The Syntax of Romanian: Comparative Studies in Romance 9783110886597, 9783110135411

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The Syntax of Romanian

Studies in Generative Grammar

Editors

Jan Köster Henk van Riemsdijk

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

The Syntax of Romanian Comparative Studies in Romance

by

Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1994

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin. The series Studies in Generative Grammar was formerly published by Foris Publications Holland. © Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

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Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen, The Syntax of Romanian : comparative studies in Romance / Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, p. cm. — (Studies in generative grammar ; 40) Originally presented as the author's thesis (These d'Etat). Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-013541-8 (cloth) 1. Romanian language — Syntax. 2. Romanian language— Verb. 3. Romanian language—Grammar, Generative. 4. Romanian language—Grammar, Comparative—Romance. 5. Romance languages — Grammar, Comparative — Romanian. 6. Romance languages —Syntax. 7. Romance languages—Verb. 8. Romance languages — Grammar, Generative. I. Title. II. Series. PC725.D63 1993 459'.5 —dc20 93-5554 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek — Cataloging-in-Publication

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Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen: The syntax of Romanian : comparative studies in romance / by Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin. — Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1993 (Studies in generative grammar ; 40) ISBN 3-11-013541-8 NE: GT

© Copyright 1993 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printing: Gericke GmbH, Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin Printed in Germany.

Ce serait entreprendre le r£cit d'un cauchemar que de vous raconter par le menu l'histoire de mes relations avec cet idiome d'emprunt [le frangais], avec tous ces mots pensis et repens£s, affinis, subtils jusqu'ä l'inexistence, courbis sous les exactions de la nuance, inexpressifs pour avoir tout exprimö, effrayants de prdcision, chargis de fatigue et de pudeur, discrets jusque dans la vulgarity [...] plus aucune trace de terre, de sang, d'äme en eux. Une syntaxe d'une raideur, d'une dignity cadavirique les enserre et leur assigne une place d'ou Dieu meme ne pourrait les ddloger. [...] sans quoi jamais je n'eusse abandonnd la notre [le roumain], dont il m'arrive de regretter l'odeur de fraicheur et de pourriture, le mölange de soleil et de bouse, la laideur nostalgique, le superbe d6braillement Ε. M. Cioran, Histoire et Utopie

Preface This book started out as a translation of my Thfese d'Etat, but it has become a quite different piece of work. Chapters 1 through 4, as well as chapter 7 are entirely new. The central ideas of chapters 5 and 6 go back to my dissertation, but have been revised in essential ways. Chapter 6 is reprinted from Linguistic Inquiry (1990, 3) without any change in content; because of technical difficulties, the numbering of examples differs from the version in Linguistic Inquiry, but everything else is identical. During the four years I spent writing this book, I greatly benefited from opportunities to present my ideas to other people. Preliminary versions of the whole book were presented in various talks in Paris, in a research course at Stony Brook (1992) and in talks given at the University of Bucarest and the Romanian Academy of Sciences. These visits were made possible by financial support from the CNRS. During my stays in Bucarest (1990-1992), Stony Brook and ΜΓΓ (1991-1992), discussions with Noam Chomsky, Pusi Cornilescu, Dan Finer, Irene Heim, Jim Higginbotham, Peter Ludlow, Richard Larson, Eric Reuland and Anna Szabolcsi, were especially fruitful. The central idea of Chapter 7 was first presented at the LF Conference in Tilburg (1988), and in a more refined form in Le Deuxifeme Congrös des Langues Romanes (Groningen 1992), GLOW 1992 (Lisbon), and talks given in MIT, Stony Brook and New Jersey (1992). Parts of chapter 5 were presented in Going Romance (Utrecht 1991) and Linguistica Romena Oggi (Venice 1992). Chapters 1 and 2 were presented at CUNY. I am extremely grateful to the audiences at these events, notably Guglielmo Cinque, Giuliana Giusti, Ruohmei Hsieh, Richie Kayne, Tony Kroch, Pino Longobardi, Ken Safir and Eriko SatoZhu for challenging questions and insightful criticism. Several people gave me helpful comments on preliminary drafts of the manuscript. Among them, I am especially indebted to Anna Cardinaletti, Dan Finer, Daniele Godard, Sandu Grosu, Maria Teresa Guasti, Jacqueline Guiron, Sarah Kennelly, Richard Larson, Peter Ludlow, Lea Nash, Hans Obenauer, Georges Rebuschi, Henk van Riemsdijk, Maria-Luisa Rivero, Isabelle Simatos and Elisabeth Villalta, Anne Zribi-Hertz. The acknowledgments for Chapter 6 are reproduced with it. Special thanks go to Antoine Culioli, Richard Kayne and Jean Claude Milner for having shown me how to become a linguist and to Irene Heim and Anna Szabolcsi for their invaluable help with Chapter 7 . The manuscript was more or less completed in September 1990, and circulated in preliminary versions since then. In preparing the final text, I received editorial assistance from Mouton de Gruyter Publishers, and technical assistance from the staff of the Linguistics Department of the University of Paris 7. Finally, I would like to thank Sarah Kennelly and Kristin Stromberg for having tried to improve the style of my English and Elisabeth Villalta for having compiled the Index.

Table of Contents

IX

Table of Contents

Preface Introduction 1. Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents

VII XIII 1

1.1. Auxiliary constructions 1. 1. 1. Auxiliaries and tense features 1. 1.2. Auxiliaries and generalized V-raising 1. 1. 3. "V-second" constructions (subject-Aux/V inversion; Aux-to-Comp) 1. 1. 4. Biclausal auxiliary structures (I) Conclusions 1. 2. The structure of auxiliary constructions 1. 2. 1. Biclausal auxiliary structures (Π) 1. 2. 2. Raising constructions 1. 2. 3. Monoclausal auxiliary structures Conclusions 1. 3. Auxiliaries, bare infinitives and the distribution of clitics 1. 3. 1. Auxiliaries and bare infinitives 1. 3. 2. Bare infinitives and clitic adverbs 1. 4. Auxiliary structures and Long Head Movement 1.4. 1 Auxiliary inversion and the ECP 1. 4. 2. On the absence of auxiliary inversion 1. 4. 3. Inverted conjugations and relativized minimality 1. 4. 4. Modals 1. 5. The licensing of verbs, auxiliaries and types of IP constituents 1. 5. 1. IP structvfre and auxiliaries 1. 5. 2. Auxiliary configurations and the Tense filter 1.5.3. The licensing of verbs embedded under modals 1.5. 4. "Biclausal" tenses 1. 5. 5. Towards a definition of auxiliaries 1.6. The perfect auxiliary fi 'be' Conclusions Appendix

2 5 6 12 14 15 15 15 18 20 23 24 24 26 27 29 31 33 35 36 37 38 39 40 40 41 45 47

2. Clitic Placement and the rule of Move I-to-C

49

2. 1. Cliticization in Romance languages 2. 1. 1 Clitic Placement as adjunction to Infi 2. 1.2. Clitic Placement as adjunction to IP 2. 1. 3. Two instances of Move Infl-to-Comp: V-second and V-preposing 2. 1. 4. The ECP and Merging 2. 1. 5. The adjacency condition on Merging Conclusions

49 50 53 55 57 59 61

X

The Syntax of Romanian

2. 2. Romanian clitics 2. 2. 1. Deriving linear order from hierarchical structure 2. 2. 2. A definition of clitics 2. 3. The rule of V-preposing and clitic Merging 2. 3. 1. Adverbial clitics and V-preposing 2.3.2. Move I lands in Comp 2. 3. 3. Negation 2. 3. 4. Proclisis, enclisis and Merging Conclusions 2. 4. Move I-to-C (V-preposing) in auxiliary structures 2. 4. 1. The distribution of clitics in auxiliary structures 2. 4. 2. Auxiliary inversion and endoclitic pronouns Conclusions . Appendix: A diachronic note: early Romance inverted conjugations

62 63 65 66 66 67 68 70 72 72 73 78 79 80

3. The constituent structure of infinitives and subjunctives

82

3. 1. The constituent structure of infinitival clauses 3. 1. 1. The categorial status of a 3. 1.2. The structure of infinitival IP constituents 3. 1. 3. Control structures 3. 2. The constituent structure of subjunctive clauses 3. 2. 1. The categorial status of sä 3. 2. 2. The structure of subjunctive IP constituents 3. 2. 3. On certain differences between subjunctives and indicatives 3. 2. 4. On the difference between CP and IP 3. 2. 5. The doubly filled Comp filter and predication 3. 2. 6. Comp and left dislocated elements

82 82 87 91 93 93 98 104 106 107 109

4. Subject anaphors in subjunctive clauses

112

4. 1. The data: control, subject raising and obviation 4. 2. PRO and control structures 4. 3. On the contextual identification of anaphors 4. 4. Subject raising 4. 5. Obviation 4. 6. The constituent structure of Romanian subjunctives 4. 7. The governing category of the subject of Romanian subjunctives 4. 8. The null subject of Romanian infinitives Conclusions

112 114 115 118 120 121 122 126 126

5. Copula passives and middle/passive se with (in)transitives

128

Introduction 5. 1. Passives with (in)transitives 5. 1. 1. The data

128 129 129

Table of Contents XI

5. 1.2. Null prototypical arguments: saturation in the Lexicon and syntactic realization 5. 1. 3. The passivization of (in)transitives and the relation between the lexical and the syntactic components 5. 1.4. French impersonals and passive (in)transitives 5. 1. 5. An indexing condition on the chains underlying null prototypical arguments Conclusions 5. 1.6. Further evidence in favour of the indexing condition 5. 2. Passive se with (in)transitives 5. 2. 1. Copula passives and passive se 5. 2. 2. Passive se with (in)transitives in Romanian 5. 2. 3. Passive se with (in)transitives in French Conclusions 5. 3. Remarks on certain contrasts between Romanian and Italian 5. 3. 1. Subject si in Italian 5. 3. 2. Unaccusative verbs and passive se 5. 3. 3. On the ambiguity of Italian si with (in)transitives 5. 3. 4. An alternative analysis Appendix 1: Indexed elements and indexed chains Appendix 2: On Case assignment in passives

145 153 154 167 168 169 172 175 175 175 179 183 185 187 193

6. Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification

196

6. 6. 6. 6. 6.

197 197 202 204

1. Quantification and movement in wh-structures 1. 1. Wh-structures and the clitic doubling of direct objects 1.2. Romanian wh-structures that do not involve quantification 1.3. The quantifier status of wh-phrases 1.4. Wh-structures and quantification: lexical wh-phrases versus structural quantifiers 6. 2. Quantification and movement in Left Dislocations 6.2.1. The two types of Left Dislocation 6. 2. 2. The CLLD of quantified NPs (QNPs) 6. 3. Quantified NPs and Quantifier Raising 6. 3. 1. Bare quantifiers 6. 3. 2. Clitic doubling and specificity 6. 3. 3. Scope ambiguities 6. 3. 4. Prepositional accusatives and specificity 6. 4. Indirect objects 6. 4. 1. Clitic doubling of indirect objects and quantification 6. 4. 2. Romanian relatives and interrogatives containing cäruia 6. 4. 3. Clitic Left Dislocation of indirect objects Appendix - Italian CLLD

132 137 140

210 218 218 220 223 223 224 229 234 236 236 239 240 240

XII The Syntax of Romanian

7. What does QR raise?

242

7. 1. Two LF rules: NPR and DR 7. 2. LF representations and NP denotations 7. 2. 1. DR + N'-incorporation: the amount reading 7. 2. 2. DR + NPR: the presuppositional and the existential readings 7. 2. 3. NPR: the referential reading Summary 7. 3. Locality conditions on DR 7. 3. 1. Prepositional accusatives and DR 7. 3. 2. Bare quantifiers 7. 3. 3. Other quantified pronouns 7. 4. DR and wh-movement 7. 5. On the licensing of A'-bound empty categories 7. 5. 1. Null operators, wh-agreement and wh-configurations 7. 5. 2. A'-licensers 7. 5. 3. DR and bare wh-quantifiers 7. 5. 4. Wh-strategies and the constituent structure of S and S' 7. 6. Three LF representations for how many Summary 7. 7. DR, referentiality and locality 7. 7. 1. Rizzi's (1990) conditions on A'-movement 7. 7. 2. Reconstruction, DR and the locality of wh-movement 7. 7. 3. The long wh-movement of non-D-linked wh-phrases 7.7.4. The long wh-movement of D-linked adjuncts Conclusions 7. 8. Weak islands and scope 7. 8. 1. Asymmetries between topicalization and wh-movement 7. 8. 2. Bare quantifiers and scope 7. 8. 3. Weak islands block narrow scope Appendix 1: Non referentiality without DR Appendix 2: Strong determiners

242 243 244 245 248 249 250 251 254 257 259 260 260 261 262 263 264 264 265 265 266 268 271 272 273 273 274 274 275 276

Bibliography Index of names Index of subjects

278 290 293

Introduction XIII

Introduction

The chapters of this book are the best answers I have so far found to a number of intriguing questions, whose common format is: why is a given phenomenon found in Romanian but not in (the) other Romance languages? This type of question has become central in generative grammar only recently, after a major theoretical shift took place, which led from rule-based models towards what is currently called the "principles and parameters" framework adopted in the Pisa lectures. This conceptual move has fundamentally modified our hypotheses concerning the common properties of natural languages. Within the older system, the various grammars of natural languages were viewed as sets of rules, completely distinct from each other, developed through language acquisition. Questions of comparative syntax could not be asked because the assumption was that any given set of rules (and in particular a given natural language) was different from any other set of rules: universal grammar was essentially a specification of the general format of these rules. Within the present framework, the theory consists of general principles which are supposed to be common across natural languages, and therefore they can be tested on any particular natural language. This view immediately raises the question of crosslinguistic variation. Why do natural languages, viewed now as instantiations of general principles, appear to be so different from one another? A plausible hypothesis is that languages differ from each other by a restricted number of primitive differences which, given the deductive power of the theory, have wide-ranging, apparently unconnected consequences. The primitive differences are conceived of as different values of open "parameters". Thus, the existence of parameters is an empirical hypothesis inherent to the principles framework; parameters bridge the gap between the general, supposedly universal, principles of language and the quite wide range of observable crosslinguistic variation: Universal Grammar would contain, along with general principles, a set of parameters, whose values (in general restricted to two, positive and negative) are set differently across languages. One important goal of current research is to determine the relevant parameters, through a careful investigation of comparative data. Set against this background, the detailed study of any particular language sheds light on the analysis of the others, and may sometimes lead to revisions of the principles themselves. The label "principles-and-parameters" thus appears to designate two distinct things, on the one hand a highly articulated theory (a system of principles organized in distinct modules: government, binding, X'-theory, etc.) and on the other hand an important empirical hypothesis concerning language variation, and a research program associated with it. Part of this research program is the formulation of the theory of parameters itself: (a) what the general format of a parameter should be; (b) on what kind of elements, structural configurations or relations it should bear; (c) what levels or modules of the grammar are in principle open to parametric variation; (d) how many values a parameter may take, etc. Tentative answers can be found in the literature, but I do not think there is any emerging agreement on any of these fundamental issues. This means that what makes it possible for generative grammar to deal with comparative syntax is not the "parametric", but the "principles" framework.

