emphatic ([[superlative]]) form ''metipsimum'' was created, later evolving into ''medisimum'' and eventually Spanish ''mismo'', French ''même'', Italian ''medesimo'', which replaced both Latin ''ipse'' "self" and ''idem'' "same". The alternative form ''metipse'' eventually produced Catalan ''mateix'', [[Old Portuguese]] ''medês''. The normal Italian equivalent, however, is ''stesso'', derived from the combination ''iste''-''ipse''.</ref>
Reinforced demonstratives such as ''accu''-''ille'' became necessary once ''ille'' came to be used as an article as well as a demonstrative. Such forms were often created even when not strictly needed to distinguish otherwise ambiguous forms. Italian, for example, has both ''questo'' "this" (''eccu''-''istum'') and ''quello'' "that" (''eccu''-''illum''), in addition to dialectal ''codesto'' "that (near you)" (''eccu-tē-istum''). French generally prefers forms derived from bare ''ecce'' "behold", as in the pronoun ''ce'' "this one/that one" (earlier ''ço'', from ''ecce''-''hoc'') and the determiner ''ce/cet'' "this/that" (earlier ''cest'', from ''ecce''-''istum'').
Reinforced forms are likewise common in [[locative adverb]]s (words such as English ''here'' and ''there''), based on related Latin forms such as ''hic'' "this" vs. ''hīc'' "here", ''hāc'' "this way", and ''ille'' "that" vs. ''illīc'' "there", ''illāc'' "that way". Here again French prefers bare ''ecce'' while Spanish and Italian prefer ''eccum'' (French ''ici'' "here" vs. Spanish ''aquí'', Italian ''qui''). In western languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan, doublets and triplets arose such as Portuguese ''aqui, acá, cá'' "(to) here" (''accu''-''hīc'', ''accu''-''hāc'', ''eccu''-''hāc''). From these, a prefix ''a-'' was extracted, from which forms like ''aí'' "there (near you)" (''a-(i)bi'') and ''ali'' "there (over yonder)" (''a-(i)llīc'') were created; compare Catalan neuter pronouns ''açò'' (''acce''-''hoc'') "this", ''això'' (''a-(i)psum''-''hoc'') "that (near you)", ''allò'' (''a-(i)llum''-''hoc'') "that (yonder)".
Subsequent changes often reduced the number of demonstrative distinctions. Standard Italian, for example, has only a two-way distinction "this" vs. "that", as in English, with second-person and third-person demonstratives combined. In Catalan, however, a former three-way distinction ''aquest, aqueix, aquell'' has recently been reduced differently, with first-person and second-person demonstratives combined. Hence ''aquest'' means either "this" or "that (near you)"; on the phone, ''aquest'' is used to refer both to speaker and addressee.
[[Old French]] had a similar distinction to Italian (''cist/cest'' vs. ''cil/cel''), both of which could function as either adjectives or pronouns. Modern French, however, has no distinction between "this" and "that": ''ce/cet, cette'' < ''cest, ceste'' is only an adjective, and ''celui, celle'' < ''cel lui, celle'' is only a pronoun, and both forms indifferently mean either "this" or "that". (The distinction between "this" and "that" can be made, if necessary, by adding the suffixes ''-ci'' "here" or ''-là'' "there", e.g. ''cette femme-ci'' "this woman" vs. ''cette femme-là'' "that woman", but this is rarely done except when specifically necessary to distinguish two entities from each other.)
===Verbala morfologio===
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