Vol. XXVI Nr. 1
DOI: 10.31178/BWPL.26.1
Special issue: Insights into nominal and event modification
Editors: Adina Camelia Bleotu and Deborah Foucault
Monica Alexandrina Irimia
Predicate doubling in Romanian
Abstract: An important restriction has been pointed out regarding resultative secondary predicates, namely their impossibility with stative roots (Dowty 1979, Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995, a.o.). This paper addresses resultative verbal complexes from Mandarin Chinese, which can be constructed from statives; these examples raise important questions regarding their precise nature and the differences from languages like English where stative roots are banned from resultatives. The diagnostics examined here demonstrate that the Mandarin Chinese constructions are indeed true resultatives built from stative roots. However, only certain types of statives are permitted, more precisely those that contain complex internal structure, as contributed by a Davidsonian event argument (Maienborn 2003, 2007), a causative head, or a scalar change component. As opposed to English which can only construct resultatives from bases that exclude statives, Mandarin Chinese permits resultatives built on scalar predicates, irrespective of their stativity.
Keywords: resultative secondary predicates, stativity, Mandarin Chinese
Mihaela Tănase Dogaru
On silent COLOR in Romanian
Abstract: The main aim of the present paper is show that there is a silent noun COLOR in Romanian (following Kayne 2005), in constructions such as stiloul e COLOR roșu ‘pen-DEF is COLOR red’. Silent COLOR is a qualitative classifier, occupying therefore the head of the Classifier Phrase. This silent noun can thus be added to the inventory of silent nouns in Romanian, such as NUMBER, AMOUNT and TYPE (see Tănase-Dogaru 2008, 2009, 2013, Constantinescu & Tănase-Dogaru 2007).
Keywords: silent nouns, COLOR, qualitative classifiers
Daniela-Gabriela Trușcă and Adina Camelia Bleotu
Adjective orders in English and Romanian: An experimental investigation
Abstract: The paper investigates experimentally the order of adjectives in British English and Romanian through Likert acceptability judgments. We focus on three categories of adjectives (Quality, Size, Color) and all their possible combinations in both languages. We show that there is a rigid ordering of adjectives in British English, i.e. the adjectival combinations of Quality-Size (beautiful big family), Quality-Color (special blue flowers), Size-Color (tiny blue butterfly) are natural for native English speakers, but the reverse adjectival orders Size-Quality (little special girl), Color-Quality (blue special flowers), Color-Size (blue tiny butterfly) were judged to be unnatural. In contrast, we found that in Romanian, a language where adjectives typically occur post-nominally, adjectives are more freely ordered, as the orders Size-Quality, Color-Quality, Color-Size were judged by participants as equally natural as the reverse adjective orders Quality-Size, Quality-Color, and Size-Color, e.g., the Color-Size order fluture albastru mititel, lit. ‘butterfly blue tiny’ was judged as equally natural by participants as the reverse Size-Color adjective order fluture mititel albastru, lit. ‘butterfly tiny blue’.
Keywords: General Adjective Hierarchy, AOR, Roll-up, mirror image, English, Romanian
Adina Camelia Bleotu and Amalia Luciu
How are size, age, shape, and color adjectives ordered in English and Romanian? An experimental investigation
Abstract: The current study investigates experimentally whether the General Adjective Hierarchy Size > Age > Shape > Color holds for British English and Romanian native speakers alike, and whether Romanian exhibits a mirror order of English, as argued in Cinque (1994, 2005, 2010) or whether Romanian exhibits a more flexible ordering than English (Cornilescu & Nicolae 2016, Cornilescu & Cosma 2019, Leivada & Westergaard 2019). The results from a forced choice task conducted both in British English and Romanian support the idea that English observes the fixed hierarchy Size > Age > Shape > Color overall, while Romanian is more flexible in its ordering. These results go against Cinque’s (1994) cartographic theory that Romance is a mirror of English, as well as against Scontras et al.’s (2017) theory of subjectivity; instead, the results may be captured by free adjunction. Our findings for English and Romanian support the idea that certain languages (like English) observe general hierarchies for adjectives, while other languages (like Romanian) do not.
Keywords: English, Romanian, adjectives, adjective hierarchy, adjectival orders, adjunction, experimental linguistics
Mara Panaitescu
Romanian free choice free relatives: A comparison with subtriggered free choice sentences
Abstract:The present study focuses on the semantic and pragmatic properties of Romanian free choice free relatives (FC-FRs), with the following conclusions: the quantificational force of FC-FRs in Romanian is definite; the apparent universal force is the outcome of an evaluation constraint of the free choice particle: the syntax of FC-FRs in Romanian is the same as that of English -ever FRs; Romanian FC-FRs most closely resemble the semantics and pragmatics of subtrigged free choice determiners. The distribution and interpretation of Romanian FC-FRs is assumed to be of three main kinds: auto-licensing, on a par with subtrigging; licensing by a modal operator in a non-generic/non-habitual context on a par with FCI determiners licensed in the same environments; licensing by a generic or habitual operator (also on a par with determiner FCIs). As shown in Panaitescu (2022), the three types of contexts differ in the type of universality they display: serial universality, parallel universality (the apparent existential reading) and atemporal universality.
Keywords:free choice free relative, subtrigging, definiteness, universality effect, presumptive mood
REVIEWS
Guglielmo Cinque. The Syntax of Relative Clauses: A Unified Approach. (Reviewed by Deborah Foucault)