Formal Approaches to Dps in Old Romanian Brill’S Studies in Historical Linguistics
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Formal Approaches to DPs in Old Romanian Brill’s Studies in Historical Linguistics Series Editor Jóhanna Barðdal (Ghent University) Consulting Editor Spike Gildea (University of Oregon) Editorial Board Joan Bybee (University of New Mexico) – Lyle Campbell (University of Hawai’i Manoa) – Nicholas Evans (The Australian National University) Bjarke Frellesvig (University of Oxford) – Mirjam Fried (Czech Academy of Sciences) – Russel Gray (University of Auckland) – Tom Güldemann (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) – Alice Harris (University of Massachusetts) Brian D. Joseph (The Ohio State University) – Ritsuko Kikusawa (National Museum of Ethnology) – Silvia Luraghi (Università di Pavia) Joseph Salmons (University of Wisconsin) – Søren Wichmann (MPI/EVA) VOLUME 5 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bshl Formal Approaches to DPs in Old Romanian Edited by Virginia Hill LEIDEN | BOSTON Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Formal approaches to DPs in Old Romanian / Edited by Virginia Hill. pages cm. — (Brill’s Studies in Historical Linguistics; Volume 5.) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-28771-6 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-29255-0 (e-book) 1. Romanian language—Syntax. 2. Romanian language—To 1500. 3. Romanian language—History. 4. Discourse analysis—History. 5. Pragmatics—History. 6. Historical linguistics. 7. Romania—History—To 1711. I. Hill, Virginia, editor. PC713.F67 2015 459’.5—dc23 2015010249 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2211-4904 isbn 978-90-04-28771-6 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-29255-0 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Abbreviations vii List of Contributors ix Introduction 1 Virginia Hill PART 1 The Internal Structure of the DP The Parameter of Definiteness in Romanian: Diachronic and Synchronic Evidence 17 Alexandru Nicolae Polydefinite DPs in Old Romanian 62 Daniela Isac Classified Proper Names in Old Romanian: Person and Definiteness 100 Alexandra Cornilescu and Alexandru Nicolae Agreeing and Non-agreeing Genitives in Old Romanian and the History of Romanian Genitive Constructions 154 Ion Giurgea Differential Object Marking in the First Original Romanian Texts 200 Alexandru Mardale Two DP Configurations for Supine-Based Nouns 246 Adina Dragomirescu Part 2 The DP and the Clause Object Pronouns in the Evolution of Romanian: A Biolinguistic Perspective 269 Anna Maria Di Sciullo and Stanca Somesfalean vi Contents DPs in Αdjectival Small Clauses in Romanian: A Diachronic Perspective 290 Monica Alexandrina Irimia Restrictive and Appositive Relatives 329 Anca Sevcenco Index 365 Abbreviations ABL ablative ACC accusative ADV adverb AUX auxiliary verb COND conditional DAT dative DEF definite article DEM demonstrative DO direct object DOM differential object marking ERG ergative ESS essive F feminine FUT future GEN genitive GER gerund IMP imperative IMPER imperfective INDEF indefinite INDIC indicative INF infinitive INF infinitive INST instrumental IRR irrealis IO indirect object M masculine N neuter NEG negation NOM nominative NPI Negative Polarity Item PART partitive PASS passive PFV perfective PL plural PLUPERF pluperfect PPART past participle PRES present viii abbreviations PROG progressive PS simple past REFL reflexive SEARB arbitrary se SG singular SUBJ subjonctif Note: ‘=’ attached to an item indicates its clitic/affixal status; ‘/’ between two abbreviations indicates syncretism (e.g., Case syncre- tism: NOM/ACC List of Contributors Alexandra Cornilescu [email protected] University of Bucharest Anna Maria Di Sciullo [email protected] Université du Québec à Montréal Adina Dragomirescu [email protected] The I.Iordan-Al.Rosetti Institute of Linguistics Ion Giurgea [email protected] The I.Iordan-Al.Rosetti Institute of Linguistics Virgina Hill [email protected] University of New Brunswick - Saint John Monica Alexandrina Irimia [email protected] University of York & University of Toronto Daniela Isac [email protected] Concordia University Alexandru Mardale [email protected] INALCO de Paris Alexandru Nicolae [email protected] The I.Iordan-Al.Rosetti Institute of Linguistics x list of contributors Anca Sevcenco [email