Differential subject marking through SE
-
Virginia Hill
und
Monica Alexandrina Irimia
Abstract
An outstanding question in current studies concerns the status of Romance SE that does not obviously mark reflexivity or anticausativity. This paper signals the presence of such constructions in Old and Modern Romanian, where SE occurs with unergative verbs and qualifies as pleonastic according to traditional grammars (i.e., it makes no difference for the truth conditions or for the argument structure). The main argument is that such constructions are actually instances of differential subject marking (DSM) in Romanian, and that the semantic triggers and the underlying configuration resemble those that occur with differential object marking (DOM) in this language. In terms of theoretical contribution, this analysis (i) widens the cross-linguistic inventory of DSM patterns, by adding Clitic Doubling; (ii) confirms the predictions of recent studies that there could be similarity rather than opposition between DOM and DSM contexts; (iii) shows the possibility of re-allocating the reflexive pronoun SE to other configurations besides (an instance of) verb reflexivization.
Acknowledgment
We thank Alexandru Mardale and Gabriela Alboiu for help with the data. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their very useful feedback and constructive suggestions. All errors are our own.
The appendix provides more examples of unergative verbs that may occur with pleonastic se. The bulleted verb comes with the meaning arising from its unergative use; some of these verbs may have a transitive frame, but the meaning would be different and/or causativity would be implied. Examples under (a) display the active form of the verb, while examples under (b) show its occurrence with pleonastic se. For consistency, all the examples come from OR texts. The pairs tend to come from the same text, in order to underscore the intra-speaker variation.
apropia ‘approach’
| iată, | dragii | miei, | al | mieu | apropie | cătră | mine | (Ev.1642: 310) |
| look | dear | my | the | mine | approaches | to | me | |
| ‘look, my dears, mine is approaching towards me’ | ||||||||
| cu | multă | bucurie | se | apropie | la noi | (Ev.1642: 307) |
| with | much | joy | refl.3acc | approaches | to us | |
| ‘he approaches us with much joy’ | ||||||
bătrânit ‘get old’ (MR variant: îmbătrâni)
| Şi | fu | când | Isac | bătrâni | (PO 88) |
| and | was | when | Isac | got.old | |
| ‘And this was when Isac got old’ | |||||
| şi | domnu-miu | se -au | bătrânit | (PO 57) |
| and | lord-my | refl.3acc -has | got.old | |
| ‘and my husband got old’ | ||||
domni ‘reign’
| Fi-va | atare | vreame | cum | tu | încă | veri | domni |
| be-will.3sg | such | time | when | you | again | will.2sg | reign |
| ‘there will come such a time when you will reign again’ (PO 93) | |||||||
| Aceştia-s | iară | craii | carii | se -au | domnit |
| these-are | again | kings.the | who.the | refl.3acc –have | reigned |
| în | pământul | Edomului | (PO 125) | ||
| in | land.the | Edom.the.gen | |||
| ‘These are again the kings who reigned in the Edom land’ | |||||
glumi ‘joke’
| căutând | pre | fereastră | vădzu | Isac | cu | Răveca | glumind . (PO 86) |
| looking | through | window | saw | Isac | with | Rebeca | joking |
| ‘looking through the window, he saw Isac joking with Rebeca’ | |||||||
| şi | acealea | iubii, | şi | glumiia-mă |
| and | those | loved.1sg | and | joked.1sg- refl.1sg.acc |
| în | dereptăţile | tale | (CEV 19) | |
| in | blessings.the | your | ||
| ‘and I loved those and I joked amidst your blessings’ | ||||
răbda ‘endure’[14]
| ce | tu, | ome, | rabdă | în Domnulŭ | (CEV 43) |
| but | you | man.voc | endure.imp.2sg | in Lord.the | |
| ‘but you, man, endure in the name of God’ | |||||
| până | cândŭ | mă | voi | răbda ? | (CEV 79)[15] |
| until | when | refl.1sg.acc | will.1 | endure | |
| ‘until when will I endure?’ | |||||
| Nu | s-au | putut | răbda | între | păreții | casei. |
| not | refl. 3.acc -have | could | endure | between | walls.the | house |
| ‘he could not endure it anymore inside the walls of the house’ (Sbiera: 132) | ||||||
tăcea ‘keep quiet’
| porunci | să | tacă | (SVI.∼1670: 272) |
| ordered.3sg | sbjv | keep quiet.sbjv.3 | |
| ‘he ordered him to keep quiet’ | |||
| iară | omul | călcătoriu | de leage | să | va | tăcea |
| but | man.the | violating | of law | refl.3sg.acc | will.3sg | keep quiet |