XIV The syntax of Romanian

It is clear that parameters represent a powerful descriptive device, which should be drastically constrained in order for our analyses to achieve a satisfactory degree of explanatory adequacy. It is possible to constrain the possible types of parameters on the basis of the principles themselves. 1 One possibility is to assume that languages differ with respect to the primitive elements or categories which are involved in the definition of the various general principles. The list given in (1) is based on the one in Lefebvre and Muysken (1985). The elements in parentheses are open for variation, i.e., they are relevant in certain languages, but not in others; the elements without parentheses are supposed to be common to all languages: (1)

a. Binding nodes are NP, S', (AP), (PP), (S). b. In order to be accessible to Move ae, an element ae must be marked with features such as (+Wh), +N, (+Q), (+R). c. Heads are Ν, A, V, P, (INFL), (COMP). d. Proper governors are V, (A), (N), (P), (AGR).

As observed by Lefebvre and Muysken, the explanatory power of this kind of parameter is not obvious, and we do not know if it is possible to derive them from other, more abstract, differences between languages. But in any case, they are a possibility suggested by our theory, and as such should be taken into account if we try to define our parameters in a deductive way, on the basis of our theory. Another type of possible parametric variation is related to the modularity of the model. Given the relative independence of the various modules (government, binding, Case, th-theory) and levels of representation, it is possible to assume that languages differ with respect to the modules or levels at which a given principle or general rule applies. A well-known example is Huang's (1982) hypothesis that whmovement applies at S-structure in certain languages, but only at LF in other languages. Another case in point is Hale's (1983) proposal that in "non configurational" languages the projection principle holds only for Lexical Structure but not for syntax. One part of the grammar which is in principle open to parametric variation is the Lexicon, a possibility that has been extensively used in the recent literature (see in particular Borer (1984), who restricts the domain of parametrization to inflectional elements). The motivation which is frequently invoked is the fact that Lexicons are clearly language-particular; parameter setting would apply in the process of acquisition of the Lexicon, which is independently needed. This motivation has been recently undermined by Gleitman (1990) who has shown that the acquisition of the Lexicon relies on syntactic bootstrapping: the child uses the observed syntactic structures as evidence for deducing the meanings of words (verbs in particular); compare semantic bootstrapping (Grimshaw (1981), Pinker (1984, 1987), by which the structures would be deduced from the word meanings that are antecedently acquired from the observation of events. Most of the analyses presented in this book provide empirical evidence against a number of particular parametrizations of the Lexicon that can be found in the literature, and propose instead parametrical options that pertain to constituent structure. My linguistic arguments thus meet Gleitman's psycholinguistic evidence. leave aside psycholinguistic considerations, which may lead us to formulate leamability constraints.

Introduction XV

One type of parameter that has been frequently proposed recently relies on abstract features (I use the term "abstract feature" to refer to pairs of opposite features that do not correspond to any overt, phonological difference) such as [+/strong] or [+/- pron] Infi, [+/- referential] or [+/- argumental] pronominal clitics, etc. According to Aoun (1981, 1985) languages may differ from one another with respect to the type of clitics that they present: four types can be defined on the basis of features such as [+/-referential] and [+/- Case]; according to Cinque (1988), the reflexive clitic se/si may be characterized as [+/- argumental], and Romance languages differ from one another by the particular choice they make with respect to these features. One problem with this kind of proposal is the fact that features such as [+/- referential] or [+/- argumental] do not - and should not be allowed to count among the primitive notions of our theory; such features are quite often mere abbreviations for structural observations. Thus, the label "[-referential] clitics" used by Aoun designates clitics that are allowed to double R-expressions (and variables in particular). This is a direct empirical observation concerning syntactic configurations, and as far as I can see there is no evidence regarding the nature of the clitic itself.2 Parameters stated in terms of abstract features of lexical items may thus obscure structural differences. Analyses relying on abstract features are currently presented as an "explanation" for a number of observable phenomena; it seems to me that instead of an explanation we simply give an abstract name to the observed phenomena, without any further understanding. In Chapters 5 and 6 of this book it will be shown that for a number of cases not only do abstract features fail to explain an observed phenomenon, but moreover they postulate a nonexistent difference between languages or between two elements in a given language: it is I think undebatable that, contrary to Aoun (1981, 1985), there is no difference in the clitic systems of Romanian and (River Plate) Spanish.3 The use of "referential" features calls for further comment. I do not think that a given linguistic element can be said to be either "referential" or "non referential" independently of the syntactic context in which it appears. Therefore referential properties should not be directly introduced as features characterizing linguistic elements, but rather read off the syntactic representation. An adequate theory of reference must provide (a) a formal procedure that freely assigns indices (independently of referential properties); (b) well-formedness conditions on configurations of indices; (c) interpretive procedures by which given configurations of indices are associated with referential properties (for a specific proposal see Chapter 5). Given the chain formalism, it is reasonable to assume that referential properties are only relevant at the level of the chain, and not at the level of the elements of the chain. Thus, even if we could use the features [+/-referential], we still would not be able to use it for clitics, but only for clitic chains. 2 It is well-known that different distributional patterns of clitics do not necessarily correlate with different types of clitics. According to "Kayne's generalization" - for which Jaeggli (1982) has provided a principled explanation - it is indeed possible to maintain that the possibility of clitic doubling is not due to the nature of the clitics, but rather to the existence of prepositional Accusatives. In Dobrovie-Sorin (1990) reprinted here as Chapter 6,1 have shown that Romanian clitics behave exactly as Spanish clitics regarding Jaeggli's generalization that variables (more precisely variables bound by "weak" wh-phrases) cannot be clitic-doubled. 3This does not mean that Aoun's parametrization of clitic systems may not prove correct for other languages.

XVI The syntax of Romanian

One important disadvantage related to the use of abstract features is that it tends to increase the number of cases of synonymy and homonymy in the syntax and the morphology of natural languages, which decreases explanatory power (explanatory accounts of linguistic phenomena aim at reducing synonymy and homonymy). To make the point clear let me take an example. It is known that "passive meaning" can be expressed in various ways, among which are middle/passive morphemes (see Greek or Turkish), reflexive clitics (see se/si in Romance languages) or copula verbs followed by past participles. All these constructions have in common the absorption of the external th-role (the absorption of objective Case is much less clear), and we may try to derive this characteristic from the properties of the syntactic configurations that display it. Jaeggli's (1986a) proposal (taken up recently by Baker, Johnson and Roberts (1989)) is that the the passive suffix -en absorbs the external th-role (and also Objective case in certain languages). The problem with this analysis is the existence of past participles which do not trigger the passive phenomenon (see the present perfect/ past perfect paradigms). One must then stipulate the existence of two types of homonymous past participles, "passive" and "non passive" (cf. Baker, Johnson and Roberts (1989)).4 This kind of analysis can of course apply to passive reflexives, and this has indeed been proposed by Belletti (1982): their passive meaning would also be due to a "passivizing" morpheme, the clitic se, which would be characterized in exactly the same way as the past participle morpheme. Put together, Jaeggli's and Belletti's hypotheses lead to the curious conclusion that the "passive" past participle morpheme and "passive" se are synonyms 5 , and that the "passive" se and the "reflexive" se are homonyms. By avoiding the use of abstract features we may provide an analysis within which semantics is interpretive, that is, it can be read off structures which have been generated by a truly autonomous syntax, one which makes no reference to the "passive" meaning of a given element. The syntactic representation should take into account the distinct overt properties of the constructions under discussion: the verb BE (we use capitals to refer to English be, but also to French etre, Romanian a fi, etc.) for copula passives, and se for "reflexive" passives. None of these elements should be stipulated as being a passivizer. We should also try to understand why se (see also Greek morphological passives) is compatible with both the passive and die reflexive meaning, unlike copula passives. Cinque (1988) has observed an important difference concerning the distribution of Italian si in [-finite] clauses, between on the one hand (in)transitives and on the other hand unaccusatives, passives and copula constructions. This data suggests that what was currently supposed to be just one item, namely the Italian "impersonal" ("nominative", "subject") si, must in fact be analyzed as two items, ^There is in fact a difference between the two -en morphemes, namely the fact that only "passive" -en necessarily takes AGR features, thus qualifying as an Ν element (cf. Jaeggli (1986a: 592, fn 6)). However, it is not clear at all that this difference is due to intrinsic features, or rather to the fact that in passives, as opposed to present perfect, -en appears in a copula construction. Note also that in French and Italian the non-passive past participle morpheme takes AGR features in a number of cases. 5 Note that according to J. C. Milner (class lectures) complete synonymy is probably non existent in general; morphological synonymy is even more questionable than lexical synonymy.

Introduction

XVII

and Cinque proposes to distinguish them by the feature [+argument] versus [argument]. This analysis is difficult to accept, in so far as it postulates perfect homonymy: two elements that present exactly the same overt properties are supposed to be characterized by distinct "content" properties (i.e., by distinct features). It is in fact possible to show that the distinction between +arg and -arg si is an artefact. The important empirical data that this distinction is supposed to capture can be treated in terms of the difference between the anaphoric "object" si and the "subject" (or "nominative") si (see Chapter 5 ). The latter distinction is not a case of homonymy, because Case constitutes a formal property, which can be used to distinguish between linguistic elements: Nominative si and Accusative si are two formally distinct entities, and not two homonyms. The question of why such a difference should exist for phonologically identical elements is another problem (diachronic reanalysis may be invoked, see Naro (1976)). Let us now consider overt features. Notions such as "clitic" or "affix" are morphophonological features that characterize certain lexical items as opposed to others. Features of this kind provide important descriptive information, which may help us in characterizing crosslinguistic variation. It is obvious that languages differ from each other with respect to the presence of clitic elements: Romance languages, as opposed to English, present pronominal clitics; Slavonic languages, as opposed to Romance languages (with the exception of Romanian which in this respect behaves as a Slavonic language) present verbal auxiliaries which have clitic status. The presence/absence of (pronominal and/or verbal) clitics is a real crosslinguistic difference, but a quite "superficial" one, which probably does not deserve the status of "parametrical" option: if we have a good definition of clitics we may easily classify languages with respect to the presence of these elements, but this classification (which can be established independently of our theory of principles) does not really help us understand crosslinguistic variation. We must therefore pursue our investigation and try to see whether the existence of clitics can be shown to follow from other parametrical choices. It seems that the distribution of clitics is related to functional categories in general, and to Infi (or Tense) in particular. It is thus, in principle, possible to account for the presence or absence of clitics on the basis of properties of Tense, which are closely related to the structure of IP constituents. It would then be interesting to derive the existence of clitic elements as a consequence of a particular choice concerning IP structure (S-V-O, S-O-V or V-S-O). This is the line of investigation that I will try to pursue in Chapter 1: if I am correct, the fact that Romanian verbal auxiliaries are clitics is related to the fact that this language is V-initial. More precisely, NP subjects are generated as sisters to VP and V raises to Infi, bypassing the intervening subject; the subject stays in its base-position - compare S-V-0 languages, which according to Sportiche (1988) would be characterized similarly, but would furthermore involve obligatory subject-raising to (Spec,I'). The recent research concerning IP constituents is characterized by the proliferation of syntactic positions: not only is each inflectional morpheme generated in a distinct syntactic position (hence syntactic nodes such as Tense, Agreement, Aspect, Negation, etc.), but moreover each of these morphemes is considered to be the head of a functional projection; hence AGRP, NegP, AspP, etc., each of which takes its own Spec, or subject position. The stand that I have taken in this book is more conservative with respect to two assumptions: (a) I take AGR to be a functional head of "nominal" type, which could only project a DP-like

XVIII The syntax of Romanian

constituent; I therefore assume no AGRP, either under or above TenseP (see Pollock (1989) and Belletti (1990), respectively); (b) I do not assume a Spec position for every functional projection. What we obtain is a CP which dominates NegP, which in turn dominates IP (or rather TenseP). I have also proposed a process of reanalysis by which functional heads merge with each other giving rise to incorporated heads of the form (Comp)-(Neg)-(cl)-Tense-V-AGR, where the bracketed elements are not obligatory. There is only one Spec position for this reanalyzed head, which hosts the NP subject in S-V-0 languages; in V-initial languages the same Spec position is an A' position, which can host any kind of constituent. Correlatively, I take the VP-internal subject position to be an A position in V-initial languages, but a mere th-position (which does not qualify as either A- or A'-) in S-V-O languages. Arguments in favour of these options can be found in Chapters 1 and 2. Must we assume that languages present the same functional categories or are we allowed to postulate distinct functional categories across languages? Morphological data seems to plead in favour of free variation: there are "aspectual" languages for which it seems necessary to postulate an "Aspect" functional category, which probably does not exist in Romance languages. The obvious character of this remark may be misleading, and the languages that present "Aspect" should be carefully studied before we can make a decision concerning the syntactic relevance of certain morphological inflections. Even if it may prove to be too strong, it seems that from a purely heuristic point of view, it is preferable to try to maintain the more constrained hypothesis, according to which languages present the same functional categories. In Chapters 1, 2 and 3 it will be shown that this hypothesis leads to a more explanatory account of certain Romanian data than other accounts which rely on idiosyncratic functional categories (see Rivero (1988a, to appear), who assumes that Balkan languages present, besides Tense/AGR, an extra Infi node, which would host subjunctive and infinitival particles, as well as certain auxiliaries). I believe that by letting idiosyncracies get into our analyses we diminish our hope of approaching a real comprehension of linguistic phenomena. The Lexicons of various languages do vary widely in obvious respects: not only do we not find exactly the same lexical items from one language to another, but the various classes of verbs appear to overlap: a transitive verb in Li appears to have an intransitive counterpart in L2, and the same happens with intransitivesunaccusatives, etc.; verbs do not subcategorize the same type of PP in various languages, etc. The existence of these differences in the membership of the classes of verbs does not mean that the classes themselves are defined in a different way: I do believe that the notions of (in)transitivity should be defined in the same way in English, German and French, even if the classes of transitives and intransitives are not completely identical in these languages. It is thus possible to say that, in so far as certain lexical classes can be defined across languages, there is no reason to believe that they are open to parametrical variation. What is open to variation is the choice that is made for a particular verb in a particular language, as to its belonging to one class or another. These remarks cast doubt on the idea that in certain languages (German, Norwegian, as opposed to Italian or English) intransitives would be able to assign objective Case (see Jaeggli (1986a)). My point is not that intransitives should not be allowed to assign objective Case (I believe in fact that they do), but only that we should not allow intransitives to be defined in different ways for different languages.

