Romanian definite articles are not clitics
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Albert Ortmann
Abstract
The central claim of this paper is that the postposed definite article in Romanian is a genuine inflectional suffix. To justify this claim, we show that the status of the article that is commonly assumed in the literature is inadequate in two respects. First, the article is not a second position clitic. Second, the numerous syntactic analyses that involve movement of the adjective phrase in order to account for the combination of article and adjective make wrong empirical predictions. Instead, we provide a lexical analysis within the theory of Minimalist Morphology that accounts for both the morphological behaviour and the syntactic distribution of the article. We finally show that the analysis carries over to Albanian and Bulgarian, although the definite articles of these neighbouring languages are also usually reported as being second position clitics.
Abstract
The central claim of this paper is that the postposed definite article in Romanian is a genuine inflectional suffix. To justify this claim, we show that the status of the article that is commonly assumed in the literature is inadequate in two respects. First, the article is not a second position clitic. Second, the numerous syntactic analyses that involve movement of the adjective phrase in order to account for the combination of article and adjective make wrong empirical predictions. Instead, we provide a lexical analysis within the theory of Minimalist Morphology that accounts for both the morphological behaviour and the syntactic distribution of the article. We finally show that the analysis carries over to Albanian and Bulgarian, although the definite articles of these neighbouring languages are also usually reported as being second position clitics.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Clitics from different perspectives 1
- The tonal phonology of Yoruba clitics 31
- Adjective-clitic combinations in the Greek DP 63
- Free clitics and bound affixes 85
- Clitics and coordination in linear structure 121
- The acquisition of clitics and strong pronouns in Catalan 161
- The prosodic representation of clitics in Irish 181
- Positioning Romanian verbal clitics at PF 219
- Clitic placement in the Romanian verbal complex 255
- Romanian definite articles are not clitics 295
- Clitics in the Srpske narodne pjesme 325
- Verbal clitics in Bulgarian 355
- Operator clitics 387
- Doubling and possession 405
- Name index 433
- Subject index 437
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Clitics from different perspectives 1
- The tonal phonology of Yoruba clitics 31
- Adjective-clitic combinations in the Greek DP 63
- Free clitics and bound affixes 85
- Clitics and coordination in linear structure 121
- The acquisition of clitics and strong pronouns in Catalan 161
- The prosodic representation of clitics in Irish 181
- Positioning Romanian verbal clitics at PF 219
- Clitic placement in the Romanian verbal complex 255
- Romanian definite articles are not clitics 295
- Clitics in the Srpske narodne pjesme 325
- Verbal clitics in Bulgarian 355
- Operator clitics 387
- Doubling and possession 405
- Name index 433
- Subject index 437