protected] University of Bucharest Stanca Somesfalean [email protected] Université du Québec à Montréal Introduction Virginia Hill This volume provides a number of studies that bring a formal perspective to the discussion of diachronic changes the noun phrases underwent from Old to Modern Romanian. It is the first time that a collection of such studies is pub- lished in English, outside Romania, so the respective data and tests become accessible to linguists all over the world. Why would the Old Romanian DP be interesting for cross-linguistic studies?1 In order to answer this question, I will briefly summarize the main points of contention in the current DP theory, and then point out how the studies included in this volume contribute to a better understanding of the relevant issues. In a nutshell, the data from Old Romanian increase the empirical basis needed to revise or refine current analyses of DPs with respect to their inter- nal structure and to the constraints such phrases impose on the structure and interpretation of clauses. The empirical observations lead to precise theoreti- cal proposals that benefit from the diachronic perspective adopted across the board in this volume. 1 Data and Methodology Old Romanian texts have been preserved starting with mid16th century. Thus, what we call old for Romanian grammar corresponds to the early modern stages in other languages (see also Hill & Alboiu 2015). Thus, Old Romanian is the language of the texts created, translated or printed from the 16th century up to the end of the 18th century (Gheție et al. 1997). The Institute of Linguistics in Bucharest compiled a digital corpus compris- ing most of these texts. All the contributors to this book used texts included in this corpus, in their digital or original versions, with the occasional addition of other documents. The search is manual and, for the digital version, it relies on the word search key in the software. The formal analyses proposed on the basis of these data are couched in the framework of generative grammar, in particu- lar, the minimalist theory (Chomsky 1995 et seq). 1 The term Determiner Phrase (DP) refers to the complex structure generated by a noun; that is, the argumental structure of the noun plus its functional domain. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�9�550_00� 2 hill 2 Typology It is well known that the Romanian morphosyntax displays a typological mix of Romance and Balkan parametric settings: while the morphological items are essentially inherited from Latin (Iordan & Manoliu 1965), the structure in which they merge is derived according to Balkan patterns (Mladenova 2009). For nouns, this typological mix is best illustrated by the definite article, which has a Latin etymon, but it is enclitic on the noun stem in Romanian—following the Balkan pattern—whereas in other Romance languages it is prenominal (e.g., Rom. fiul ‘son=DEF’ versus It. il figlio ‘DEF son’). This parametric setting remains constant in Old and Modern Romanian, and is responsible for a wide range of cross-linguistic variation concerning the word order within the DP. For example, among Romance languages, only Romanian may display defi- nite articles in true vocatives (e.g., fiule ‘son.DEF.VOC’; Hill 2014);2 and may allow adjectives to carry the article (e.g. bunul fiu ‘good=DEF son’; Giusti 1993). Diachronic changes affect only the micro-parameters, and they make the topic of the articles included in this volume. That is, further ramifications of the parametric setting for the definite articles are discussed (among other proper- ties of the DP), and changes are pointed out in the area of: multiple agreement, where both adjectives and nouns carry the definite article; definiteness mark- ing with proper nouns; the development of prenominal genitive markers; and the syntax of wh-phrases that had enclitic articles in Old Romanian. 3 Formalization: The Internal Structure of DPs Since the formalization of nominal phrases as DP structures (Brame 1982; Abney 1987), the linguistic theory strived to identify the finer articulations of these configurations, in a way that would capture the morphosyntactic and interpretive variations observable intra- and cross-linguistically. For example, variations arise regarding the codification of phi-features (i.e., number and gender), the expression of possession, the definiteness marking,