On bare and non-bare temporal names in Romanian
Abstract
The present paper investigates punctual vs. habitual readings of Romanian proper temporal names of the type luni ‘Monday’ vs. lunea ‘Monday.def’. These readings are associated with the absence vs. presence of the definite article (Franco and Lorusso 2022). The paper makes two major claims. Firstly, following Longobardi (1994, 2005), and Franco and Lorusso (2020), the paper claims that with bare, i.e., definiteless, proper time names, N-to-D movement triggers individual-like reference, which, in turn, explains why the event is interpreted as punctual. Secondly, the paper shows that the structure of proper temporal names is complex, in the sense that it contains the classifier zi ‘day’, thus paralleling the structure of complex descriptive proper names of the type ‘the planet Venus’ (see van Riemsdijk 1998, Cornilescu 2007 a.o.). This classifier is shown to be overt when there is no N-raising, and silent when N raises to D in the structure of proper temporal names.
Keywords:
temporal names, classifiers, N-raisingReferences
Alexiadou, A. 2001. Functional structure in nominals. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Crossref)
Anderson, J. M. 2003. On the structure of names. Folia Linguistica 37: 347–398. (Crossref)
Anderson, J. M. 2004. On the grammatical status of names. Language 80: 435–474. (Crossref)
Anderson, J. M. 2007. The grammar of names. (Oxford Linguistics). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Borer, H. 2005. In Name Only. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cornilescu, A. 2007. On classifiers and proper names. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics 9 (1): 62–75.
Cornilescu, A. 2016. The low definite article and the evolution of the Romanian DP. Generative Grammar in Geneva 9: 3–26.
Franco, L., and P. Lorusso. 2020. On the interpretation of proper temporal adverbs in Italian: The role of P and D. Talk delivered at Talk delivered at Going Romance, November 2020. Handout available at https://www.sfl.cnrs.fr/going-romance-34-special-session-programme.
Franco, L., and P. Lorusso. 2022. On the interpretation of proper temporal adverbs in Italian: The role of P and D. Isogloss. A journal on variation of Romance and Iberian languages 8(2): 1–18. (Crossref)
Kayne, R. S. 2005. Movement and Silence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Crossref)
Langendonck, van W. 2007. Theory and typology of proper names. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. (Crossref)
Longobardi, G. 1994. Reference and Proper Names: a Theory of N- Movement in Syntax and Logical Form. Linguistic Inquiry 25(4): 609–665.
Longobardi, G. 2005. Toward a Unified Grammar of Reference. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 24: 5–44. (Crossref)
Löbel, E. 2001. Classifiers and semi-lexicality: Functional and semantic selection. In N. Corver, and H. van Riemsdijk (eds.), Semi-lexical Categories. The Function of Content Words and the Content of Function Words, 223–271. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Manzini, M. R., and L. M. Savoia. 2011. Reducing ‘case’ to denotational primitives. Linguistic Variation 11: 76–120. (Crossref)
Nicolae, A. 2013. Notă de sintaxă comparată: parametrul [+definit] în sintaxa grupului nominal românesc. Limba Română 62(2): 186–209.
Riemsdijk, H. C. van. 1998. Categorial feature magnetism: The endocentricity and distribution of projections. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 2: 1–48
Riemsdijk, H. C. van. 2005. Silent nouns and the spurious indefinite article in Dutch. In M. Vulchanova, and T. A. Ǻfarli (eds.), Grammar and Beyond: Essays in honour of Lars Hellan, 163–178. Oslo: Novus Press.
Tănase-Dogaru, Mi. 2008. Pseudo-partitives and (Silent) Classifiers in Romanian. In S. Blaho, C. Constantinescu, and E. Schoorlemmer (ed.), Proceedings of ConSole XV, 295–320. Leiden: Sole.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. 2009. The Category of Number. București: Editura Universității din București XIII (1): 151–167.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. 2011. Diagnostic Criteria for Semi-Lexicality. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. 2013. Classifiers of quantity and quality in Romanian. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. XV, nr. 2: 77–90.
Tănase-Dogaru, M. 2017. Partitive constructions. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax. Second Edition, edited by Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118358733.wbsyncom017 (Crossref)
Vos, Riet. 1999. A Grammar of Partitive Constructions. PhD Diss: Tilburg University.
University of Bucharest https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3737-7234