Introduction

XIX

The idea that intransitives may vary crosslinguistically with respect to their Case-assigning properties has been suggested in order to account for a well-known fact: intransitive verbs are allowed to passivize in some languages (see German, Norwegian, Arabic, etc. and marginally French), as opposed to others (Romance languages other than French, English, etc.) which do not. The problem is that by parametrizing (in)transitivity we get rid of the puzzle rather than solve iL The same remark applies to the other possible alternative, the parametrization of the Case absorption properties of passive morphemes (see Baker (1988); Roberts (1985, 1987), among others). In Chapter 5, I argue instead that the passivizability of intransitives need not be parametrized; the above mentioned crosslinguistic differences are due to the existence of various types of impersonal constructions (see il impersonals in French, inverted subjects in "pro-drop" Romance languages, and es/impersonal "pro"constructions in German). The proposed analysis of passive intransitives opens the way towards a better understanding of the Romance construction that involves intransitive verbs used with the reflexive pronoun se/si. According to a generalization unanimously maintained by both traditional and generative scholars (see in particular Belletti (1982)), "pro-drop" Romance languages present a subject/Nominative se/si, which shows up, among other constructions, in se Vjntransitive sequences. In Chapter 5, it is shown that this generalization should be revised. Although it is a "pro-drop" language, Romanian does not have at its disposal "Nominative" se. The matter is complicated by the fact that Romanian does present the construction se ^intransitive (se doarme 'se sleeps': "one sleeps", "they sleep"), which will be analyzed as relying on middle/passivizing se. The foregoing discussion anticipates arguments that show that certain proposed parameters concerning the Lexicon are not needed; other parameters capture real differences between linguistic elements (see the clitic status of pronouns and auxiliaries in certain languages) but these differences can be shown to derive from structural properties of syntactic constituents. Certain crosslinguistic differences concerning the distribution of comparable elements in various languages should not be interpreted as the consequence of some abstract difference between the elements themselves, but rather as the consequence of the different structural properties of their syntactic environment: V-initial IP constituents, various types of impersonals, or the existence versus the absence of "null operator" configurations (Romanian does not present i/iai-relatives, clefts, Topicalizations, etc). In Chapter 6, I argue that the lack of "null operator" configurations explains why Romanian presents systematic contrasts between "strong" and "weak" (in the sense of Milsark) whquantifiers. I believe that this result is correct, but it is clearly not the end of the story: a "parameter" that distinguishes between languages with and without "null operators" has no real theoretical status; it is at most a descriptive generalization made possible by our theory. We must now try to understand better the notion of "null operator" itself (or rather the type of licensing mechanism of those empty "variables" which are not bound by lexical quantifiers). We must then try to establish a relation between this type of licensing mechanism and other crosslinguistic differences. A possible line of inquiry would be to try to establish a relation between word-order typology (SVO, SOV, VSO, etc.), "clitic doubling typology" (Romanian and Spanish, as opposed to French and Italian, allow (in)direct objects to be doubled by a clitic pronoun) and the typology of whmovement. The "null operator option" is thus clearly not a "parameter" if by that

XX The syntax of Romanian

notion we mean a primitive difference between languages. The term "parameter" is, however, currently used in a less strict way, to designate one difference that accounts for a cluster of differences between languages. Such a parametrical variation may then be shown to follow as a consequence of another, more abstract parametrical option. By restricting the parametrization of the Lexicon we reduce quite drastically the number of possible parameters, because the possible variations in syntactic structures are much fewer than the possible variations in the Lexicon. This book eliminates a number of unjustified parameters concerning the Lexicon, and does not propose any real "parameter", in the sense of primitive difference between languages. My main aim has been to establish correlations between clusters of covarying crosslinguistic differences; I hope that further investigation will lead us from these "intermediate/mid-way parameters" to the discovery of some primitive differences between languages. This constrained view of parametrization has led me to propose certain theoretical refinements, which bear on the projection principle, on the theory of whmovement and quantification, and on the identification of empty categories and pronouns. I shall very briefly summarize the main conclusions and refer the reader to the various relevant chapters. If we do not want to introduce unjustified parameters concerning either intransitivity or passivization, the possibility of passive intransitives must no longer be thought of as a "marked" characteristic of certain languages, but as a virtual possibility of any language. In Chapter 5 evidence will be provided in favour of the idea that the representation of passive intransitives necessarily involves the presence of an empty category in the object position (which, depending on the type of impersonal construction, may form a th-chain by itself, or belong to the same chain as the subject position). Active intransitives, on the other hand, may appear with overt cognate objects, but no empty category should be postulated when such objects do not show up. This means that the projection principle is not alone responsible for the positions projected in the syntax: syntactic configurations, passives in particular, may force the instantiation of certain positions; as a result, "implicit/prototypical" or empty "cognate" objects may surface in the syntax in passive configurations, but in active structures they are saturated in the Lexicon. The analysis of Romanian wA-structures proposed in Chapters 6 and 7 leads to certain revisions of the GB theory of quantification, which appear to be independently motivated by the behaviour of dislocated quantified expressions and of quantified expressions in situ. My proposals concern the formal mechanisms on which quantification structures rely. How do we define a quantified NP as opposed to a "referential" NP? Are quantificational relations established between quantified NPs and variables, or between nominal determiners and variables? In addition, I propose new accounts for certain well-known phenomena, such as the systematic interpretive contrasts between the specific versus nonspecific readings of indefinites and other quantified NPs, and "weak" islands. My results depart from the current view of quantification initiated by May (1977), but converge with work by Cinque (1990), Pesetsky (1987), Williams (1986) and others.

1. Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents

Romanian auxiliary constructions show properties that set this language apart among the other Romance languages. The main aim of this chapter is to establish the correct underlying configuration of Romanian auxiliary constructions. I will then try to show that a correlation exists between types of auxiliaries and types of IP constituents. If this correlation is correct, the type of auxiliaries found in Romanian constitutes an indirect argument in favour of the idea that Romanian IP constituents are VC+ty-initial.1 Let us start by defining the notion of auxiliary: (A)

a. Auxiliaries are verbs which present a defective lexical structure, characterized by the absence of th-structure (they do not th-mark). b. Auxiliaries select a VP complement.

The statement in (A)a defines the thematic properties of those auxiliaries that are sometimes referred to as "functional"/"weak" (see Lema and Rivero (1989, 1990)), "aspectual" (Chomsky (1986)b), or "temporal" (Bennis and Hoekstra (1988), Gueron and Hoekstra (1988)). The term "auxiliary" will be used here in this restrictive sense. The statement in (A)b is the structural characteristic of auxiliaries. It is however well-known that this structural property can be found in other elements, such as English modals and Infi, which differ from auxiliaries with respect to (A)a: Infi is assumed to th-mark VP (see Chomsky (1986)b), and English modals L-mark VP. The structural definition of auxiliaries (and modals) goes back to Chomsky (1955): auxiliary verbs are not sisters to V itself, but rather sisters to VP; 2 in other words, auxiliaries are not inside, but outside the minimal VP constituent which dominates the lexical verb. It is currently assumed (see in particular Akmajian, Steele and Wasow (1979), Gueron and Hoekstra (1988) and Rouveret (1987)), that the definition in (A)b is an empirical generalization that subsumes (besides English modals) aspectual auxiliaries in Germanic and Romance languages (see have, the French etre and avoir, etc.); it does not cover the passive auxiliary, nor English causatives. It will be shown (Section 1.1.) that Romanian auxiliaries cannot be analyzed in terms of (A)b; they appear to be subsumed by the definition in (B): (B)

Romanian auxiliaries do not select a VP complement; they select a CP complement headed by (V+)Infl.

The characteristic stated in (B) should not be understood as meaning that Romanian auxiliaries are comparable to the French aller 'go' in the colloquial future '(Spec, IP) is an A'-position, which can be occupied by subjects and non-subjects alike; (Spec, VP) is the Α-position of subjects. 2 For other hypotheses concerning auxiliaries see Ross (1969), Emonds (1978) and Akmajian, Steele and Wasow (1979).

2 The syntax of Romanian

construction, which from the structural point of view behaves as a raising verb. Romanian auxiliaries will be shown to be different from raising verbs. Romanian raising structures involve two IP constituents and two subject positions, whereas the auxiliaries defined in (B) can be shown to appear in configurations in which only one Infi element is active and only one subject position is projected (note that by these properties the Romanian auxiliaries defined in (B) resemble the structural auxiliaries defined in (A)b). Romanian presents a modal verb, a putea 'may, can', which shows the structural properties of Romance and Germanic auxiliaries (see (A)b): (C)

Romanian modals may select a VP complement.

An understanding of why (B) and (C) should hold relies on the "Tense filter", a licensing requirement to which both auxiliaries and lexical verbs are subject. 1 . 1 . Auxiliary constructions The auxiliaries to be discussed in this chapter are those found in the present perfect ("perfectul compus"), future and conditional paradigms. The passive auxiliary be will not be considered, because it shows the morpho-syntactic behaviour of lexical verbs. Romanian and English have in common the use of auxiliary verbs that encode grammatical information such as "future" and "conditional"; as in English, these auxiliaries are followed by a bare infinitive, i.e., an infinitive devoid of the particle a. For ease of reference I have glossed a as to, although the two particles do not represent the same syntactic category (see Chapter 3). (1)

a. Copüi vor (*a) pleca la mare. The children will (*to) go to the seaside, b. Copiii ar (*a) pleca la mare. The children would (*to) go to the seaside.

It is not obvious that the Romanian examples in (1) should be analyzed on a par with their English glosses. We might as well think that (l)a-b are comparable to the French "futur proche", which is currently attributed a biclausal structure: (2)

Je vais [ip PRO lui dcrire] I go [ip PRO himDat (to) write] Ί am going to write him'

The main argument in favour of a biclausal structure comes from the distribution of clitics. Assuming that clitics attach necessarily to an Infi node (see Chapter 2), the position of the clitic in (2) indicates that the lower verb is governed by an Infi node; hence an embedded IP constituent must be assumed in (2). This means that the verb aller has the structural properties of raising verbs, not those of auxiliaries (see the definition in (A)b); thus, to classify aller as an auxiliary is to take into account its semantics (future meaning) rather than its structural properties (for further

Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents 3

discussion of the difference between structural auxiliaries and raising verbs see Section 1.2.). Returning to the Romanian examples in (1), clitics necessarily attach to the higher verb,3 and this may be taken to indicate that there is no lower Infi node: (3)

a. Mana il va invita

sigur.

Mary him will invite for sure, b. *Maria va il invita

sigur

Furthermore, Romanian future and conditional auxiliaries are not used as lexical verbs, as opposed to aller in French. Both the Romanian future auxiliary voi/vei/.. and the verb a vrea 'want' stem from the same etymon, uolo. However, in modern Romanian the paradigm of voi is distinct from the paradigm of a vrea 'to want' (see (4) and (5)); (4) is also distinct from the paradigm of the lexical verb a voi 'to want' (see (5)b), felt as an archaic variant of a vrea::4 (4)

eu voi / tu vei/el

va/noi

vom / voi vep /ei

vorpleca

[future]

I will-1st p/ you will-2nd ρ/ he will-3rd ρ leave .. (5)

a. eu vreau /tu vrei/el vrea /noi vrem / voi vrefi... I want-1st ρ/ you want-2nd p/ he want... b. eu voiesc/tu voiefti/.../ noi voim / voi voip

[a vrea 'to want'] [a voi

'to want!

The morphological differences between the paradigms (4) and (5) indicate clearly that in modern Romanian the future auxiliary is an element whose use is restricted to the future periphrastic construction. Likewise, the paradigm in (6)a, used in the "perfectul compus" is distinct from the conjugated forms of a avea 'to have' (see (6)b), although they are historically related: (6)

a. am/ai/a/am/ap/au plecat (I) have/ (you) have/ (he) has ... left b. am/ai/are/avem/avepi/au

["perfectul compus"] [a avea'to have']

Compare the French avoir or English have, which function both as auxiliaries and as lexical verbs. The case of the Romanian conditional is even clearer. The inflected auxiliary element is a§/ai/ar..., whose distribution is restricted to the conditional forms. It no longer bears any relation to a avea 'to have', to which it is historically related: (7)

eu a§ / tu ai / el ar /noi am / voi ap°/ei ar pleca

[conditional]

I would-1st ρ/ you would-2nd p/ he would-3rd ρ leave .. Thus, the Romanian future and conditional periphrastic constructions seem difficult to analyze as biclausal structures on a par with (2). This might lead us to analyze

3

The feminine clitic ο is a notable exception to this generalization, which will lead us to abandon the hypothesis envisaged here (see Section 1.2.3. below). 4 The etymology of voi is not completely clear; it may go back to Latin uolo, or be of Slavonic origin.

4 The syntax of Romanian

them as monoclausal constructions involving an auxiliary verb of the type defined in (A)b, repeated in (8): (8)

Auxiliaries select a VP complement.

The verbs that fall under (8) are not all of the same type. English modals present certain well-known formal characteristics that distinguish them from lexical verbs: (a) their position with respect to the negation particle and adverbs; (b) participation in subject-Aux inversion; (c) the lack of Agreement inflections and (d) the lack of non-finite forms. This irregular morpho-syntactic behaviour has been captured by assuming that English modals are not generated under V, but under a specific position, whose label has changed from Aux (Chomsky (1957, 1965)) to Infi (Chomsky (1981)): (9)

a.

I'. I Aux

VP^ V

NP 0

The label Aux in (9) should not be mistaken for the node Aux in Chomsky (1965), which has survived as Infi in the current theory (Chomsky (1981)). Infi is a more inclusive category than the former Aux; the two notions are nevertheless essentially comparable since they both have the status of a syntactic category. The Aux in (9) is simply a label for a given lexical class, whose elements are defined in (A). Unlike English modals, aspectual auxiliaries (see English have, French avoir and e£re, etc.) show the morpho-syntactic behaviour characteristic of lexical verbs5 and are therefore assumed to be generated outside Infi, under a V node (for ease of reference the VPs headed by an auxiliary will be notated AuxP; the reader should recall that this label does not mean that we assume the existence of a distinct syntactic category) that takes a VP complement: at S-structure French auxiliary verbs move to Infi (as French verbs normally do, see Emonds (1978) and Pollock (1989)): (9)

b.

