Title: | Differential Object Marking of Human Definite Direct Objects on Romanian |
Authors: | Edgar Onea, Daniel Hole |
Publication: | Revue roumaine de linguistique, LXII (4), p. 359-376 Differential Object Marking in Romance: some more pieces of the puzzle / Le marquage différentiel de l’objet dans les langues romanes : quelques nouvelles pièces du puzzle Edited by Alexandru Mardale |
p-ISSN: | 0035-3957 |
Publisher: | Editura Academiei |
Place: | București |
Year: | 2017 |
Abstract: | In Romanian, direct objects realized as full definite descriptions denoting human entities in a post-verbal position are often marked with the differential object marker pe. The literature mentions subtle semantic and pragmatic effects associated with pe-marking, but largely ignores two hard syntactic constraints: pe-marking is a) blocked by possessor datives external to the object DP, and b) incompatible with overtly definiteness-marked unmodified nominal direct objects. This paper contributes to a theory of differential object marking in Romanian starting out from these ‘blocking constraints’. Firstly, we show based on a corpus study that these two constraints isolate the quantitatively most significant domains of variation for the distribution of pe-marking. In fact, there is virtually no variation in pe-marking of definite human direct objects outside these domains. Secondly, we outline a theoretical analysis at the syntax-semantics interface centered on the syntactic movement of pe-marked direct objects. This analysis covers the variation associated with both blocking effects in a unified way. |
Key words: | Romanian, Differential Object Marking, Article Drop, Semantic Binding, Possessor Raising, Weak Definites |
Language: | English |
Links: | pdf html |
Citations to this publication: 0
References in this publication: 1
15 | Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, Ion Giurgea | The Suffixation of Definite Articles in Balkan Languages | RRL, LI (1), 73-103 | 2006 | pdf html |
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