| ‘but the man who violates the law will keep quiet’ (DPar 140/II/35r) | ||||||
veseli ‘enjoy’
| de | veseliia | cu | măscăricii | pre cale | (MC 34r) |
| and | enjoyed.3sg | with | clowns.the | on road | |
| ‘and he enjoyed himself with the clowns on the road’ | |||||
| Acesta | se | veseliia | cu | cărţile | elineşti | (MC 45r) |
| this | refl.3sg.acc | enjoyed.3sg | with | books.the | Greek | |
| ‘This one enjoyed himself with Greek books.’ | ||||||
References
Aissen, Judith. 2003. Differential object marking: Iconicity versus economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21. 435–483. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1024109008573.10.1023/A:1024109008573Suche in Google Scholar
Alboiu, Gabriela. 2002. The features of movement in Romanian. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Alboiu, Gabriela, Michael Barrie & Chiara Frigeni. 2004. SE and the unaccusative-unergative paradox. In Martine Coene, Gretel de Cuyper & Yves D’Hulst (eds.), Antwerp papers in linguistics, vol. 107, 109–139. Universiteit Antwerp.Suche in Google Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis & Elena Anagnostopoulou. 1998. Paremetrizing AGR: Qord order, verb-movement and EPP-checking. Natural Languages and Linguistic Theory 16. 491–539. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1006090432389.10.1023/A:1006090432389Suche in Google Scholar
Alsina, Alex. 1996. The role of argument structure in grammar. Evidence from Romance. CSLI Lecture Notes 62. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Suche in Google Scholar
Armstrong, Grant. 2013. Agentive reflexive clitics and transitive SE constructions in Spanish. Borealis 2(2). 81–128. https://doi.org/10.7557/1.2.2.2526.Suche in Google Scholar
Avram, Larisa & Virginia Hill. 2007. An irrealis be auxiliary in Romanian. In Raúl Aranovich (ed.), Split auxiliary systems: A cross-linguistic perspective, 47–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.69.04avrSuche in Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation. A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 2005. Extended doubling and the vP periphery. Probus 17. 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.2005.17.1.1.Suche in Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 2008. Structures and strategies. New York: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar
Bernstein, Judy, Francisco Ordóñez & Francesc Roca. 2018. Sardinian descendants of ipse in comparative relief. In Annamaria Chilà & Alessandro de Angelis (eds.), Capitoli di morfosintassi delle varietà romanze d’Italia: teoria e dati empirici, 315–336. Palermo: Centro di studi filologici i linguistici siciliani.Suche in Google Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh. 2007. Ergativity in Indo-Aryan languages. Handout. Available at: http://people.umass.edu/bhatt/papers/mit-nov2007-handout.pdf.Suche in Google Scholar
Bossong, Georg. 1983. Animacy and markedness in universal grammar. Glossologia 2(3). 7–20.Suche in Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax. A government-binding approach. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-94-009-4522-7Suche in Google Scholar
Butt, Miriam. 2006. The dative-ergative connection. In Olivier Bonami & Patricia Cabredo-Hofherr (eds.), Empirical issues in formal syntax and semantics, 69–92. Available at: http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss6/index_en.html.Suche in Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1990. Types of A’-dependencies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Ciucivara, Oana. 2009. A syntactic analysis of pronominal clitic clusters in Romance: The view from Romanian. NYU PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Language universals and linguistic typology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 2006. Transitivity pairs, markedness and diachronic stability. Linguistics 44(2). 303–318. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.2006.011.Suche in Google Scholar
Coon, Jessica & Omer Preminger. 2012. Towards a unified account of person splits. In Jaehoon Choi, Alan Houge, Jessamyn Schertz, Jeff Punske, Deniz Tat & Alex Trueman (eds.), Proceedings of the 29th west coast conference on formal linguistics (WCCFL 29), 310–318. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 2000. The double subject construction in Romanian. In Virginia Motapanyane (ed.), Comparative studies in Romanian syntax, 83–134. Oxford: Elsevier.10.1163/9780585473888_005Suche in Google Scholar
