When Syncretism Meets Word Order. On Clitic Order in Romanian

Probus ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Oana Săvescu
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Accusative Case

Abstract Romanian singular clitics are unique among their counterpars in other Romance languages in that they exhibit different forms for dative (mi, ţi) and accusative case (mă, te). In contrast, 1st and 2nd person plural clitics are case syncretic: the forms ne and vă are used both in the dative and in the accusative. Moreover, in non-finite environments, following gerunds and imperatives, non-syncretic (singular) clitics unambiguously exhibit the order dative accusative, while syncretic (plural) clitics show the reverse, accusative dative order. This paper focuses specifically on this correlation between case syncretism (or lack thereof) and the ordering possibilities of postverbal clitics, showing that the relation receives a principled syntactic explanation. The ordering of postverbal Romanian clitics, as well as the contrast between case syncretic and syncretic clusters are derived through the interaction between (i) morpho-syntactic effects due to case syncretism, (ii) remnant VP movement, and (iii) a representational view on locality, in the spirit of Rizzi (2001), Krapova and Cinque (2005).

scholarly journals Los clíticos de segunda persona de plural en las lenguas romances de la Península Ibérica

2018 ◽  
Vol 134 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-85
Author(s):  
Víctor Lara Bermejo
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Plural Subject ◽  
Península Ibérica

AbstractThe Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula possess a second person plural subject pronoun that induces verb and pronoun agreement in 2pl. While standard Catalan chooses us/vos as unstressed pronouns, Portuguese selects vos and Spanish, os. Nevertheless, the data taken from linguistic atlases of the 20th century point out the great quantity of 2pl allomorphs in unstressed pronouns: tos, sos, sus, los and se. In this article, I aim to account for the linguistic geography of 2pl allomorphs and their possible linguistic factors.

Diachronic features of Romanian in a broader comparative setting

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-222
Author(s):  
Alexandru Nicolae
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diachronic Development

Chapter 6 highlights the novel theoretical and empirical facts brought about by the word order changes that occurring in the passage from old to modern Romanian, showing how the diachrony of Romanian may contribute to a better understanding of the history of the Romance languages and of the Balkan Sprachbund, as well as to syntactic theory and syntactic change in general. One important dimension of diachronic variation and change is the height of nouns and verbs along their extended projections (lower vs higher V- and N-movement). The two perspectives from which language contact proves relevant in the diachronic development of word order in Romanian, language contact by means of translation and areal language contact, are discussed. The chapter also addresses the issue of surface analogy vs deep structural properties; once again, Romanian emerges as a Romance language in a Balkan suit, as Romance deep structural properties are instantiated by means of Balkan word order patterns.

Case in Heritage Korean

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kitaek Kim ◽  
William O’Grady ◽  
Bonnie D. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
Perceptual Salience

Abstract In a series of five experiments with 31 Korean heritage children, we show that knowledge of case and the ability to use it must be evaluated with careful attention to multiple factors that can influence access to morphological information in the course of comprehension and production. The first two experiments, which compared the canonical SOV pattern with the non-canonical OSV pattern, employed picture-selection comprehension tasks to assess knowledge of case. Poor performance on OSV sentences was mitigated by experimental manipulations that either enhanced the perceptual salience of case or provided felicitous conditions for the use of non-canonical word order. The next three experiments, all involving production tasks, revealed that many children who failed to demonstrate knowledge of case in the comprehension tasks actually produced nominative and accusative case correctly, thereby revealing their knowledge of this morphosyntactic system.

scholarly journals Syntactic Aspects of Lithuanian-Spanish Translation of Fiction and Scientific Texts

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Carmen Caro Dugo
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Spanish Translation ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
Spanish Word ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Linguistic Means

