Vol. XVI Nr. 1
Alexandra Cornilescu and Alexandru Nicolae Classifying pronouns: the view from Romanian
Abstract: This paper is devoted to the analysis of (DP, AP, and PP) postnominal modifiers of personal pronouns, focusing especially on Romanian. Regarding the internal structure of personal pronouns, we adopt the traditional view that they actually do not have a nominal restriction; instead, they themselves are definite NPs that raise to the D-domain, thus coming to be DPs. By means of the suffixal definite article, Romanian provides a contrast between definite modifiers, which prove to be DP-internal, and non-definite modifiers, which prove to be DP-external. Non-definite modifiers are non‑problematic: they are predicates in a small clause configuration. By contrast, the definite postpronominal modifiers are analysed as occupying the specifier position of a Classifier Phrase, present in the extended projection of DPs headed by pronouns and proper names (Cornilescu 2007); the modifier “classifies” the personal pronouns with respect to the kind of the pronoun’s referent (e.g. we linguists / Rom. noi lingviştii). Corroborative data from English and other Romance languages support the proposed analysis.
Keywords: personal pronouns, postpronominal modifiers, Classifier Phrase, kind-level modifiers
Camelia Stan De-phrases and specificity in old Romanian
Abstract: Romanian inherited the Romance de-genitive from Latin. In the 16th century, the de-genitive had an archaic character and was used in the formal register. The absence of the de-genitive from original documents goes to show that it was not used in the spoken language any longer. In the first grammar textbooks of Romanian, from the 18th century, the de-genitive was a bookish form.
Keywords: de-genitive, functional preposition, definiteness, Old Romanian
Alina-Mihaela Tigău Specificity effects with clitic doubling and pe marking
Abstract: This paper focuses on the relationship between pe marking and clitic doubling in Romanian arguing in favour of Bleam’s (1999) hypothesis: the two mechanisms are semantically related through the specificity effects they both engender, but are otherwise independent one from the other. Diachronic data support this hypothesis. Another point which supports this hypothesis is that pe marking may be used in some contexts in which clitic doubling is not allowed (bare quantifiers). Furthermore, pe marking is not as consistent as clitic doubling when putting forth specificity effects. As to the way in which specificity effects arise we have identified different mechanisms: in the case of clitic doubling, the clitic pronoun acts as a restrictor on the domain variable of the DP it doubles, while in the case of pe marking, the specific interpretation is taken to be the effect of a certain interpretation procedure triggered by the insertion of pe (a semantic type shifter).
Keywords: specificity, clitic doubling, differential object marking
Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru Defining “incorporation” with bare singulars in Romanian
Abstract: This paper revisits the problem of bare singular count nouns in Romanian (see Tănase-Dogaru 2007, 2008). The vantage point bare singulars are analyzed from in this paper is the framework known in the literature as “incorporation”. The paper will try to refine the analysis of incorporation; in so doing, the analysis will clarify issues related to head-movement in current linguistic theory.
Keywords: bare singular, incorporation, head-movement
Mara Panaitescu Free choice indefinites and serial universality effects
Abstract: The paper focuses on two contexts which license universal free choice items: future sentences and episodic subtrigged sentences, where the universal flavor of free choice items is dependent on temporal structure. Generally, the universal flavor of free choice items is an outcome of the constraints they impose on the interpretation of individual alternatives. The aim is to show that the two environments produce a serial universality effect (in the sense of chronological order): the free choice item is constrained to vary with respect to the values for the variable ranging over entities and with respect to an event variable. The alternatives are distributed in the time-world segments of a branching W´ T framework. The non-specificity of the free choice interpretation amounts to domain shift, which, in its turn, is guaranteed by non-settledness within a metaphysical modal base.
Keywords: serial universality, metaphysical modal base, branching world, non-settledness, domain shift.
Mihaela Colhon and Dan Cristea Automatic extraction of syntactic patterns for dependency parsing in noun phrase chunks
Abstract: In this article we present a method for automatic extraction of syntactic patterns that are used to develop a dependency parsing method. The patterns have been extracted from a corpus automatically annotated for tokens, sentences’ borders, parts of speech and noun phrases, and manually annotated for dependency relations between words. The evaluation shows promising results in the case of an order-free language.
Keywords: dependency parsing, syntactic patterns, noun phrases
Nicoleta Sava The semantics of focus particles
Abstract: The article analyses the semantic properties of the restrictive focus particle only. It argues for a unitary treatment of only as an adverbial quantifier over properties of events. The study shows that the scope interactions that the particle creates support this analysis, that is the lack of interaction with D-type quantifiers and scope ambiguities created in the presence of A-quantifiers and other sentential operators such as modals and negation. Scope ambiguities, and particularly the interaction with negation, are used to determine the position of only in the LF structure of the sentence.
Keywords: focus particle, interaction with focus, A-quantifier, scope interaction
REVIEWS
Christian Ugo C. Ugorji. Nigerian English Phonology: A Preference Grammar. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. xvii + 195 pp. (Reviewed by Andrei A. Avram)
Giuliano Bocci. The Syntax-Prosody Interface. A Cartographic Perspective with Evidence from Italian. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ix + 213 pp.