Cuervo, Cristina. 2003. Datives at large. MIT PhD thesis.Suche in Google Scholar
Dalrymple, Mary & Irina Nikolaeva. 2011. Objects and information structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511993473Suche in Google Scholar
de, Hoop, Helen & Andrej, L. Malchukov. 2007. On fluid differential case marking: A bidirectional OT approach. Lingua 117. 1639–1656.10.1016/j.lingua.2006.06.010Suche in Google Scholar
Diaconescu, Rodica. 2004. Romanian applicative constrictions. University of Ottawa PhD dissertation.Suche in Google Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. 1994. The syntax of Romanian. Comparative studies in Romance. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110886597Suche in Google Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen & Ion Giurgea (eds.). 2013. A reference grammar of Romanian, vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.207Suche in Google Scholar
Folli, Raffaella & Heidi Harley. 2005. Event-path homomorphism and the accompanied-motion reading in motion causatives. Proceedings of WECOL 2004. 76–88.Suche in Google Scholar
Gheţie, Ion, ed. 1997. Istoria limbii române literare. Epoca veche (1532–1780). București: Editura Academiei Române.Suche in Google Scholar
Hale, Ken & Samuel Jay Keyser. 2002. Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/5634.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. More on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. In Bernard Comrie & Maria Polinksy (eds.), Causation and transitivity, 87–120. Amsterdam: John Bejamins.10.1075/slcs.23.05hasSuche in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2005. Argument marking in ditransitive alignment types. Linguistic Discovery 3. 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1349/ps1.1537-0852.a.280.Suche in Google Scholar
Hewitt, Steve. 2018. Control/volition trumps transitivity. Paper presented at STAS 2018: The shaping of transitivity and argument structure: Theoretical and empirical perspectives University of Pavia, Italy, 25–27 October 2018.Suche in Google Scholar
Hill, Virginia & Gabriela Alboiu. 2016. Verb movement and clause structure in Old Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198736509.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Hill, Virginia & Gabriela Alboiu. 2017. Grammaticalization of auxiliaries and parametric changes. The Linguistic Review 34. 419–447. https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2017-0007.Suche in Google Scholar
Hill, Virginia & Alexandru Mardale. 2021. The diachrony of differential object marking in Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780192898791.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Irimia, Monica Alexandrina. 2020. Types of structural objects. Notes on the differential object marking in Romanian. In András Bárány & Laura Kalin (eds.), Case, agreement and their interactions: New perspectives on differential argument marking, 77–127. Berlin: de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110666137-003Suche in Google Scholar
Kachru, Yamuna. 1980. Aspects of Hindi grammar. New Delhi: W. H. Allen.Suche in Google Scholar
Kagan, Olga. 2020. The semantics of case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781108236867Suche in Google Scholar
Kornflit, Jaklin. 2009. DOM and two types of DSM in Turkish. In Helen de Hoop & Peter de Swart (eds.), Differential subject marking, 79–111. NY: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4020-6497-5_5Suche in Google Scholar
Labelle, Emanuelle. 2008. The French reflexive and reciprocal se. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 26(4). 833–876. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-008-9053-1.Suche in Google Scholar
Laszakovits, Sabine. 2013. Specificity and Differential Object and Subject Marking in Turkish. MA thesis. University of Vienna.Suche in Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 25(4). 609–665.Suche in Google Scholar
López, Luis. 2012. Indefinite objects. Scrambling, choice functions and differential object marking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9165.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Malchukov, Andrej. 2005. Case pattern splits, verb types, and construction competition. In Megistu Amberber & Helen de Hoop (eds.), Competition and variation in natural languages: The case for case, 73–117. Amsterdam: Elsevier.10.1016/B978-008044651-6/50006-9Suche in Google Scholar