I'

V

NP,

What is the correct underlying structure of Romanian auxiliary structures? Are they of the type given in either (9)a or (9)b? 5

Note however that non-finite auxiliaries behave differently from non-finite lexical verbs, cf. Pollock (1989).

Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents

1. 1. 1. Auxiliaries

and Tense

5

features

Consider (10)-(11) and compare the corresponding English glosses with the French and English paradigms in (12)-(13): (10)

euam/tu

ai/el

a/noi

am/voi

ap/ei

au

mincat

(I) have-lst ρ / you have-2nd ρ / ...eaten (11)

mincasem

/ mlncasefi

/ mincase

/ mincasem

/ mincasefi

/

mincaserä

I / you / ....had eaten (12)

a. tu as mang6

/tu

es

parti

b. you have eaten / gone (13)

a. j'avais

mang6/j'6tais

parti

b. I had eaten/1 had left In English and French (and in fact in Romance and Germanic languages in general) the present perfect and past perfect are built with the perfect auxiliary (have/avoir/etre), which takes Present and Past Tense/Imparfait morphological inflections respectively. This strategy is not available in Romanian, which uses instead a bound morpheme for the Past Perfect. The paradigms of Present Perfect and Past Perfect thus appear to be completely distinct from each other in Romanian, as opposed to French and English, where the Past Perfect and the Present Perfect paradigms use the same auxiliary (with different Tense inflections). The generalization underlying this data could be that Romanian auxiliaries are unable to carry Tense features. This characteristic could be captured by assuming that Romanian auxiliaries are generated under I(nfl), as are English modals (see (9)a): since the auxiliary fills the Infi position, and assuming that syntactic positions cannot be doubly filled, Tense inflections cannot be generated.6 Now compare the paradigm in (10) and those in (14): (14)

a. eu voi

fi

mincat

I will BE eaten Ί will have eaten' b . eu a§ fi

mincat

I would BE eaten Ί would have eaten' These examples are not built with the perfect auxiliary am/ai/a..., used in (10), but with the invariable auxiliary fi 'be',7 which appears with any kind of verb

^This means that auxiliaries can take Tense inflections only if they are generated outside the Infi position, as in (9)b. The English modals should and would constitute a potential problem for this generalization: they bear the Tense inflection -ed, but their distributional properties indicate that they are generated under Infi. To solve this problem one may assume that should and would are listed in the Lexicon as such and directly inserted under Infi (rather than deriving from the raising of shall/will to an Infi position dominating -ed). ^Besides (14)a-b, fi is also used in perfect infinitivals and subjunctives: (i) a fi mincat

6 The syntax of Romanian

(unaccusatives, transitives or intransitives). This difference between (10) and (14) may indicate that am/ai/ar... cannot be embedded under another auxiliary. The incapacity of am/ai... to be embedded under future or conditional auxiliaries could follow from the hypothesis suggested above, according to which the perfect auxiliary am/ai/a..., as well as the future and conditional auxiliaries are necessarily generated under Infi: assuming that syntactic positions cannot be doubly filled, am/ai/a... cannot co-occur with the future and conditional auxiliaries. One would then have to assume that fi differs from the other auxiliaries in that it is generated outside Infi. To summarize, the structures in (9)a-b represent two abstract possibilities from which languages may choose: French (and probably Romance languages other than Romanian) represents the type in (9)b, Romanian is apparently characterized exclusively by (9)a, and English has at its disposal both of them ((9)a for modals and (9)b for the perfect auxiliary). At this stage of our investigation, the idea that Romanian auxiliaries (with the exception of invariable fi) are necessarily generated under Infi seems to account for the data, but it is a mere stipulation; for a real understanding of the Romanian data we must explain why this should be so, and why Romanian auxiliaries behave the way they do. We would like to know whether the particular characteristics of Romanian auxiliaries correlate with other differences that distinguish Romanian from other languages. The investigation of this will lead us to abandon the idea that (9)a is the underlying representation of Romanian auxiliary structures. It will then be shown that Romanian auxiliaries are not of the type described in (A)b. 1. 1. 2. Auxiliaries and generalized V-raising Some of the current tests for V-raising to Infi 8 are unavailable in Romanian. Compare (15)a-b and (15)c: (15)

a.

Nuplecmiine. (I) not leave tomorrow b. *Plec nu miine. c. Je ne pars pas demain. I NE leave NOT tomorrow

In (15)c pas necessarily shows up after the verb; assuming that pas is generated in front of VP, its S-structure position indicates that the verb has raised over pas (compare French infinitives, in which the verb does not raise: ne pas partir/*ne partirpas 'not pas leave'). The data in (15)a-b does not show that V-raising does not apply in Romanian; they simply indicate that the negative particle nu is basegenerated in front of Infi, and not between Infi and VP. 9 Consider also the 'to have eaten' a$ vrea sS fi mincat Ί would like sä have eaten.' 8 See Emonds (1978), Pollock (1989), and the references cited there. 9 S e e Zanuttini (1989) who gives evidence in favour of the existence of two distinct types of negative elements: (a) nu in Romanian, ne in French, or non in Italian would be functional heads that take IP complements; (b) pas is an adverbial element, generated in front of VP. (ii)

Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents

7

sentences in which an auxiliary, that we provisionally assume to stand under Infi, is followed by a verb, as in (16)a-b. Compare this with French, where pas comes between the auxiliary verb, which has raised to Infi, and the VP: (16) a. N-ar vrea sä te supere. he not-would want to bother you b. *Ar nu vrea sä te supere. c. il n'a pas voulu/ *il ne pas a voulu Let us then add the position of the Neg head to the abstract structure given in (9)a: (17)

NegP Neg

IP

At this point let me specify the analysis of V-to-I movement to be adopted below. Following Roberts (1985) and Rizzi and Roberts (1989), I assume that the landing site of V-to-I movement is created at D-structure, as a function of the lexical properties of Infi: Infi morphologically subcategorizes for a V position (for morphological subcategorization see Lieber (1980)), to which the verb raises. Under this analysis V-to-I movement satisfies a strong version of the structurepreservation constraint, one which rules out the adjunction option: this means that V cannot adjoin to the element dominated by Infi. If that element does not present a morphologically subcategorized position, V cannot raise to Infi, but stays under VP. I will assume that Head to Head movement in general is structure-preserving: a head can substitute either in an empty head position (the standard case is I-to-C movement, but one can imagine that V-to-I movement can also apply in case Infi is empty) or in a morphologically subcategorized position (V-to-I movement). The adjunction possibility is ruled out for Head to Head movement.10 In line with current research, I assume that functional categories are heads that project functional projections (see Pollock (1989)); however, I do not think that all functional projections have subject positions. Even if we do not have at our disposal an explicit theory of subject positions, I would like to preserve the natural idea that sentential constituents have just one subject position. In order to achieve this, we would have to investigate the relation between Tense and the subject NP, and the relations between the various functional categories: Tense, AGR and Neg appear to cluster together, which may be taken to indicate that they are subject to an incorporation process (see also Chapters 2 and 3) giving rise to an X° constituent labelled Infi: [i n fl Neg-V+Tense+AGR] ; correlatively, the projection of this element would be IP, 11 and the subject would occupy the (Spec, IP) position.

lORizzi and Roberts (1989) note that cliticization may constitute an exception to this strong version of structure preservation (see Chapter 2). l^This analysis of functional projections could be theoretically supported by Grimshaw's (1991) theory of "extended projection", under which NegP, TenseP, AgrP are all extended projections of the verb.

8 The syntax of Romanian

A short note is in order here, concerning the position and status of AGR inflections, which in Romanian can combine both with auxiliaries and with Tense inflections (bound morphemes): in (4), (6) and (7) the auxiliary is inflected for AGR and the lexical verb takes on the bare infinitive or the past participle form; in (18) the lexical verb carries both Tense and AGR inflections: (18) eu plec-a-m/tu plec-a-i/el plec-a- / noi plec-a-m / voi plec-a-p I leave-imperf-lst ρ / you leave-imperf-2nd ρ / he leave-imperf-3rd ρ ... If we assume that each inflectional morpheme is generated in a distinct syntactic position, we may add an AGR position to the structure in (17). However, Romanian presents no clear evidence in favour of the idea that AGRP and TenseP are two distinct maximal projections (see Pollock (1989)). We may even question the idea that AGR is a syntactic head that projects a functional projection; AGR may instead be viewed as an affix that is nominal in nature, on a par with pronominal clitics. I take AGR to adjoin to Tense. As discussed above, adjunction is not allowed for Head to Head movement, but base-generated adjunction is allowed. Thus we obtain a structure in which AGR is higher than Infi (see also Belletti (1990), as opposed to Pollock (1989)), which accounts for the surface word order of AGR and Tense morphemes. (17) thus becomes (19), in which the Tense node dominates either auxiliary verbs or Tense inflections.12 The latter present a morphologically subcategorized position to which the verb raises:

AGR

Tense

Γ Aux Τ ^past/present J Consider now the distribution of adverbs and floating quantifiers: (20) a. (i)

Elevii mei väd des filme bune. my students see often good films (ii) Elevii mei citesc top ο poezie de Verlaine. my students read all a poem by Verlaine, b. (i) Am väzut adesea filme bune. [I] have seen frequently good movies. (ii) Voi vedea adesea filme bune. [I] shall see frequently good movies. (iii) A$ merge des la cinema. [I] would (*frequently) go (frequently) to the cinema.

12

Since Chomsky (1955) it has been assumed that the same position may host both bound and free morphemes (the English Infi node may dominate modals, auxiliary do, -edand -s).

Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents 9

(iv) Elevii täi au citit top un poem de Verlaine. your students have read all a poem by Verlaine, (ν) Elevii täi vor citi to(i un poem de Verlaine. your students will read all a poem by Verlaine (vi) Elevii täi ar citi top un poem de Verlaine. your students would read all a poem by Verlaine c. (i) *elevii mei vor adesea vedea filme bune my students will often see good films (ii) *elevii mei au top sens ο poezie my students will all write a poem On the assumption that certain adverbs and floating quantifiers are generated in front of VP, the word order in (20)a indicates that V-to-Infl movement applies in Romanian. 1 3 This reasoning is comparable to the one proposed for French examples (see Emonds (1978)) like those in (21)a-b: (21)

a. *les Sieves tous 6criront b. les Sieves Scriront tous c. les Sieves ont tous ecrit un poeme

Example (21)a is ungrammatical because V-raising did not apply; compare (21)b, obtained by V-raising. Let us now examine the contrast between (20)c and (21)c. In the French example the auxiliary has raised by V-to-I movement; the past participle itself is left in situ, under VP: 14 (21') c. les eleves

Uux-TenseOnt]

i

[

A u

x P t A u x [VP

tous [Vp ecrit un poeme]]]

ι

To account for the word order in (20)b we must assume that in Romanian the lexical verb itself is subject to V-raising. Example (20)c is ungrammatical because V-raising did not apply. The contrast between (20)b and (20)c thus indicates that in Romanian V-raising necessarily applies to lexical verbs, even in the presence of auxiliary verbs: (20') b. Oelevii mei [Tensevor] [yscriei] [yp toji [yp t; ο poezie]] As indicated by the diamond, the structure in (20')b is illegitimate, because V movement violates the structure preservation constraint: there is no available head position to which the verb may raise. The fact that (20')b is illicit accounts for a reasonably well-established generalization, according to which the presence of an 13

The same conclusion concerning V-raising can be reached if we assume that floating quantifiers are generated under the (Spec, NP) node of NP subjects, which would be themselves generated inside or adjoined to VP (see Sportiche (1988)). 14 This is probably an oversimplification (see Appendix); we may assume that the past participle morpheme is generated under an Infi node which governs VP (see Kayne (1987); Baker, Johnson and Roberts (1989)).

10 The syntax of Romanian

auxiliary (independently of whether it is generated under Infi or outside Infi) forces the lexical verb to stay under VP (see English modals and have, French avoir/etre or German auxiliaries). Examples (20) show that Romanian falls outside the scope of this generalization (the lexical verb obligatorily raises in auxiliary structures). The correct underlying configuration remains to be discovered. One possibility would be to assume that Romanian auxiliaries are some kind of affixes, which subcategorize morphologically for a V position to which the lexical verb raises. This would solve the problem of the landing site for V raising, but another major difficulty presents itself in connection with the so-called "inverted conjugations", characterized by an inverted order between the lexical verb and the auxiliary (compare (22) and (23); for a detailed analysis of these constructions see Section 1.4.): (22)

am plecat nouä din Vaslui.. [we] have left nine from Vaslui (23) plecat-am nouä din Vaslui left-[we] have nine from Vaslui 'We were nine when we left Vaslui'. The possibility to reverse morpheme order cannot be reconciled with the idea that auxiliaries are affixes. Let us then assume that Romanian auxiliaries are free morphemes, and as such do not present any morphologically subcategorized position that could host the raised verb. The description of V raising in Romanian auxiliary constructions must take into account a very small class of monosyllabic adverbs (mai 'again', §i 'already', cam 'a little', prea 'too much' and tot 'still'), which are characterized by an extremely constrained distribution; they necessarily precede lexical verbs (see (24)a vs (24)c), but follow auxiliaries (see (24)b vs (24)d): 15 (24)

a. Nu mai cred cä e posibil. (I) not longer believe that (it) is possible b. Altä datä nu va mai spune prostii. next time (he) not will again say nonsense Ion a §i sens profesorului. John has already written the teacher c. *Nu cred mai cäe posibil. (I) not believe longer that (it) is possible *Altä datä nu va spune mai prostii. next time (he) not will say again nonsense d. *De anul trecut mai a venit since last year again not-has come * Jon $i a sens profesorului. John already has written the teacher

l^The adverb cannot follow the perfect auxiliary fr. (i) Ion ar mai ft stat, dar nu 1-a läsat Maria. John would still PERF stayed, but not him-has let Maria 'John would have stayed longer, but Mary didn't let him.' (ii) * Ion ar fi mai stat, dar nu 1-a läsat Maria. This data, which is not relevant here, will be discussed in Section 1.6.

Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents 11

The ungrammatically of (24)c indicates that the verb cannot raise over monosyllabic adverbs. This does not necessarily mean that V-raising does not apply. We could assume that the adverb is generated adjoined to the position to which the verb raises (see below). Or alternatively we may suppose that the adverb is base-generated in an adjunction position to the verb (see Rivero (1988a; to appear)); the constituent Adv-V, where Adv belongs to the class of monosyllabic adverbs enumerated above, would be subject to all the rules that affect verbs, V raising out of VP in particular. Example (24)b could thus be represented as either (24')b or (24")b: (24') b. aItä datä nu [aux^J [mai [yp spunej [yp ti prostii] tZ ι another time not [he] will again talk nonsense (24") b. altädatänu \\nxval [yp mai spunej [yptj prostii] t ι These two structures have in common the idea that the monosyllabic adverbs that show up in (24) are clitic elements (on the definition of clitics see Chapter 2). This hypothesis is strongly supported by their distribution relative to the distribution of pronominal clitics: (25) a. Nu-1 mai intreb nimic. (I) not-him longer ask about anything b. II mai /§i examinez din cind in cind. (I) him still/ also examine from time to time c. *Mai/§i il examinez din cind in cind 16 (I) still/ also him examine from time to time Note also the example in (26), where phonological endocliticization of mai can be observed: (26) nemaiplecind Ion de acasä not-again-leaving John from home To summarize, the rule of V-raising appears obligatorily to apply in Romanian, even in the presence of an auxiliary. This fact cannot be captured under the hypothesis that Romanian auxiliary structures are of type (A)b: the only representation that could be proposed was that in (20')b, which was shown to be

^Sequences in which clitic adverbs precede pronominal clitics do appear in certain non-standard idio-/dialects: ?? mai il intreb j/ eu ceva '[I] still him ask me too something'; they seem to improve with the negation: ? nu mai il intreb nimic. These examples might be obtained at surface structure, by some morpheme reordering. The improvement observed in negative contexts may be due to the fact that nu mai is reinterpreted as numai 'only', which is not a clitic adverb, and as such occupies a different position.

12 The syntax of Romanian

illicit.17 In the next section we will investigate another hypothesis to be eliminated, before proceeding to a positive analysis of Romanian auxiliary structures, which will lead us to abandon the idea that Romanian auxiliaries fall under the definition in (A)b.

1. 1. 3. V-second constructions (subject-Aux/V inversion; Aux to Comp) Consider next the following data, which shows that unlike English and French, Romanian does not have subject-Aux inversion: (27)

a. * Va/arIon/elpleca miine? will/ would John/ he leave tomorrow? b. * A Ion/ el plecat ieri? has John/ he left yesterday?

The type of movement that is illicit in (27)b is quite general across languages. Following den Besten (1977, 1983), it is currently assumed that (28)a-c are particular instantiations of the rule known as "V second" in Germanic languages: auxiliaries (and lexical verbs) move out of the Infi position to which they raise at Sstructure, over the NP subject, towards a sentence-initial position, presumably Comp: (28)

a. Ist er gekommen? has he come? b. Kommt er? comes he? c. Will/ would John/ he leave tomorrow?

According to den Besten (1977,1983), Kayne (1984, Chapter 10), and Roberts and Rizzi (1989), the same rule may be assumed to underlie the French examples in (29): (29)

a. L'as-tu mang6? it have you eaten? b. Le verra-t-il? him seefuture he 'Will he see him?'

17 This problem may apparently be solved if we adopt the hypothesis proposed by Pollock (1989), according to which the Infi node is split into two distinct functional heads, AGR and Tense (see V. Motapanyane (1989)): AGR would host auxiliaries, and Tense would host lexical verbs. This hypothesis immediately raises the question why in the other Romance languages AGR and Tense cannot dominate auxiliaries and verbs respectively. Other technical questions concern the conditions on verb/ auxiliary movement: is it possible to assume that the auxiliary, which presumably governs VP, raises to AGR skipping Tense (in violation of Head to Head movement), thus leaving Tense available as a landing site for V?

Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents

13

The examples in (28)-(29) show a number of cross-linguistic differences: (a) in French and in Germanic languages other than English, V-second applies to either lexical verbs or auxiliaries; in the latter case the lexical verb is left behind; (b) in English, V-second applies exclusively to auxiliaries: (30)

a. Will John come? b. * Comes John .. ?

The impossibility of (30)b is due to the fact that in English, lexical verbs do not raise to Infi, which is a necessary step (due to the condition on Head to Head movement, see Travis (1984) and Baker (1988)) for the verb to reach Comp. Let us now come back to Romanian: if a rule such as V-second exists in this language, it applies either to inflected verbs (see (31 )a) or to Aux V sequences (see (31)b), and this cannot easily be accounted for by the general principles of language. The example in (31)a seems to be analogous to (29)b and (28)b in French and German respectively, but (31)b does not have any counterpart in any of these two languages: (31) a. Pleacä Ion miine ? leaves John tomorrow b. Vapleca Ion miine?^ will leave John tomorrow 'Will John leave tomorrow?' Our task will be to account for (31)b and for the ungrammaticality of (27)a. It is interesting to note that Romance languages other than Romanian show the impossibility illustrated in (27)a. But they nonetheless differ from Romanian in that they have other constructions obtained by a rule of Aux raising to Comp; the relevant examples and analysis are due to Rizzi (1982): (32) a. Questa commissione ritiene [aver loro sempre ottemperato agli obblighi previsti dalla legge]. this commission thinks [have they always accomplished the requirements imposed by the law] 'This commission thinks that they have always ...' b. Avendo Mario accettato di aiutarci, potremo risolvere ilproblema. having Mario accepted to help, we could solve the problem Romanian does not present any construction of this type, in which the subject NP would intervene between the auxiliary and the lexical verb.

l^Note that the order V-S-0 is possible, and probably preferred to V-O-S in questions, independently of whether V is a simple verb or a AuxV sequence: crezi cä va citi Ion cartea asta? 'do you think that will read John this book'.

14 The syntax of Romanian

1. 1. 4. Biclausal auxiliary structures (I) Like the other Balkan languages (see Rivero (1988a; to appear)), Romanian presents biclausal Tenses (the label CP/IP is meant to notate the hybrid status of Romanian sä subjunctives, see Chapter 3): (33) Ion are, [cp/ip sä-1 conducä la garä] John has sä -him takesubj to the station 'John will take him to the station' (33) illustrates the colloquial future paradigm, constructed with the conjugated form of the verb a avea 'to have' followed by a sä subjunctive. 19 This is clearly a biclausal construction: the embedded verb carries AGR features, and clitics can only appear between sä and the subsequent inflected verb, i.e., in die position they normally occupy in subjunctives. Examples of the type in (33) are thus apparently characterized by a structure that is entirely different from the auxiliary constructions presented above. But surprisingly, we find they have common properties. Floating quantifiers and adverbs cannot intervene between the main verb and the subjunctive: (34)

a. Ion are (*adesea) sä einte (adesea) la pian. John has (*often) sä play (often) piano 'John will often play piano.' b. Copiii au (*to{i) sä einte (to{i) la pian. the children have (*all) si play (all) the piano

This is what we might expect, if we assume (a) that adverbs and floating quantifiers are generated in a pre-VP position and (b) that the subjunctive verb obligatorily raises to Infi. We must of course also assume that adverbs are not allowed to be generated in front of the upper VP. It may be reasonable to think that this restriction is due to the auxiliary nature of the verb; adverbs modify lexical verbs only. What is not expected is the ungrammaticality of (35)a-b: (35) a. *Are Ion sä einte la pian? has John sä play the piano b. *Aveam sä-1 conduc la garä.20 [I] had sä -him take to the station (35)a shows that the auxiliary is not able to raise above the NP subject (a grammatical question would be are sä einte Ion la pian? 'has sä play John (at) the

19-rhe complete paradigm is: (eu) am sä plec / (tu) ai sä pleci / (el) are sä piece / (noi) avem sä plecäm/ (voi) avefi sä pleca(i / (ei) au sä piece; but the plural forms tend to become less productive, and are currently replaced by invariable ο : noi ο sä plecäm/ voi ο sä pleca(i/ei ο sä piece. 20 T he star indicates that the purely future meaning is excluded; examples of this form are nonetheless acceptable, but they become synonymous with the examples with a urma 'to follow, to go to'.

Auxiliaries and the structure of IP constituents

15

piano) and (35)b indicates that the auxiliary cannot take Tense inflections. How can we explain (35)a-b? Is it possible to show that these two impossibilities are correlated? Why do mono- and bi-clausal auxiliary constructions behave alike? Conclusions To summarize, the following characteristics of Romanian auxiliaries have been illustrated: (a) they cannot combine with Tense affixes, nor can they be embedded under Tense auxiliaries; b) Romanian lexical verbs necessarily raise out of VP even if an Aux is present; c) Aux is not subject to V-second (Romanian presents no rule comparable to either the English subject-Aux inversion, or the French subject-clitic inversion, or the Aux-to-Comp rule characteristic of Italian (and Portuguese, see Raposo (1987)); in descriptive terms, Romanian presents no context in which the subject NP can intervene between an auxiliary and the lexical verb. 21 Another important fact about Romanian is that the three properties listed above define not only monoclausal, but also biclausal auxiliary constructions. The characteristics given in (b) and (c) could be captured by an adjacency requirement: Romanian auxiliaries are necessarily adjacent to the verb, or to clitic elements attached to the verb. This suggests that Romanian auxiliaries are clitic elements, which is indeed correct (see Chapter 2). But this does not conclude the analysis. We must still provide an adequate representation. It is not clear what kind of position should be posited for clitic auxiliaries: the idea that they are under Infi, supported by the property stated in (a), may seem appealing, but this is clearly not sufficient, since English modals are generated under Infi, but do not qualify as clitics. What is then the underlying representation of Romanian auxiliary constructions? No answer could so far be found to this question. This failure strongly suggests that we must abandon the null hypothesis according to which Romanian auxiliaries would be of the type defined in (A)b, found in Romance and Germanic languages.

1. 2. The structure of auxiliary constructions 1. 2. 1. Biclausal auxiliary structures (Π) The biclausal tenses presented in 1.1.4. seem to rely on a configuration like that in (36), characterized by two IP constituents, with V-to-I movement applying in both the embedded and the main clause; C° dominates sä, and the higher V node dominates the auxiliary:

21 T h e characteristics in a) and c) distinguish Romanian from French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese; b) seems to be instantiated in other pro-drop languages such as Italian and Spanish (see Belletti (1990)). Note, however, that in Italian past participles may, but do not necessarily, raise to Aux, as indicated by the distribution of floating quantifiers (which can intervene between the auxiliary and the lexical verb); in Romanian on the other hand past participles necessarily raise out of VP.

16 The syntax of Romanian

(36)

IP V-Infl

VP NP S

V' tv j

C

W

c°

IP CI

\

IP V-Ir VP

tv

NP
23 o n a P 3 1 w i t h fNPtSpec.N' c a r e H N ' bäiat]] 'which boy'.

22

"Null operators", disregarded here, will be dealt with in Section 1.4.2. 23 As suggested by an LI reviewer, this is reminiscent of other cases of N'-deletion, such as la prima N' 'the first N', quella JV"that N" in Italian.

206 The syntax of Romanian

Given the structural position of care, its quantifier features are attached to the (Spec.N') node. The NP node that dominates care could acquire quantifier features only if these features percolated from (Spec,N') up to NP. The obligatory presence of an accusative clitic indicates that care N' does not function as a syntactic quantifier, which in turn indicates that care does not transfer its features to its maximal projection. In other words, care is a "restricted quantifier" (the restriction is defined by N'); its domain of quantification is limited by the NP to which it belongs. Care ranges not over the class of elements that can fill the A-position characteristic of direct objects, but over the class of elements that satisfy the referential properties defined by the lexical properties of N' (or of the antecedent of [N1 e]): the class of boys in (18)a. According to this hypothesis, the LF representations of (18)a-b are not of the type shown in (17'), but rather of the type shown in (18'); in (18')b e is identified by its antecedent (the class of boys, students, and so on): (18') a [NPi for which χ, χ is a boy] yousawhimj b [ΝΡΪ for which χ, χ is e] you saw himi The difference between cine and care is comparable to Cinque's (1986) distinction between dislocated bare quantifiers, which necessarily bind a variable, and "nonbare" quantifiers (or "quantified NPs"), which do not enter a quantifiervariable configuration. Note however that the dichotomy between bare and nonbare quantifiers does not necessarily correlate with a contrast in quantifier status. It is true that bare quantifiers are necessarily syntactic quantifiers, because their inherent qu-features attach to the NP node itself; they present no restriction (that is, no N' sister node), and therefore their domain of quantification cannot be restricted to the NP to which they belong. It is however not the case that a nonbare quantifier always functions as a syntactic "nonquantifier": the presence of a lexical item under the N' node makes it possible for the quantifier under (Spec,N') to restrict its domain to the NP, but it does not impose this restriction; nonbare quantifiers can be restricted, but they are not necessarily restricted. In other words, NPs of the form [NPtSpec.N' Q] N'] may or may not function as syntactic quantifiers, depending on the percolation of qu-features: the wA-quantifiers generated under (Spec,N') are lexically marked for a particular choice among the following three possibilities: (a) the wA-quantifier necessarily transfers its wA-features to the dominating NP node, which will thereby function as a quantifier, and the empty category it binds in S will be a variable; (b) the wA-quantifier does not transfer its wA-features, with the result that the dominating NP node does not function as a quantifier and cannot bind a variable;24 (c) the wA-quantifier optionally transfers its wA-features, with the result that the dominating NP node optionally functions as a quantifier and optionally binds a variable. These three possibilities all exist in Romanian: qu-feature transmission from (Spec,N') to NP is obligatory, impossible, or optional, depending on the lexical properties of the quantifiers themselves (feature transmission is also subject to quantifiers referred to in points (a) and (b) are known as "weak" and "strong", respectively (cf Milsark (1977) and Barwise and Cooper (1981)). According to the terminology used by these authors, the quantifiers referred to in (c) are weak; I will show that in fact they may take either a weak or a strong reading (see also Section 3 below).

Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification

207

locality conditions; see Section 6.1.3.2). The choice formulated in point (b) characterizes care structures, as opposed to ce-structures: (19) a. Ce elev ai putea tu suporta? what student could you stand b. *Ce elev 1-ai putea tu suportäi (19)a is characterized by the presence of a syntactic variable (the empty category in the direct object position is marked for Case), which must be bound by a quantifier, since (19)a is grammatical, we must assume that ce elev 'what student1 counts as a syntactic quantifier. The ungrammaticality of (19)b can be attributed to vacuous quantification: ce elev has no variable to bind (in the presence of the clitic no licit variable is available in S). The ungrammaticality of (19)b thus indicates that ce 'what', a nonbare quantifier, is characterized by the option (a): ce necessarily transfers its qu-features to the dominating NP. This contrast between two nonbare quantifiers, care (N') and ce (N'), shows that the contrast between syntactic and nonsyntactic quantifiers is not only structural (bare versus nonbare) but also lexical. The contrast in the distribution of clitics correlates with a systematic semantic difference between ce TV'and care N': care structures can be used only if a certain set of students has already been mentioned or is implicit in a given dialogue; cestructures suppose no such shared knowledge between the two speakers. This semantic difference can be derived from the difference between the LF representations given in (18') and (19'): (19') for what x , x a student, you could stand χ According to (18'), care does not bind a variable in S but has a quantifying domain restricted to the class of elements defined by the nominal head. In other words, the quantifying domain is independent of the sentence in which the quantified NP is used. On the other hand, the representation given in (19') indicates that ce does bind a variable in S: the quantifying domain of ce (Nf) is defined both by the lexical properties of N' (or its antecedent) and by the properties of the rest of the sentence.2^ difference in LF representation is associated with a well-known difference in pragmatic meaning: in (18), but not in (19), the set of elements defined by the nominal head is pragmatically interpreted as constituting "shared knowledge" among the dialogue protagonists (see Pesetsky's (1987) distinction between "discourse-linked" and "discourse-free" wh-elements, which is comparable to Kripke's (1977) distinction between presence and absence of "pragmatic reference"). Like Pesetsky, and unlike Kripke, I believe that this distinction is semantic, and not pragmatic. The difference in pragmatic meaning (discourse "linking" or "freedom") can indeed be derived as a consequence of the difference between the two types of LF configurations given in (18') and (19'), which are themselves due to the different semantic properties of care and ce respectively. The LF representation given in (19') does not allow for any set of elements to be defined independently of the sentence in which the quantifier is used. In (18'), on the other hand, the quantifier ranges over a set of boys, independently of the rest of the sentence; since it does not depend on the rest of the sentence, this domain of quantification can be restricted -must be, as a matter of fact, because natural languages tend to restrict domains of quantification as much as possible -only by the pragmatic context (the information that constitutes "shared knowledge" between speaker and hearer). To sum up, certain "restricted" (or "strong") wh-elements (the which

208 The syntax of Romanian

Let us now turn to the third type of w/i-quantifiers mentioned in point (c), which is also instantiated in Romanian: (20)

a. Cip studenp ai examinat? how many students have (you) examined b. Pe cip studenp i-ai examinat? pe how many students them-have (you) examined

The clitic is optionally present in (20), which indicates that cip' 'how many' optionally transfers its qu-features to the dominating NP: a quantification configuration underlies (20)a, but not (20)b. The difference in quantification properties that we assume between (20)a and (20)b correlates again with a semantic contrast: (20)a asks a question about the number of individuals who are students (no particular set of students is presupposed) and who have been examined by the addressee; on the other hand, (20)b is a question concerning a subset of students, included in a larger set, which constitutes shared knowledge between speaker and hearer. 6. 1. 3. 2. The locality of feature percolation Consider next the following contrasts: (21)

(22)

a. Ce elev ai putea tu suporta ? what student could you stand b. ??Pe ce elev ai putea tu suporta ? pe what student could you stand a. C?p elevi ai putea tu suporta? how many students could you stand b. *Pe tip elevi ai putea tu suporta? pe how many students could you stand

The examples in (21)a and (22)a are grammatical: [NP ce elev] and [NP ci{i elevi] are quantifiers (by inheritance of qu-features) that correctly bind variables in the direct object position. The ungrammaticality of (21)b and (22)b indicates that pe ce elev and pe cip elevi do not correctly identify the variable; in other words, they do not count as quantifiers. Their nonquantifier status is obviously not due to their lexical properties, since (21)a and (22)a are correct, but may be triggered by the presence of the preposition pe. It is then tempting to treat (21)b and (22)b as violations of a locality constraint on feature percolation: [pp pe [NP ce elev]] is not a licit quantifier, because pe blocks the percolation of qu-features from ce up to the dominating PP. More precisely, the dummy preposition pe does not L-mark NP, which therefore functions as a barrier (see Chomsky (1986)), which blocks the percolation of qu-features. Note that pe does not block the transmission of qu-features in (23):

type) are pragmatically interpreted as being "discourse-linked", whereas "unrestricted" (or "weak") wh-elements (the who type) are pragmatically interpreted as being "discourse-free".

Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification 209

(23) Pe cine ai invitat? 'pe who have (you) invited In this case the lexical quantifier cine is exhaustively dominated by NP: hence, there is no barrier that could block the transmission of qu-features up to [pp pe [NP cine]]. The examples in (24) and (25) show that pe is compulsory in wA-structures that take obligatory clitics: (24) a. Pe care elev 1-ai intilnit? pe which student him-have (you) met b. Pe ci(i elevi i-ai examinat? pe how many students them-have (you) examined (25) a. VCare elev 1-ai intilnit? which student him-have (you) met b. ?? dp elevi i-ai examinat? how many students them-have (you) examined Let us assume that wA-phrases are subject to the Case Filter, like any other NP. As they occupy an A'-position, wA-phrases cannot be assigned structural Case, but they may acquire it by one of the following mechanisms: (a) Case can be shared by a variable and the quantifier that binds it; (b) a dummy Case marker (the preposition pe, for instance) can be inserted. The first possibility applies in quantifier-variable configurations, which explains why pe is not needed in front of ce TV'or cijfr N' (see (21)a and (22)a); the impossibility of pe in the same contexts was shown to be due to locality conditions on the percolation of qu-features. Since in (25)a-b accusative Case is "absorbed" by the clitic, it cannot be transmitted to the wA-phrase; pe is therefore necessarily inserted.26 If these principles are on the right track, we might be able to derive the definition of variables in terms of Case from the Case Filter on wA-phrases. A further interesting outcome can be noted: the correlation between clitic doubling and the possibility of nonresumptive clitics bound by wA-phrases need not be stipulated but could be accounted for by the fact that both phenomena depend on the existence of an accusative marker (Kayne's Generalization would apply not only to the clitic doubling of NPs that occupy Α-positions but also to the clitic doubling of whphrases). To sum up, I have shown that the contrast between the two types of Romanian wA-structures is due to the different quantification features of the wA-phrases that the following example, however Care cartej ai citit-oj? which book; have (you) read-it;? In this example pe is excluded, because carte is inanimate (pe is fully grammatical only with human referents, marginal with nonhuman animates). For some speakers, examples like (i) are marginal, or even ungrammatical, by virtue of violating the Case filter. For other speakers such examples are acceptable, probably by virtue of a default Case assignment used as a "last recourse" mechanism. A default Case assignment is independently needed for left-dislocated NPs: (ii) (Pe) elevii täi nu i-am väzut de ο lunä. (pe) your students (I) haven't them-seen for a month. ^^Consider

. (i)

210 The syntax of Romanian

head them.27 In Sections 6.2 and 6.3 I will show that the principles proposed here also account for certain constraints to which the clitic doubling of quantified NPs in situ is subject. 6. 1. 4. Wh-structures and quantification: lexical wh-phrases versus structural quantifiers 6. 1.4. 1. Equivalents of care in other languages Let us assume that the principles of the quantification theory proposed above do not constitute a parametrized option characteristic of Romanian but instead belong to the general principles of language. 28 We would then expect systematic syntactic

27

According to Steriade's (1980) account, Romanian wh-traces are replaced by pronominal copies (similar to Perlmutter's (1972) "shadow pronouns") that inherit the [+/-specific] features of the moved constituent. Granting this assumption, the distribution of clitics in wh-structures is predictable entirely from the conditions under which pronominal objects may or must reduplicate; more precisely, the contrast between the two types of wh-structures comes down to the contrast between specific vs nonspecific pronouns, which respectively require and exclude clitic doubling. Within Steriade's approach, the correlation between specificity and clitic doubling is stated as a primitive, and left unexplained. It is my intent to explain it, or rather the more general correlation between the distribution of clitics and quantification structures: (i) a. Nu (*l)-am vSzutpe nimeni. not (*him) [I] have seen pe nobody b. Ion (*l)-a indlnit pe cineva. John (*him)-has met pe somebody The exclusion of the clitic in (i) is parallel to the exclusion of clitics in cine structures and the other wh-structures that behave in the same way. This parallelism between wh-structures and the in situ cases of quantification does not oblige us to derive one paradigm from the other. It is instead possible to show that both configurations are governed by the same principles of quantification theory (see Section 3). Within Steriade's account the parallelism between the clitics that "double" wh-traces and the clitics that double pronominal NPs in situ is stipulated in order to account for the fact that in whstructures the clitic is obligatory (as it is for pronominal NPs in Α-positions (see the examples in (ii)-(iii)), whereas the doubling of specific NPs other than pronominal is optional (see (iv-v)): (ii) Ion 1-a examinat pe el. John him-has examined pe him" (iii) *Ion a examinat pe el. John has examined pe him (iv) Ion 1-a examinat pe vecin. John him-has examined pe neighbour" (v) Ion a examinat vecinul. John has examined the neighbour". The pronominal versus nonpronominal contrast illustrated in (iii) and (v) is irrelevant within our approach. We can nonetheless explain the difference between the obligatory presence of clitics in care structures (cf (1)) versus their optionality with specific NPs in situ (cf (iv)-(v)), by bringing into play the different positions (A'-versus Α-position) occupied by the doubled NP (see Section 6.3.3). 28 According to a quite natural, generally accepted assumption, semantic properties are universal. That is why, on conceptual grounds, we do not want to stipulate semantic differences between the

Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification 211

asymmetries between wh-structures, comparable to the ones pointed out for Romanian. There are indeed ä number of well-known asymmetries between which ΝΊwhich one and whom/what (TV), when these wA-phrases stay in situ: (26) a. b. c. d.

Who. did you persuade e^ to read what? ?? What- did you persuade whom to read e^? Mary asked [who- [e· read what]]. *Mary asked [ what- [ who read e^]].

(27) a. b. c. d.

Which man. did you persuade e· to read which book? Which book • did you persuade which man to read e. ? Mary asked [which man. [e. read which book]]. Mary asked [which book, [which man read e^]].

The ungrammatically of (26)b,d. which contrasts with the grammaticality of (26)a,c, illustrates a Superiority Effect violation (see Chomsky (1973)). Pesetsky (1987) accounts for the well-formedness of (27)b,d by assuming that, unlike what, which book was not moved by Quantifier Raising (QR). Since by definition QR applies to quantifiers, Pesetsky's proposal can be reformulated as a hypothesis concerning the quantifier status of wA-phrases in situ. The asymmetry between what/who and which (similar asymmetries exist in Romance languages other than Romanian) is thus comparable to the difference between ce/cine and care that we assumed for Romanian: what (Nf) and who function as quantifiers, which N' does not. However, relatives and interrogatives headed by which (the same is true of quel N' in French, cuäl N' in Spanish, and so on) do not contrast with the ones headed by who: both these types of wA-structures qualify as quantification structures with respect to weak crossover effects, parasitic gaps, and the distribution of clitic pronouns bound to the wA-phrase. The different behaviour of which in S-initial positions can be accounted for by assuming a "structural" definition of quantifiers (see Cinque (1986) for a similar idea): (28) NPs in (Spec,C')29 function as quantifiers.30

Romanian care (and the other wh-elements that take obligatory clitics) and its equivalents in other languages (at least in those languages where pairs such as who, what (N1) versus which (N') exist). 29i assume the internal structure of the Comp node proposed in Chomsky (1986); S' is the maximal projection of Comp (hence labeled CP (Complementizer Phrase)), which is rewritten as in (i); S, taken to be the maximal projection of Infi, is symbolized by IP: (0 CP = [Spec.C'lC'C IP]] The head position C of CP hosts complementizers like that and que; the (Spec,C) slot is filled by wh-phrases. 3 0 A s A. Belletti and L. Rizzi note (personal communication), any principle like (28) should be adequately qualified in order not to extend to verb-second languages, where it is clearly not the case that any NP in (Spec,C') acquires a quantifier status. We might therefore be forced to restrict

212 The syntax of Romanian

This definition is structural, since it is the position of an element, and not its intrinsic features, that defines its quantifier status. The lexical difference between which and who can be detected when these elements stay in situ, because in this case their lexical features are alone responsible for their quantifier status; when they are in (Spec,C'), the difference between which and who is neutralized by virtue of (28), which attributes a quantifier status to whatever element appears in (Spec,C'). (28) accounts for the well-known discrepancy between S-Structure and LF representations that characterizes pied-piped structures: (29)

a. [Whose daughter]j did (you) see ei? b. for which χ, χ a person, you saw [x's daughter]

The LF representation given in (29)b indicates that the pied-piped constituent whose daughter does not have the status of a quantifier and correlatively the whtrace does not qualify as a variable. This LF representation directly follows from our principles concerning the percolation of qu-features: the gu-features, marked on the NP that immediately dominates whose, cannot percolate to the upper NP that dominates [ N P t N P ^ o s e ] daughter]. However, the S-Structure representation given in (29)a is characterized by the presence of a syntactic variable (ei is an empty category that is marked for Case and occupies an Α-position), which must be bound by a quantifier. This quantifier-variable configuration is licit by virtue of (28): at S-Structure whose daughter counts as a quantifier, despite its lack of gufeatures. Let us now come back to Romanian. In contrast to which and quel, care does not function as a quantifier, even when it occupies an S-initial position. Similarly, piedpiped constituents such as pea cui fatä, pe a cärui fatä 'whose daughter' do not license variables; hence the obligatory presence of an accusative clitic 31 (which correlates with absence of weak crossover effects and preclusion of parasitic gaps): (30) a. Pe a cui fatä ai väzut-o? pe whose daughter have (you) seen-her b. vecinul pe a cärui fatä am väzut-o ieri the neighbor pe whose daughter (I) have seen-her yesterday The contrast between these Romanian wA-structures and their counterparts in the other Romance languages (and in English) can be accounted for by assuming that Romanian wA-phrases are not affected by (28). An even more interesting generalization can be formulated: (31)

Romanian does not show any effect of (28).

