ABSTRACT
The standard handbooks list exactly one syntactic feature which ‘defines’ RhaetoRomance as a language distinct from Italian and French: this is the use of the inherited pluperfect subjunctive in both the protasis and the apodosis of counterfactual conditionals (Prader-Schucany 1970:185). (In the discussion to follow, sentence examples will be cited in the various standard orthographies when they are taken from written sources. Examples in phonetic or phonemic transcription from spoken sources will be indicated by the usual square brackets or obliques.) For example:
Surselvan (1) Jeu mass, sche jeu savess.