Summary Translators, linguists and translation researchers often have to deal with subtle and sometimes complex syntactical aspects involved in translation. Properly conveying the structure and rhythm of a sentence or text in another language is a difficult task that requires a good understanding of syntactical aspects of both the source and the target language. The morphology of Lithuanian verbs and nouns, and specially its system of declensions and cases, without any doubt facilitates a relatively flexible word order. Many linguists also agree that word order in the Spanish sentence is also freer than in French, English or other modern languages. It has often been said that Spanish has the most flexible word order of all Romance languages. However, Spanish word order is by no means as free as in Lithuanian. A comparative study of Lithuanian texts and their translation into Spanish allows a better understanding of the syntactical differences between both languages. This article examines a case of syntactical inversion in Lithuanian: the displacement of the direct object and its location at the beginning of the sentence, and the translation of such sentences into Spanish. In Spanish the direct object usually follows the verb, except in the cases when that function is carried out by pronouns. In order to displace a direct object to the beginning of the sentence, Spanish syntactical structures should be used. In this article two stylistically different Lithuanian texts will be compared with their Spanish translation so as to identify the linguistic means used in each case. A comparative analysis of different types of texts is useful to reveal the Spanish syntactical structures chosen by the translators as well as certain tendencies in each specific context.

Nump and Possp in Dialectal Brazilian Portuguese

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 72-98
Author(s):  
Bruna Karla Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Minas Gerais ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Person Features ◽  
Plural Marking ◽  
Nominal Agreement ◽  
The One

In standard Brazilian Portuguese (BP), as well as in other Romance languages, possessives have uninterpretable number features, which are valued via nominal agreement. However, dialects of BP, especially the one spoken in Minas Gerais, have shown that 2nd person possessives, in postnominal position, do not have number agreement with the noun. In order to account for these facts, I will argue that, in this grammar, number features on 2nd person possessives are reanalyzed as being: (i) associated with the person (rather than the noun) and (ii) valued. From the frst postulation, ‘seu' is expected to be the possessive for 2nd person singular, and ‘seus' for 2nd person plural. From the second postulation, no number concord is expected to be triggered on the possessive. In addition, based on Danon (2011) and Norris (2014), I will argue that cardinals divide BP DPs into two domains in that phrases located above NumP are marked with the plural morpheme, while phrases below it are unmarked. In this sense, because prenominal possessives precede cardinals (NumP), they must be marked with the plural morpheme for nominal agreement; whereas postnominal possessives, which follow NumP, must be unmarked. Free from the plural marking associated with nominal agreement, postnominal 2nd person possessives favor the reanalysis of the morpheme ‘-s' as indicating the number associated with person features.

scholarly journals The Derivation of Wh-Questions in Najrani Arabic

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Saud A. Mushait
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Phase Approach ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Edge Feature

The study explores the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and attempts to answer the following questions: (i) Can wh-questions in Najrani Arabic be derived in VSO or SVO or both?, and (ii) How can Najrani Arabic wh-questions be accounted for within Chomsky’s (2001,2005, 2013,2015 ) Phase approach? The objective of the study is to present a unified analysis of the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic and show the interaction between Najrani Arabic data and Chomsky’s Phase framework. It has been shown that Najrani Arabic allows the derivation of wh-questions from the argument and non-argument positions in VSO word order. Given this, we assume that VSO is the unmarked order for the derivation of wh-questions in Najrani Arabic. In VSO, the subject DP does not raise to Spec-TP because the head T does not have the EPP feature: the latter attracts movement of the former. The verb raises to the head T of TP, while the subject DP remains in-situ in Spec-vP. Moreover, in Najrani Arabic intransitive structures, the phase vP does not have a specifier because it does not have an external thematic argument whereas in transitive constructions the vP has. Concerning case assignment, the phase vP merges with an abstract tense af (fix) on the head T, which agrees with and assigns invisible nominative case to the subject wh-word man ‘who’. We assume that the phase head C is the probe and has the Edge feature which attracts the raising of the subject wh-phrase to Spec-CP. Besides, we argue that the light transitive head v has an Edged feature which attracts the raising of the object wh-phrase aish ‘what’ to be the second (outer) specifier of vP. Being the phase head, the v probes for a local goal and finds the object wh-phrase aish; the v agrees with and assigns accusative case to the object wh-phrase aish. As the TP merges with a null interrogative head C, the phase head C has an Edge feature that attracts the raising of the object wh-word aish to Spec-CP for feature valuation. Following this, the null copies of the moved entities left after movement receive a null spellout in the phonological level and, hence, cannot be accessed for any further operation.

