John Benjamins Publishing Company
Some remarks on the evidential nature of the Romanian presumptive
Abstract
The Romanian presumptive verbal paradigm (aux + be + present/past participle) is puzzling in several respects: (i) it is the only modal/temporal/aspectual construct which allows the present participle; (ii) it can use any of the modal auxiliaries in the language, in order to assemble verbal forms which convey indirect evidentiality; (iii) with the past participle, indirect evidential meanings and other modal meanings create syncretism. A problem these characteristics pose is to understand the nature of indirect evidentiality, and its mapping to the morphology. This paper proposes a morpho-semantics analysis of the presumptive; the essential part of the account is that aspectual heads can be interpreted modally, in the domain of worlds (Iatridou 2000, Izvorski 1997). The specific semantics of the participles, as well as the contribution of be derive indirect evidentiality, defined as speaker’s non-awareness of the eventuality itself.
Abstract
The Romanian presumptive verbal paradigm (aux + be + present/past participle) is puzzling in several respects: (i) it is the only modal/temporal/aspectual construct which allows the present participle; (ii) it can use any of the modal auxiliaries in the language, in order to assemble verbal forms which convey indirect evidentiality; (iii) with the past participle, indirect evidential meanings and other modal meanings create syncretism. A problem these characteristics pose is to understand the nature of indirect evidentiality, and its mapping to the morphology. This paper proposes a morpho-semantics analysis of the presumptive; the essential part of the account is that aspectual heads can be interpreted modally, in the domain of worlds (Iatridou 2000, Izvorski 1997). The specific semantics of the participles, as well as the contribution of be derive indirect evidentiality, defined as speaker’s non-awareness of the eventuality itself.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- In support of a syntactic analysis of double agreement phenomena in Spanish 1
- The syntax of Spanish comparative correlatives 17
- Functional vowels in main questions in Northern Italian dialects 37
- Middle scrambling with deictic locatives in European Portuguese 59
- Morphosyntactic variation in the temporal construals of non-root modals 77
- On the realization of LF-Binding in some degree dependencies 105
- Some remarks on the evidential nature of the Romanian presumptive 125
- Toward a syntactic reinterpretation of Harris & Halle (2005) 145
- The puzzle of subjunctive tenses 171
- Nounness, gender, class and syntactic structures in Italian nouns 195
- States and temporal interpretation in Capeverdean 215
- Pluractional verbs that grammaticise number through the part-of relation 233
- Language index 249
- Word index 251
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- In support of a syntactic analysis of double agreement phenomena in Spanish 1
- The syntax of Spanish comparative correlatives 17
- Functional vowels in main questions in Northern Italian dialects 37
- Middle scrambling with deictic locatives in European Portuguese 59
- Morphosyntactic variation in the temporal construals of non-root modals 77
- On the realization of LF-Binding in some degree dependencies 105
- Some remarks on the evidential nature of the Romanian presumptive 125
- Toward a syntactic reinterpretation of Harris & Halle (2005) 145
- The puzzle of subjunctive tenses 171
- Nounness, gender, class and syntactic structures in Italian nouns 195
- States and temporal interpretation in Capeverdean 215
- Pluractional verbs that grammaticise number through the part-of relation 233
- Language index 249
- Word index 251