(28) to wh-phrases and empty categories (see also footnote 33, where a reformualtion of (28) is suggested). 31 In (i) the pied-piped constituent is indefinite and therefore may function as a quantifier (see Sections 2 and 3 below). This accounts for the absence of the clitic: (i) Ion, strämofi ai cäruia incercasem in zadar sä gäsesc John, ancestors of whom (I) had tried in vain to find

Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification 213 In what follows I will provide important independent evidence in favour of (28) and (31), which may be viewed as two distinct values of the same parameter, which I will refer to as the structural quantifier parameter?!

6. 1.4. 2. The lack of null operators in Romanian Quite obviously, a "null" operator is not marked with intrinsic gu-features; its quantifier status is due exclusively to its position in (Spec,C'). It is then natural to assume that the existence of null operators depends on the positive value of the structural quantifier parameter. 3 3 This in turn predicts that a language like Romanian, characterized negatively with respect to this parameter, will lack null operator configurations such as i/iaf-relatives, clefts, topicalization, focus-movement at LF, infinitival relatives, and tough-movement, 3 4 a prediction that turns out to be correct. I will illustrate this point through a discussion of that relatives and clefts. For the other constructions, I refer the reader to Dobrovie-Sorin (1987). Romanian presents different complementizers corresponding to the English that cä is used in declaratives, ca and sä in subjunctives. 3 5 None of these elements can show up in relatives, 3 6 as expected: that-relatives contain a variable bound to an empty quantifier, 3 7 but Romanian presents no empty quantifier (because (28) is negatively specified in Romanian).

3 ^More interestingly, one might try to render the behaviour of Romanian compatible with (28) by assuming that in this language wh-phrases do not occupy the (Spec.C') position (the slot characteristic of left dislocations might be invoked instead). This hypothesis is supported by evidence concerning the constituent structure of S and S' in Romanian (see Dobrovie-Sorin (1987)). 33 An LI reviewer suggests an alternative formulation of the parameter (28)/(31), stated directly in terms of "null operators": Romanian would lack them, as opposed to the other Romance languages. On this hypothesis, the apparent quantifier behaviour of which, quel, cuäl, quale would follow from their ability to coexist with a null operator in Comp, an ability that their Romanian counterpart does not share. As far as the data analyzed here are concerned, the two alternative parameters seem to be equivalent. ^Comparatives are not relevant in the present connection, because they do not involve the movement of direct objects, which alone concerns us here. Besides, Romanian comparatives involve not a null operator, but a lexical one (which as such normally binds variables), decit 'than' (lit. 'of-how much'). 35 On the distribution of ca and sä, see Dobrovie-Sorin (1987). 36 Note that the Romanian counterparts of that relatives do not become grammatical even if supplied with an accusative clitic. This impossibility is not completely clear to me. A way is needed to rule out two distinct possibilities: (a) a resumptive pronoun strategy and (b) a "movement" strategy comparable to care configurations. A promising line of inquiry may work out the hypothesis that the Comp node is not involved in Romanian relatives, which could be derived from the particular sentence structure of Romanian. ^According to the derivational analysis, that relatives are obtained by the deletion of the whelement in Comp; the empty category resulting from deletion is assigned a quantifier status at LF, which ensures the correct binding of the variable in S. This analysis can be restated in representational terms. According to the X' theory proposed in Chomsky (1986), two slots are available in Comp, so that an empty category can be generated under (Spec.C), even if the head

214 The syntax of Romanian

Consider now the example given in (32): (32)

Cäci mo§neagul cej prive§ti ej nu e om de iind.

for the old man whati (you) look at ei is not and ordinary man 'For the old man you are looking at is not a ordinary person.' This type of relative, headed by ce 'what', is a marked construction, which does not belong to the core grammar of contemporary Romanian: it is little productive (the example under (32) is a literary quotation; ce relatives are somewhat more frequent with non-human antecedents), and presents a number of idiosyncratic properties.38 The absence of an accusative clitic 39 indicates that the ce-relative in (32) is a quantifier-variable structure. Two different hypotheses are compatible with this idea: (a) ce is a lexical quantifier, as suggest«! by its lexical identity; (b) ce is a complementizer of the that-type (cf. Horvath and Grosu (1987) and Horvath and Grosu (1987)). I will not try to choose between these two possibilities; in terms of either of them ce-relatives are analysed as quantifier-variable configurations, and this explains why they do not take obligatory accusative clitics. Ce relatives would thus appear to fit well into the proposed analysis of the distribution of clitics in whstructures. However, if they were to be analysed as thai-relatives, we would have to admit that null operators exist in peripheral areas of Romanian. The lack of clefts 4 0 is another outstanding characteristic of Romanian, which constitutes independent evidence in favour of the proposed analysis of care position C is filled with lexical complementizers, as in i/iai-relatives. By (28) the empty category generated in (Spec,Ν') acquires quantifier status. 38 Ce-relatives take optional clitics in "short wh-movement" configurations (see (i)), and obligatory clitics in "long wh-movement" (see (ii)-(iii)) and "parasitic gap" configurations (see (iv)). (examples (i)-(iii) are from Sandfeld and Olsen (1936,112).) (i) cartea ce ai citit-(o) ... the book what [you] have read (it) (ii) uiι inel ce zicea cä *(il) are dela mo$i a ring what (he) said that (he) has *(it) from elders (iii) nifte noüfe ce am Infeles dela d-1 Ionescu cä *(le) posedaji some notes what 0) understood from Mr Ionescu that (you) possess *(them) (iv) mogneagul ce privegti färä a-*(l) necunoafle the old man what (you) look at without to recognizing *(him) The ungrammaticality of (ii-iv) cannot be due to any constraint on wh-movement in general, because the corresponding interrogative sentences arc correct, and the clitic is necessarily absent: (v) Ce zicea cä are delamo$i? what (did he) say that (he) had from (his) elders? We must then admit that the ungrammaticality of (ii-iv) is idiosyncratic; that is, it is not derivable from the general principles of language (or from any parametrized option characteristic of Romanian). 39 Quite clearly, the accusative clitics that may show up in ce-relatives (see footnote 38) should be analyzed not as the obligatory clitics characteristic of care structures but rather as resumptives. Resumptives are indeed found in two different types of contexts: (a) they may optionally appear instead of a variable; (b) they are used in contexts in which variables are illicit (for instance, by virtue of the island constraints). The first case is illustrated by (i) of footnote 38, and the second by (ii-iv), in which a constraint other than islandhood must be invoked. 4^The meaning of clefts can be expressed in Romanian by "pseudoclefts":

Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification 215

structures. Compare the ungrammaticality of (33)a-c with the grammaticality of the English glosses: (33)

a. *Epe Ion cä am väzut. it's John that I saw b. *E lui Ion cä i-am sens ο saisoare. it's to John that I wrote a letter c.

*EcuIoncäamplecat

it's with John that I left Consider next the ungrammaticality of (34)a-b, which is parallel to the impossibility of care relatives that lack clitics: it is directly accounted for by the intrinsic lexical properties of care, correlated with the idea that Romanian lacks structural quantifiers: (34)

a. *E Ion pe care am väzut (it) is John pe which (I) have seen b. *E romanul ästa pe care am citit ieri. (it) is novel this pe which (I) have read yesterday

The ungrammaticality of (35)a-b, where a clitic is supplied, is somewhat surprising, given the grammaticality of care relatives: (35)

a. *E Ion pe care 1-am väzut b. *E romanul ästa pe care 1-am citit ieri.41

These examples indicate that a quantifier-variable configuration is necessary in Romanian for clefts, 42 as opposed to relatives. (i)

Cel pe care 1-am väzut ieri e Ion. The one pe which him-(I) saw yesterday is John (ii) Cel care a plecat primul e Ion. The one which left first is John (iii) Cel cu care ay pleca la mare e Ion. The one with which I'd go to the seaside is John The impossibility of care-clefts extends to the other syntactic positions: (i) *E Ion care a plecat ieri. it's John which left yesterday' (ii) *E Ion cu care am plecat. it's John with which (I) left'. 42 0 n e may then ask why ce cannot be used; compare the (marginal) acceptability of ce-relatives to the utter ungrammaticality of (i,ii): (i) *E Ion ce am väzut. (it) is John what (I) have seen (ii) *E cartea asta ce am citit ieri. (it) is this book what (I) have read yesterday We may argue that because of its marked character, the mechanism underlying ce relatives is limited to this particular construction. It may also turn out that clefts necessarily involve null operators. The exclusion of (i) and (ii) would then constitute an argument in favour of the idea that ce relatives are not equivalent to that relatives.

216 The syntax of Romanian 6. 1 . 4 . 3. Romanian relatives versus River Plate Spanish relatives W e are now in a position to explain an important contrast between Romanian and River Plate Spanish. Though these languages both admit the clitic doubling of direct objects, they differ with respect to the distribution of clitics in care/cuäl structures. B y our analysis care configurations do not rely on quantifier-variable structures, and this explains the obligatory presence of the clitic, discussed above. Cuäl structures are clearly not subsumed by this analysis, which indicates that clitic doubling cannot be a sufficient condition for the presence of doubling clitics in whstructures. (Example (36) is from Suner (1988).) (36)

*A cuäles pasajeras las rescataron ? which passengers did they rescue 4 3

The ungrammaticality of (36) is parallel to that observed in which /quel configurations: despite its intrinsic lexical features, cuäl acquires a quantifier status (when it appears in (Spec,C')), by virtue of the structural quantifier parameter. 44 This analysis is supported by the fact that River Plate Spanish also presents that-

43

The contrast between (36) and (l)a is a true minimal pair, unlike the contrast between (l)a and (i)-(,ii), which is frequently, but misleadingly quoted: (i) el hombre que/a quien vi the man that / a whom (I) saw' (ii) * el hombre a quien lo vi the man a whom (I) saw him' Examples (i)-(ii) are that-lype relatives (or iv/io-type relatives; compare a quien, which is marginally acceptable in (i), instead of que), relying on a quantifier-variable configuration. As discussed in the preceding sections, the paradigm (i)-(ii) is as a matter of fact parallel to Romanian interrogatives in cine/ ce (the ungrammaticality of (ii) and (iii) is due to vacuous quantification): (iii) Pe cine (*l)-ai indlnit? pe whom did you meet (*him) ^Sufier (1988) gives the following grammatical examples, in which interrogative partitives are clitic-doubled: (i) Α cuäl de las dos candidatasj laj entrevistaron? which of the two candidatesj (did they) interview herj?' (ii) Α cuäles de ellosj losj interrogaron? which of them; (did they) question themj?' (iii) A cuantas de las actricesj lasj reconocieron? how many of the actresses, (did they) recognize themj?' Sufler considers that the contrast between the ungrammaticality of (36) and the acceptability of (iiii) is due to the fact that partitives are +specific, whereas NPs of the wh N' form are -specific. It is however difficult to assume intrinsic nonspecificity for cuäl Ν'. According to our analysis, the acceptability of (i)-(iii) is due to the fact that the "structural quantifier" parameter does not necessarily operate for partitives, whereas it does for wh N's independently of their intrinsic quantification features. One might suggest that, unlike other wh-phrases, Spanish partitives are allowed to stay out of the (Spec, C') position (the examples under (i)-(iii) would then be assimilated to left dislocations,; see Section 2).

Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification 217 type relatives, as well as the other configurations analyzed in terms of null operators. 45 Under our analysis, the difference between Romanian and River Plate Spanish is just a particular aspect of the more general contrast that sets Romanian apart from English and from the other Romance languages, be they clitic-doubling languages or not. To sum up, I have proposed a theory according to which wA-phrases are not necessarily syntactic quantifiers; depending on the percolation of wA-features, they may function either as N P s or as quantifiers. This amounts to saying that whstructures may rely on two different types of Move a , which need not be stated as independent rules; their different properties depend on the nature of α itself: (a) Move NP to an A'-position; 4 6 (b) Move w/j-quantifiers. Rule (b) qualifies both as a 45

According to our account, the contrast between Romanian and Spanish derives from the mechanism that underlies wh-structures. On this point our analysis is close to Steriade's (1980) pre-GB proposal, stated as a stipulation: Unlike Romanian, River Plate Spanish wh-structures involve, not pronominal copies of the extracted constituent, but just empty variables. If our analysis is correct, this stipulated difference between the Romanian and Spanish types of whmovement depends on two different values of the structural quantifier parameter, which is independently motivated (see the discussion of null operator constructions). Steriade's correct intuition got lost in both Aoun's (1981; 1985) and Borer's (1981; 1984) analyses of the contrast between Romanian and Spanish. Borer considers that the presence of clitics in wh-structures is the unmarked situation for a clitic-doubling language (see Section 1.1.2 above): wh-variables would be properly governed by doubling clitics. Romanian is taken to illustrate this generalization, but the River Plate Spanish data constitute a problem. Borer solves it by assuming that clitics function as proper governers only if they bear the same Case as the empty category they are supposed to govern. This requirement would be satisfied in Romanian, but not in Spanish, the relevant parameter being a difference in the Cases assigned to "prepositional accusatives": Romanian pe would assign the accusative, whereas Spanish a could only assign the dative (besides being an accusative marker, a is indeed the preposition characteristic of indirect objects). Spanish clitic-doubling sequences would then be characterized by a Case discrepancy between the accusative clitic and the doubled NP, which would be dative. Because of the Case harmony requirement imposed on clitic government, an accusative clitic would not be able to properly govern the (supposedly dative) variable left behind by the whmovement of the a NP, hence the exclusion of accusative clitics in Spanish wh-structures. Jaeggli (1986) shows that direct objects preceded by a are not dative, which invalidates most of Borer's explanation. According to Aoun the contrast between Romanian and River Plate Spanish would depend on two different choices from among four possible types of clitic pronouns. Romanian would have at its disposal accusative non-R clitics (clitics that may double an NP which occupies the Aposition of the direct object); River Plate Spanish, on the other hand, would have at its disposal only R-clitics (clitics that necessarily bind an empty category in the direct object position, the doubled NP occupying an A'-position). This difference would account for the contrast in whstructures: in Romanian wh-movement is allowed (because the resulting variable occupies an Aposition), but it is excluded in Spanish, because the variable would illictily occupy an A'position. Aoun's hypothesis is stipulative: the difference between accusative clitics in Romanian versus Spanish cannot be shown to be relevant in other parts of the grammar. Moreover, Aoun's hypothesis predicts that, because of their nonreferential status, accusative clitics should be possible in cine structures, contrary to fact. 4

^Move NP is just a particular case of Move XP, where XP is a maximal projection. I prefer to restrict attention to Move NP because I am dealing here with the wh-movement of direct object NPs.

