| Title: | Preverbal Subjects and Topic Marking in Romanian |
| Author: | Ion Giurgea |
| Publication: | Revue roumaine de linguistique, LXII (3), p. 279-322 Information structure and the left periphery / La structure informationnelle et la périphérie gauche Edited by Ion Giurgea |
| p-ISSN: | 0035-3957 |
| Publisher: | Editura Academiei |
| Place: | București |
| Year: | 2017 |
| Abstract: | Given the fact that subjecthood is not marked in Romanian by placement in a dedicated preverbal position, Romanian has been described as a VSO language in generative studies. From this perspective, the frequency of SV orders is somehow unexpected. I present the pragmatic and structural conditions on subject placement in Romanian and discuss an account which derives the (un)acceptability of the various possible orders based on the idea of a multifunctional position in the preverbal field, which is always present and is used for informational-structural purposes but can also be filled by raising the closest argument. I present evidence that preverbal subjects which are neither topics nor foci do exist in Romanian. I identify certain environments where such subjects are disallowed and propose a prosody-based account for the observed restrictions. I compare the multifunctional position account with other possible analyses, concluding that there are two other accounts which can cover the data: one based on distinct peripheral heads associated with an EPP-feature, and one that replaces the EPP-feature by a pragmatic principle. Finally, I argue that the observed facts are compatible with a view of Romanian as a topic-oriented language. |
| Key words: | subjects, information structure, topics, word order, Romanian |
| Language: | English |
| Links: |  pdf  html |
Citations to this publication: 5
| 0 | Nicoleta Sava | Question-answer word order and informational narrow focus | AOU, XXXII (1), 129-146 | 2021 | pdf html |
| 0 | Delia Bentley | On Thetic Broad Focus | SCL, LXXI (1), 5-23 | 2020 | |
| 0 | Florin Sterian | Bibliografia românească de lingvistică (BRL, 60, 2017). Lucrări de lingvistică apărute în țara noastră în cursul anului 2017 | LR, LXVII (2), 127-254 | 2018 | |
| 2 | Ioana Stoicescu, Maria Aurelia Cotfas | Ambiguity resolution in the pronominal domain in child Romanian | BWPL, XX (1), 65-82 | 2018 | |
| 1 | Ion Giurgea | Non-referential topical phrases in Romanian and the theory of topicality | BWPL, XIX (1) | 2017 | pdf html |
References in this publication: 4
| 3 | Ion Giurgea | Bare quantifier fronting as contrastive topicalization | BWPL, XVII (2) | 2015 | html |
| 5 | Silvio Cruschina, Ion Giurgea, Eva-Maria Remberger | Focus Fronting Between Declaratives and Exclamatives | RRL, LX (2-3), 257-275 | 2015 | pdf html |
| 25 | Laurenția Dascălu-Jinga | Melodia vorbirii în limba română | Univers Enciclopedic | 2001 | |
| 16 | Alexandra Cornilescu | The Double Subject Construction in Romanian. Notes on the Syntax of the Subject | RRL, XLII (3-4), 101 | 1997 |
The citations/references list is based on indexed publications only, and may therefore be incomplete.
For any and all inquiries related to the database, please contact us at [Please enable javascript to view.].
Preview:
