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Master's Degree Programme the Syntax And Master’s Degree programme in Language Sciences (D.M. 270/2004) Final Thesis The Syntax and Semantics of Bare Subjunctives in Romanian: a Balkanism Supervisor Ch. Prof. Iliyana Krapova Assistant supervisor Ch. Prof. Guglielmo Cinque Graduand Anda-Amelia Neagu Matriculation Number 866105 Academic Year 2017 / 2018 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Iliyana Krapova, who has always been, during my years at Ca’ Foscari, a strong point of reference. She hasn’t only been a helpful supervisor for my thesis, giving me precious advices and suggesting me how to best accomplish this task, but also an inspiring Professor of Bulgarian Language and Slavic Linguistics. I would also like to thank Professor Guglielmo Cinque, my assistant supervisor, most of all for making me understand, thanks to his classes and his works, that syntax, although not being as obscure and abstruse as it might seem at a first glance, is a whole universe which needs to be constantly explored, thus making me realize that I wish to continue its exploration. I want to thank the faculty members at Ca’ Foscari, in particular Professor Alessandra Giorgi, who introduced me to generative grammar and syntax, and to whom I owe my initial interest in this field. I also want to express my thanks to Professor Assia Assenova, who has been for me a constant and valuable source of help and support, and who transmitted me her love for teaching and for Bulgarian language. I am also thankful to Professor Andrea Trovesi, my bachelor’s degree supervisor, for if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have discovered and taken interest in Balkan linguistics. Non posso non ringraziare Matteo per essere sempre stato il mio solido appoggio in qualunque situazione io abbia dovuto affrontare, nonché un formidabile e insostituibile compagno di vita e di università. Nu în ultimul rând, aş vrea să le mulţumesc părinţilor mei, care au sprijinit întotdeauna orice decizie pe care am luat-o în viaţă, şi care m-au susţinut constant. i ii Abstract The aim of this MA thesis is to analyze bare subjunctive structures in Romanian in order to account for the syntactic and semantic behaviour of such constructions. The analysis, although focusing on Romanian, will be placed in a broader context, namely that of the Balkan Sprachbund. It is well-known that the languages of the Balkan Peninsula share common linguistic features, among which subjunctive structures in both embedded and root clauses. While embedded subjunctives in these languages have been widely studied because of their substitution of the Romance-type embedded infinitive, bare subjunctives have received less attention. In this thesis, I introduce Romanian subjunctive structures from a typological and a diachronic point of view, then I provide an analysis of the syntactic distribution of subjunctives based on the syntactic status of the subjunctive marker. I also discuss bare subjunctives from a semantic point of view, in order to reveal their various modal meanings. In addition to presenting my own analysis of Romanian bare subjunctives, I also review a number of previous studies that have dealt with structural properties that Romanian shares with the other Balkan languages, namely Bulgarian, Modern Greek and Albanian. iii Table of contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 THE MINIMALIST PROGRAM .......................................................................................................................... 3 1.2 THE CARTOGRAPHIC APPROACH .................................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 2 BALKAN SUBJUNCTIVES ................................................................................................................................ 9 2.1 THE BALKAN SPRACHBUND ......................................................................................................................... 11 2.1.1 Development of the Balkan subjunctive form ...................................................................................... 14 2.2 OVERVIEW ON THE USES OF BALKAN SUBJUNCTIVES................................................................................... 20 2.2.1 Embedded Balkan subjunctives ........................................................................................................... 20 2.2.2 Bare subjunctive forms ........................................................................................................................ 24 2.3 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................................. 28 CHAPTER 3 MORPHO-SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF THE ROMANIAN SUBJUNCTIVE MARKER...................... 31 3.1 THE SYNTAX OF THE ROMANIAN CLAUSE .................................................................................................... 31 3.1.1 Rivero (1994) ....................................................................................................................................... 32 3.1.2 Motapanyane (1995) ........................................................................................................................... 33 3.1.3 Alboiu (2002) ....................................................................................................................................... 35 3.2 MORPHOLOGICAL STATUS AND SYNTACTIC DISTRIBUTION OF THE ROMANIAN SUBJUNCTIVE MARKER ....... 40 3.2.1 Să and the left periphery of the clause ................................................................................................ 41 3.2.2 Arguments in favour of an IP-internal position of Să .......................................................................... 47 3.2.3 Syntactic position inside the IP ........................................................................................................... 49 3.3 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................................. 58 CHAPTER 4 MODAL USES OF BARE SUBJUNCTIVE STRUCTURES IN ROMANIAN ............................................ 61 4.1 IMPERATIVE CLAUSES .................................................................................................................................. 61 4.1.1 Imperative mood and subjunctive mood: common features ................................................................ 62 4.1.2 Subjunctive mood and root modality ................................................................................................... 65 4.2 INTERROGATIVE CLAUSES............................................................................................................................ 71 4.2.1 Root modality and epistemic modality ................................................................................................. 73 4.2.2 Rhetorical interrogatives ..................................................................................................................... 79 4.3 DECLARATIVE CLAUSES............................................................................................................................... 82 4.4 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................................. 83 CHAPTER 5 SUBJUNCTIVE STRUCTURES IN ROOT CLAUSES: A BALKAN PHENOMENON ............................ 85 5.1 SYNTACTIC PROPERTIES .............................................................................................................................. 86 5.1.1 Bulgarian ............................................................................................................................................. 87 5.1.2 Modern Greek ..................................................................................................................................... 89 5.1.3 Albanian .............................................................................................................................................. 92 5.2 SEMANTIC PROPERTIES ................................................................................................................................ 93 5.2.1 Bulgarian ............................................................................................................................................. 94 5.2.2 Modern Greek ..................................................................................................................................... 96 5.2.3 Albanian .............................................................................................................................................. 99 5.4 CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 102 FINAL CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................. 105 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................................. 109 Introduction The aim of this master thesis is to provide
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