218 The syntax of Romanian

quantification and as an A'-movement configuration, whereas rule (a) relies on movement without quantification. I have shown that (a) and (b) correspond respectively to Romanian care and cine structures. Unlike what happens in Romanian, in English and in Romance languages other than Romanian the wh-structures that qualify as movement also qualify as quantification structures. I have shown that this characteristic can be analyzed as a consequence of the positive value that the structural quantifier parameter takes in these languages: a wA-phrase in (Spec.C) is necessarily a quantifier, by virtue of its position. The same parameter accounts for the existence (in English, French, and so on) versus the absence in Romanian of such constructions as thai relatives, clefts, topicalizations and infinitival relatives. These results raise another question: is it possible to show that a relation exists between the clitic-doubling parameter and the negative value of the structural quantifier parameter? In Section 6.1.3.2 I suggested that prepositional accusatives constitute a necessary condition both for clitic doubling, and for the presence of accusative clitics in wA-structures (in other words, Kayne's Generalization mentioned in Section 6.1.1.2. extends to w/j-phrases). Since, by our analysis, the latter characteristic has been subsumed under the negative value of the structural quantifier parameter, prepositional accusatives may be considered to constitute a necessary condition (but not a sufficient one, as indicated by River Plate Spanish) for this paramedical value.

6. 2. Quantification and movement in Left Dislocations We have so far examined two types of Romanian ννΛ-structures that both qualify as movement (as opposed to the resumptive pronoun strategy) but differ from each other with respect to quantification properties. In this section we will see that this distinction is relevant for a particular type of left dislocations, which are sensitive to islands (as opposed to the "standard" left dislocations discussed in Chomsky (1977)) but do not necessarily rely on quantification (as opposed to topicalizations); their quantification properties depend on the quantification features of the fronted constituent. 6. 2. 1. The two types of Left Dislocation This type of structure has already been identified for Italian by Cinque (1977; 1990), who referred to it as the Clitic Left Dislocation (CLLD); see example (37), as opposed to the standard English-type Left Dislocation (ELD) illustrated in (38): (37) (38)

(Pe) Ion 1-am intSlnit anul trecut (pe) John him-(I) have met year last (Cit despre) Ion, nu 1-am väzut de anul trecut (as to) John, not him-(I) have seen since year last

Clitic doubling, wh-movement and quantification

219

As shown by Cinque (1984a, 1990), several syntactic properties distinguish CLLDs from ELDs. In particular, CLLDs are sensitive to islands, unlike ELDs: 47 (39)

a. *Pe Ion η-am intilnit fata care 1-a väzut anul

trecut

pe John not-(I) have met the girl which saw him last year b. *Pe Ion am plecatinainte

sä-Ι examineze

Popescu.

pe John (I) left before that-him examined Popescu The island sensitivity illustrated in (39) shows that unlike ELDs, 48 CLLDs do rely on movement (or on some kind of syntactic mechanism comparable to movement; see Cinque (1990) and the Appendix of this article). Despite the fact that it relies on movement, the CLLD of definite NPs does not involve quantification:49 (a) accusative clitics corresponding to a fronted direct

47

Cinque discusses other differences, among them the following: (a) the left-dislocated element of CLLDs can be of any maximal category (in the sense of X' theory), whereas ELDs essentially allow for left-dislocated NPs only; (b) there is no theoretical limit to the number of left-dislocated constituents in CLLDs, whereas ELDs do not allow more than one left-dislocated constituent; (c) in CLLDs the S-intemal element can only be a clitic, whereas in ELDs an emphatic pronoun can also appear; (d) there is obligatory "connectivity" (Cinque's connectivity resembles "reconstruction": the dislocated element behaves as if it occupied the Α-position with which it is coindexed) between the left-dislocated constituent and the S-internal position in CLLDs, but not in ELDs. Let us just illustrate the generalization given in (c): (i) *Pe Maria nu vreau s-o mai väd peeatit träiesc. pe Mary (I) not want to-her any more see pe her how long (I) live (ii) 1(Cit despre) Maria, nu vreau s-o maitvädpe ea tit träiesc. (As for) Mary, (I) not want to-her any more see pe her how long (I) live 'As for Mary, I don't want to see her any more in my whole life.' Note that care structures behave like CLLDs: (iii) *fata pe care nu vreau s-o mai vädpe ea tit träiesc the girl pe which (I) not want to-her any more see pe her how long as (I) live Whereas the presence of the emphatic pronoun pe ea results in ungrammaticaility in both CLLDs (see (i)) and care structures (see (iii)), the ELD illustrated in (ii) is marginal, but nevertheless possible. The impossibility of emphatic pronouns in CLLDs may be considered an argument in favour of the movement hypothesis: the input structure of examples like (i) and (iii) is ungrammatical; Romanian does not admit doubling sequences that include a clitic, an emphatic pronoun, and a lexical NP. The (relative) acceptability of emphatic pronouns in examples like (ii) can be accounted for by adopting the standard analysis of ELDs: in contrast to CLLDs, they do not rely on movement, or on any other syntactic relation (at S-Structure the left-dislocated element is not coindexed with any element in S); the clitic is in this case a resumptive pronoun.. ^ C o m p a r e ( 3 9 ) with (i)-(iii), which show very mild (if any) island violations: (i) (Cit despre) Ion, η-am intilnit fata care 1-a väzut ultima datä. (as to) John, not-(I) have met the girl which him-has seen the last time (ii) (Cit despre) Ion, am plecat inainte sä-1 examineze Popescu. (as to) John, (I) have left before that-him examine Popescu (iii) (Cit despre) Ion, sä-1 ajufi e ο pläcere. (as to) John, to-him help is a pleasure. 49 Given our hypothesis concerning the absence of the null operator strategy in Romanian, we correctly expect that Romanian lacks Topicalization (more concretely, the example in (37) is ungrammatical without a clitic). We should note that the English-type topicalization is

220 The syntax of Romanian

object are obligatory (see (37)); (b) parasitic gaps are not licensed; (c) no weak crossover effects can be observed (for illustration, see Cinque (1990) and Dobrovie-Sorin (1987)). The CLLD of referential expressions thus appears to rely on the same syntactic mechanism (A'-movement without quantification) as care structures. 6. 2. 2. The CLLD ofquantißedNPs (QNPs) Recall that the quantificational status of Romanian structures depends on the percolation of qu-features from wA-elements to the wft-phrases that dominate them. An interesting generalization can be reached if we are able to show that the proposed typology extends to quantifiers other than w/j-elements. The examples in (40), which illustrate the CLLD of "bare" quantifiers such as nimeni 'nobody', cineva 'somebody' and ceva 'something', are parallel to the whstructures that involve "bare" wft-quantifiers such as cine 'who', ce 'what' (see the examples in (2)): (40) a. Pe nimeni η-am supärat pe nobody not-(I) have annoyed b. Ceva ai sä descopen §i tu. something (you) will discover you too c. Pe cineva trebuie sä superi tu in ßecare zi. pe somebody (you) must upset every day Doubling clitics are excluded: (41) a. *Pe nimeni nu 1-am supärat b. * Ceva ai sä-1 descopen §i tu. c. *Pe cineva trebuie sä-1 supen tu in ßecare zi.

unacceptable in other Romance languages. In Italian, for instance, only focused NPs are subject to topicalization (see Cinque (1984a; 1990)): (i) Gianni inviterd (non Piero). John, I'll invite [not Peter] If Gianni is not stressed, an accusative clitic is obligatory in Italian: (ii) Gianni, lo inviterd domani [non oggi], John, I'll invite him tomorrow [not today]. Two questions arise, which will not be answered here: how can we explain the restriction concerning focus in Italian, and what is the parameter that distinguishes Italian from English? Crucially, Romanian lacks even the weaker variety of topicalization that characterizes Italian. Focused direct objects are allowed in S-initial positions, but an accusative clitic is still obligatory: (iii) Eu pe Popescu 1-am vSzut (nu pe Ionescu). me pe Popescu (I) him-saw (not pe Ionescu) (iv) Eu romanul ästa 1-am citit (nu pe celälalt). me, this novel it (I) read (not pe the other one)' I will not propose an analysis for this structure. What is relevant here is simply the fact that (iii) and (iv) do not involve quantification. This is also true of focused NPs in situ (they are not subject to

QR).

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In (40) the dislocated NP bears gu-features, because bare quantifiers are exhaustively dominated by their maximal projection. By the condition that precludes vacuous quantification, an NP marked with gu-features should bind a variable. The examples in (40) are correct (on a par with (2)b), because a variable is available, whereas those in (41) are ungrammatical (on a par with (2)a), because the clitic trace does not qualify as a variable. We can also find quantifiers corresponding to the care 'which' type of whelement, which cannot percolate features to the NP that dominates them: (42) a. * Top elevii täi nu cred cä pot examina miine.50 all the students your (I do) not think that (I) can examine tomorrow b. Pe top elevii täi nu cred cä-i pot examina miine. pe all the students your (I do) not think that-them (I) can examine tomorrow 'Pe all your students, I do not think that I can examine them tomorrow.' Quite clearly, top' elevii täi 'all your students' functions as dislocated definite NPs (that is, as referential expressions) generally do (see (37), which is ungrammatical without a clitic). The ungrammaticality of (42)a is expected: the empty category ej can only be a variable, but there is no quantifier available to bind it. (42)b is correct, because the clitic trace does not qualify as a variable. The third type of quantifier is illustrated by indefinite articles and numerals (see (43)-(44)), which optionally transmit qu-features to their maximal projection, on a par with w/j-quantifiers such as cip 'how many' (see (45)-(46)): (43) a. Un elevjfiecareprofesor va fi in stare sä examineze ej. a studentj each teacher will be able to examine ej b. Zece elevij va putea examina ej fiecare profesor. ten studentsj will be able to examine ej each teacher c. Doi avocafij cunosc ej top judecätorii. two lawyersj know ej all the judges (44) a. Pe un elevj va trebui sä-lj examineze ej fiecare profesor. pe a studentj will have to-himj examine ej each teacher b. Pe zece elevij iij va putea examina ej fiecare profesor. pe ten studentsj themj will be able to examine ej each teacher

50see also the behaviour of oricare/fiecare elev 'whichever/each student': (i) * Oricare student nu-s in stare sä examinez. whichever student not [I] am able that [I] e x a m i n e s ^ 'Whichever student I am not able to examine.' (ii) * Fiecare student tiebuie sä examinezi cu atenfie. each student [you] must that [you] examineSubj attentively 'Each student you must examine attentively.' These examples are grammatical with a doubling clitic and a prepositional accusative.

222 The syntax of Romanian

c. Pe doi avocapj iiy cunosc ej tap judecätorii.51 pe two lawyersj themj know ej all the judges (45) a. Cfp elevij va examina ej fiecare profesor? how many studentsj will examine ej each teacher? b. C5]pr avocap'y cunosc ej tofijudecätarii? how many lawyers^ know ej all the judges? (46) a. Pe cttf elevij Hj va examina ejfiecareprofesor? pe how many studentsj themj will examine ej each teacher b. Pe d p avocafij iij cunosc ej tofijudecätarii? pe how many lawyersj themj know ej all the judges The syntactic difference in quantification status between (43) and (44) correlates with a quite clear semantic difference. The student in (43)a, the group of ten students in (43)b, or the group of two lawyers in (43)c may be different from one teacher to another (or from one judge to another). This interpretation is excluded in (44)a-c, in which the clitic-doubled dislocated NP can only take specific/referential readings: 'there is one/ there are ten students such that each teacher will examine them'; 'there are two lawyers such that all the judges know them'. The interrogatives given in (45)-(46) correspond respectively to (43)-(44), both structurally (see the distribution of clitics and of pe) and semantically. (45)a asks a question concerning the number of students examined by each teacher, which may differ from one teacher to the other, even if each teacher examines the same number of students, he does not (necessarily) examine the same group of students. (46)a on the other hand, asks a question concerning the number of students belonging to a group, which is identical for all the teachers. This difference in interpretation is generally analyzed as a scope difference: in (43) the dislocated NPs would take "narrow scope", and the NPs in situ would take "wide scope"; the reverse would be true of (44). In Section 6.3.3. we will see that these so-called "scope ambiguities" should be treated as a particular case of the more general dichotomy between the specific and nonspecific readings of quantified expressions. The data examined in this section point to important parallelisms between Romanian ννΛ-structures and CLLDs: the movement rule that underlies both these configurations does not necessarily correlate with a quantification structure; the 51a quite clear difference in acceptability exists between (43) and (44). The examples in (44) are perfectly grammatical and productive, but examples of the type given in (43), just like those in (40), are quite marginal. Compare (43) to the ungrammatical examples in (i), in which the subject is a definite NP; (ii), where the postverbal subject is focused, is better: (i) * Un elev Ion poate examina. a student John is able to examine (ii) Un elev poate examina $i Ion. a student is able to examine even John Ά student even John is able to examine.' The difference in acceptability between (43) and (44) is due to the fact that the left-dislocated position preferentially acquires referential expressions. In the unmarked situation a quantified NP (QNP) on which qu-features have percolated will stay in situ, whereas referential QNPs (QNPs on which qu-features have not percolated) will be dislocated. Note indeed that referential QNPs in situ (see Section 3.2) are marginal for certain speakers, but they are fully acceptable in (44).

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quantification status of both types of configurations depends on the gu-features of the w/j-phrases and of the dislocated QNPs, respectively.52 6. 3. Quantified NPs and Quantifier Raising In this section we will see that the principles proposed for wA-structures and dislocated QNPs extend to QNPs in situ. More precisely, QNPs in situ are not necessarily subject to Quantifier Raising (QR), just as dislocated QNPs and whphrases are not necessarily involved in quantification structures. The application or nonapplication of QR, which is constrained by lexical properties and by syntactic conditions (the presence or the absence of a doubling clitic or a prepositional accusative), correlates with certain systematic interpretive contrasts (the "specific" or "nonspecific" readings of indefinites and other "weak" NPs; "wide" or "narrow" scope). 6. 3. 1. Bare quantifiers In the preceding sections an important generalization was assumed: S-Structure variables cannot be doubled by accusative clitics. In what follows this generalization will be shown to hold not only for S-Structure but also for the level of Logical Form (LF). The behaviour of bare quantifiers follows directly from this generalization; they cannot be clitic-doubled: (47) a. *B vei intilni tu pe cineva acolo. him (you) will meet you pe somebody there b. *Nul-am väzut pe nimeni. not him-(I) have seen pe nobody Assuming the GB framework, in which QNPs are subject to QR, the examples given in (47) have the following LF representations: (47') a. *[