Subject-Object binding dependencies in Romanian
Abstract
This paper dwells on an interesting contrast between Romance (Romanian, Spanish a.o.) and Germanic languages (English, German a.o.) with respect to the syntax and the interpretation of the direct object (DO). One structural difference between these two groups of languages amounts to the fact that the former clitic double (CD) and differentially object mark (DOM) their direct objects while the latter do not. This leads to important interpretive consequences when it comes to phenomena such as Subject-Object binding dependences: Non-CD languages rely on the c-command configuration and surface word order in resolving binding relations (the antecedent must c-command the element containing the bound pronoun. As a consequence, a natural way for the DO to bind into the Subject is to have it moved to the left, in a preceding, c-commanding position). As will be shown, in CD languages, the word order configuration is not decisive: the direct object may bind the subject without having to precede it at the same time. The paper draws a parametric difference between configurational languages (where binding is closely linked to the c-command configurations and is sensitive to surface word order) and non-configurational languages, where the same semantic properties can be derived from the internal structure of the direct object (through its featural specification).
Keywords:
binding, c-command, clitic doubling, differential object marking, direct objectReferences
Aissen, Judith. 2003. Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 435–483. (Crossref)
Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 1994. Clitic Dependencies in Modern Greek. Salzburg: Salzburg University dissertation.
Chomsky, N. 1980. On Binding. Linguistic Inquiry 11: 1–46.
Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris: Dordrecht.
Cinque, Guglielmo.1990. Types of A′-Dependencies. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 2000. Notes on the Intepretation of the Prepositional Accusative in Romanian. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, 2 (1): 91.
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 2002a. Direct object at the left periphery. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (1): 1–15.
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 2002b. Clitic doubling and parasitic gaps in Romanian. Paper presented at Going Romance Groningen, November 2002.
Cornilescu, Alexandra and Cosma Ruxandra. 2014. On the Functional Structure of the Romanian de supine. In Ruxandra Cosma, Stefan Engelberg, Susan Schlotthauer, (Crossref)
Speranța Stănescu and Gisela Zifonun (eds.), Komplexe Argumentstrukturen. Kontrastive Untersuchungen zum Deutschen, Rumänischen und Englischen. (Konvergenz und Divergenz Series), 283–336. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter.
Cornilescu, Alexandra, Dinu Anca and Tigău, Alina. 2017. Romanian Dative Configurations: Ditransitive Verbs, A Tentative Analysis, Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, special volume Investigating Romanian Datives / Recherches autour du datif roumain, LXII (2). 179–206.
Cornilescu, Alexandra, Alina Tigău. 2018. Towards a derivational account of Romanian binding ditransitive constructions. In Teresa Parodi (ed.), Proceedings of the VIII Nereus International Workshop “Referential Properties of the Romance DP in the Context of Multilingualism. Arbeitspapier 129, 121–140. Konstanz: Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Konstanz.
Cornilescu, Alexandra, Alina Tigău. 2021. Is there a dative alternation in Romanian? Remarks on the cross-categorial variation of datives in ditransitive construction. In Adina Dragomirescu, Alexandru Nicolae, (eds.), Romance Language and Linguistic Theory 2017. Selected papers from Going Romance 31, 91-109. Bucharest, Amsterdam: Benjamins. (Crossref)
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. 1994. The Syntax of Romanian. Studies in Generative Grammar, vol 40, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (Crossref)
Gierling, Diana. 1997. Clitic Doubling, Specificity and focus in Romanian. In Black, James. and Motapanyane, Virginia (eds.) Clitic, pronouns and movement, 63–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (Crossref)
Hill, V. and A. Mardale. 2019. Patterns for Differential Object Marking in the history of Romanian. Journal of Historical Syntax 3 (5): 1–47.
Hill, V. and A. Mardale. 2021. The diachrony of Differential Object Marking in Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Crossref)
Iatridou, Sabine. 1991. Clitics and island effects. ms. MIT, Cambridge
Iatridou, Sabine. 1994. Clitics and Island Effects. In Roumyana Izvorski and Victoria Tredinnick (eds.), University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 2 (1). 11–30. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Linguistics Club.
López, Luis. 2012. Indefinite Objects. Scrambling, Choice Functions, and Differential Marking. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT (Crossref)
Pesetsky, David and Torrego, Esther. 2007. The Syntax of Valuation and the Interpretability of Features. In Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian, Wendy K. Wilkins (eds), Phrasal and Clausal Architecture: Syntactic Derivation and Interpretation, 262–194. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (Crossref)
Reinhart, Tanya. 1976. The syntactic domain of anaphora. PhD Dissertation, MIT.
Reinhart, Tanya. 1983. Anaphora and semantic interpretation. London: Croom Helm.
Reinhart, Tanya. 2001. Experiencing derivations. In Rachel Hastings, Brendan Jackson and Zsofia Zvolenszky (eds.) Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 11, 365–387. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications. (Crossref)
Săvescu, Oana. 2009. A Syntactic Analysis of Pronominal Clitic Clusters in Romance: The View from Romanian. New York: New York University dissertation.
Suñer, Margarita. 2006. Left dislocation with or without epithets. Probus 18 (3): 127–158. (Crossref)
Tigău, Alina. 2011. Syntax and Interpretation of the Direct Object in Romance and Germanic
Languages with an Emphasis on Romanian, German, Dutch and English. Bucharest: Editura Universităţii Bucureşti.
Tigău, Alina. 2016. A DRT analysis of Clitic Doubling. Bucharest: Editura Universităţii Bucureşti.
Tigău, Alina. 2018. Linguistic creativity with Clitic Left Dislocated objects in Old Romanian. Creativity 1 (1): 107–122. (Crossref)
Tigău, Alina. 2020. Experimental insights into the syntax of Romanian ditransitives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (Crossref)
Uriagereka, Juan. 1995. Aspects of the syntax of clitic placement in Western Romance. Linguistic Inquiry 26 (1): 79–123.
Zagona, Karen. 2002. The Syntax of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Crossref)