Manoliu-Manea, Maria. 2011. Pragmatic and discourse change. In Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith & Adam Ledgeway (eds.), The Cambridge history of the Romance languages, vol. I. Structures, 472–531. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CHOL9780521800723.011Suche in Google Scholar
Masullo, Pascual José. 1992. Antipassive constructions in Spanish. In Paul Hirschbühler & E. F. K. Koerner (eds.), Romance languages and modern linguistic theory. Selected papers from the XX linguistic symposium on Romance languages, University of Ottawa, April 10–14, 1990, 175–195. Amsterdam: New York: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.91.13masSuche in Google Scholar
Motapanyane, Virginia. 1994. An A-position for Romanian subjects. Linguistic Inquiry 25. 729–734.Suche in Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad & Elena Titov. 2009. Focus, contrast and stress in Russian. Linguistic Inquiry 40(3). 514–524. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling.2009.40.3.514.Suche in Google Scholar
Nicolae, Alexandru. 2015. Ordinea constituenţilor în limba română: o perspectivă diacronică. Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti.Suche in Google Scholar
Ordóñez, Francisco & Francesc Roca. 2018. Differential object marking (DOM) and clitic subspecification in Catalonian Spanish. In Ángel Gallego (ed.), The syntactic variation of Spanish dialects 35–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780190634797.003.0002Suche in Google Scholar
Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela (ed.). 2014. The grammar of Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Popescu, Ştefania. 1995. Gramatică practică a limbii române. Bucharest: Editura Orizonturi.Suche in Google Scholar
Reinhart, Tanya & Tal Siloni. 2005. The lexicon-syntax parameter: Reflexivization and other arity operations. Linguistic Inquiry 36. 389–436. https://doi.org/10.1162/0024389054396881.Suche in Google Scholar
Rooryck, Johan & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. 2011. Dissolving binding theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199691326.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael. 1976. Hierarchies of features and ergativity. In Robert M. W. Dixon (ed.), Grammatical features in Australian languages, 112–171. New Jersey, NJ: Humanities Press.10.1515/9783110871661-008Suche in Google Scholar
Sinha, Yash. 2017. Ergative case assignment in Hindi-Urdu: Evidence from light verb compounds. In Patrick Farrell (ed.), Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, vol. 2, 1–14. New York: Linguistic Society of America.10.3765/plsa.v2i0.4079Suche in Google Scholar
Sportiche, Dominic. 2014. Assessing unaccusativity and reflexivity: Using focus alternatives to decide what gets which theta-role. Linguistic Inquiry 45(2). 305–321. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00156.Suche in Google Scholar
Spyropoulos, Vassilios. 2020. Abstract and morphological case in a nominative-accusative system with differential case marking. In András Bárány & Laura Kalin (eds.), Case, agreement and their interactions, 175–218. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110666137-005Suche in Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1957. Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66(2). 143–160. https://doi.org/10.2307/2182371.Suche in Google Scholar
Woolford, Ellen. 2009. Differential subject marking at argument structure, syntax and PF. In Helen de Hoop & Peter de Swart (eds.), Differential subject marking, 17–40. New York: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4020-6497-5_2Suche in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Parasitic gaps aren’t parasitic, or, the case of the Uninvited Guest
- Differential subject marking through SE
- The adjunct condition and the nature of adjuncts
- Proleptic PPs are arguments: consequences for the argument/adjunct distinction and for selectional switch
- Revisiting aspectual se in Spanish: telicity, statives, and maximization
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Parasitic gaps aren’t parasitic, or, the case of the Uninvited Guest
- Differential subject marking through SE
- The adjunct condition and the nature of adjuncts
- Proleptic PPs are arguments: consequences for the argument/adjunct distinction and for selectional switch
- Revisiting aspectual se in Spanish: telicity, statives, and maximization
