Some notes on the realizations of the direct object in the old language

Affiliations

• Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, Str. Edgar Quinet 5–7, Sector 1, 010017 Bucharest, Romania
• “Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics, Calea 13 Septembrie 13, 050711 Bucharest, Romania

History

Received May 22, 2017
Accepted June 25, 2017
Published September 30, 2017

Key words

direct object
non-determined
specific
non-specific
p(r)e marking

Abstract

In the present article, we aim to analyse some constructions with the direct object realized as a personal or animate noun in the old language in order to emphasize certain syntactic features which have been only partially preserved or even eliminated from the modern language. On the one hand, we point to the construction with a bare direct object, which is recorded quite extensively in the context of wider range of selecting verbs than in the present-day language, on the other, we focus on the p(r)e-marking variation in the context of personal nouns with a specific / non-specific reading, as well as on the competition between the direct object generic singular and plural (pre sărac(ul) ‘DOM poor.DEF’ vs pre săraci ‘DOM poor.M.PL’ / săracii ‘poor.M.PL.DEF’).

Copyright

© 2017 The Authors. Publishing rights belong to the Journal. The article is freely accessible under the terms and conditions of the CC-BY Open Access licence.