scholarly journals DP-internal Inversion and Negative Polarity: Latin aliquis and its Romance Descendants

Probus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-302
Author(s):  
Chiara Gianollo
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Complex Pattern ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Order Difference ◽  
Polarity Sensitivity ◽  
Pattern Of Variation

AbstractI analyze the Romance descendants of Latin aliquis ‘some or other’, which are characterized by a complex pattern of variation in the contemporary Romance languages. I account for this variation in terms of diverging diachronic paths, tracing their determinants back to a process taking place between Classical and late Latin. Classical Latin only used aliquis as an epistemic indefinite, expressing ignorance about the identity of the referent. In late Latin a distributional extension is observed, and aliquis starts to be consistently found as an NPI in negative contexts. This multiplicity of uses is transmitted to medieval Romance and represents the prerequisite for contemporary variation. In their further history, some languages continue only one of the two uses. Other languages maintain both, but the meaning contrast comes to be related to a word-order difference. I analyze this difference as a syntactic DP-internal inversion operation, motivated by focus and connected to polarity sensitivity. Significantly, the diachronic path of the Romance descendants of aliquis contributes to our understanding of general mechanisms of semantic change, since it instantiates a cline of development that can be related to varying (hence, diachronically changing) constraints on quantificational domains.

Formation of Numerals in the Romance Languages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte L.M. Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Functional Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Morphological Markers ◽  
Partial Loss

The Romance languages have a rich numeral system that includes cardinals—providing the bases on which the other types of numeral series are built—ordinals, fractions, collectives, approximatives, distributives, and multiplicatives. Latin plays a decisive and continued role in their formation, both as the language to which many numerals go back directly and as an ongoing source for lexemes and formatives. While the Latin numeral system was synthetic, with a distinct ending for each type of numeral, the Romance numerals often feature more than one (unevenly distributed) marker or structure per series, which feature varying degrees of inherited, borrowed, or innovative elements. Formal consistency is strongest in cardinals, followed by ordinals and then the other types of numeral, which also tend to be more analytic or periphrastic. From a morphological perspective, Romance numerals overall have moved away from the inherited syntheticity, but several series continue to be synthetic formations—at least in part—with morphological markers drawn from Latin that may have undergone functional change (e.g. distributive > ordinal > collective). The underlying syntax of Romance numerals is in line with the overall grammatical patterns of Romance languages, as reflected in the prevalence of word order (with arithmetical correlates), connectors, (partial) loss of agreement, and analyticity. Innovation is prominent in the formation of higher numerals with bases beyond ‘thousand’, of teens and decads in Romanian, and of vigesimals in numerous Romance varieties.

Dialectal Variation in Clitic Placement in Andalusian and Asturian Spanish Negative Infinitival Imperatives

2019 ◽  
pp. 127-158
Author(s):  
Julio Villa-García
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Illocutionary Force ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Dialectal Variation ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Negative Root ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Clitic Placement

This chapter investigates a novel syntactic contrast regarding the placement of clitics in negative root infinitival sentences with imperative illocutionary force in two varieties of Iberian Spanish, (Lower) Andalusian and (Central) Asturian Spanish. Data reveals a stark difference in clitic directionality in second person plural imperatives with infinitives: whereas positive imperatives involve postverbal clitics in both dialects, negative imperatives involve enclisis in AndSp but proclisis in AsturSp, a phenomenon reminiscent of Italian negative singular imperatives. Under a PF-merger+copy-and-delete approach, imperatives involve an affixal null F head that must merge with a PF-adjacent host. This analysis allows for a uniform syntactic treatment of the relevant construction in the two dialects, the difference between the two varieties reducing to PF considerations. This approach also makes use of the same machinery employed to account for the infamous ban on negative imperatives operative in languages like Greek and Spanish, which provides novel crosslinguistic support for the analysis The evidence adduced here also has consequences for verb height and word order as well as for the architecture of the clausal left edge.

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