Resultative Expressions in Romanian

Revue Roumaine de Linguistique LVI/3: 277-292, 2011

"The present paper examines Romanian resultative constructions and especially their sentence-final predicative bare NPs, like spumă ‘foam’ in a structure, like a bate spumă ‘beat (until) foamy’ or măr ‘apple’ in a lexicalized (idiomatic) expression, like a bate măr ‘beat flat//beat as soft/red as an apple’. The discussion in this paper sheds light on the fact that not all such V + (apparently predicative) bare NP combinations are resultative structures. KEYWORDS: resultative construction, predicative bare NP, small clause, telic, atelic "

Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, 2017

The aim of this paper is to analyze the class of Romanian nominalizations which enter light verb constructions with the light verbs a face 'make, do' and a avea 'have'. We show that such nominalizations are not event, but result. In order to test this hypothesis, we have chosen two of the most productive suffixes which appear with these nominalizations in light verb constructions, namely -ţie and -re. As will be seen, the two suffixes may attach to the same verb stems, giving rise to doublets (e.g. from a afirma 'state': afirmaţie vs. afirmare). The syntactic analysis of these doublets proves that -re is specialized for event readings, while –ţie generally gives rise to result nominals. Returning to light verb constructions, when a verb has both -ție and –re nominalizations available, the light verb will always select the result deverbal noun, the one ending in -ţie, while its -re counterpart will have an event reading and thus will be banned from the light v...

This paper discusses resultatives, often considered a subgroup of secondary predicates. Resultatives with an adjectival form (i. e., resultatives that can be considered a special form of secondary predicates) occur only rarely in Croatian. This paper highlights the formal and semantic characteristics of these constructions, as well as other possibilities of expressing resultative meaning. Key words: resultatives, secondary predicates, depictives, adverbials, adverbial resultatives, resultative meaning of prefixes

2008

This paper discusses resultatives, often considered a subgroup of secondary predicates. Resultatives with an adjectival form (i. e., resultatives that can be considered a special form of secondary predicates) occur only rarely in Croatian. This paper highlights the formal and semantic characteristics of these constructions, as well as other possibilities of expressing resultative meaning.

Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 2000

This paper argues that resultative -ł-adjectives in Polish,such as zbiegł:y 'escaped' and zwiędły 'faded', are derived from past (-ł-system) participlesby means of conversion (or zero-derivation). Evidence is presented in favourof the lexical (rather than the syntactic) character of the derivation, inthe course of which resultative adjectives inherit the event structure ofverbal bases. It is suggested that the availability of a resultative -ł-adjectiveis indicative of the unaccusative status of the related verb in Polish.

2020

To cite this version: Marta Donazzan, Alexandru Mardale. Additive and aspectual adverbs: towards an analysis of romanian MAI. Revue roumaine de linguistique, Bucureşti : Ed. Academiei Române, 1990Române, -, 2010 ADDITIVE AND ASPECTUAL ADVERBS: TOWARDS AN ANALYSIS OF ROMANIAN MAI MARTA DONAZZAN, ALEXANDRU MARDALE Abstract. This paper is concerned with the semantics of the Romanian adverb mai in its occurrence as a VP-modifier. We propose that mai has the core meaning of an additive particle whose argument is a predicate of events. Following this monosemic analysis, we are able to explain the different interpretations of mai (its continuative, iterative and 'experiential' readings) by considering the aspectual information of the sentence and the structural properties of the predicate. Our claim is also supported by a comparison with additive and aspectual adverbs in Italian.

SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 12/4: 28-54, 2015

The present paper explores the relationship between Romanian denominal/deadjectival verbs such as a îngheţa ‘to freeze’ and resultative constructions such as a îngheţa bocnă ‘to freeze solid’. I first discuss the general properties of the derivation of Romanian denominal and deadjectival verbs. I then turn to investigate the way in which resultatives are built in this Romance language, with particular interest in some lesser-known expressions that I call metaphorical resultatives or result(ative) expressions. I take a close look at the co-occurrence restrictions on building resultatives with denominal/deadjectival verbs, and I offer a semantic and, more importantly, a syntactic explanation for the possibility of a Romanian denominal verb such as a îngheţa ‘to freeze’ to head a result construction such as a îngheţa bocnă ‘to freeze solid’.

The article discusses morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the constructions conveying resultative secondary predication in Lithuanian and Latvian. The Baltic languages have developed specific formal encoding patterns for resultatives although some parallels with neighbouring Slavic and Finnic languages can be inferred. The meaning of the resultative construction in Baltics can be generated in a few ways depending on the semantics and the argument structure of the verb. I propose that actional properties as well as the retention or transformation of the argument structure of the verb allow three types of resultatives to be distinguished.

Cet article a comme point de depart l’observation de Virginia Hill (2013), conformement a laquelle les verbes aspectuels ne peuvent pas recevoir la marque impersonnelle SE ; l’auteur donne des arguments contre cette observation. Les verbes aspectuels peuvent seulement se combiner avec SE en tant que marqueur de voix et ils n’acceptent pas d’autres types de SE (pronom reflechi, marqueur lexical reflechi, marqueur de la diathese). Les consequences de cette distribution sont comme suit : (1) il y a une distinction nette entre voix et diathese ; (2) les verbs aspectuels sont des verbes a montee du sujet (SE en tant que marque de voix est etroitement lie a la position du sujet de la proposition subordonnee, dans le cas des verbes transitifs aussi bien que des intransitifs).

Annals of the University of Craiova, Series Philology, Linguistics XXXVII/1-2, 288-303., 2015

The aim of the present paper is very modest: I propose to uncover some of the properties of those Romanian adjectival phrases in which the postmodifier, functioning as an intensifier, is expressed by an adverbial noun in singular. The interest is both in adjectival phrases such as ud leoarcă ‘very wet’, gol puşcă ‘completely naked’, or singur cuc ‘completely alone/lonely’, as well as in participial structures such as îngheţat bocnă ‘frozen solid’, beat turtă ‘very drunk’, or supărat foc ‘very angry/upset’. The discussion also extends to some comparisons between the canonical absolute superlative and these phrases with superlative value.

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 2011

We discuss a type of variation in the pattern of definiteness valuation in Old Romanian (XVI th to XVIII th century), which has never been noticed before, and examine its significance for the evolution of the DP.

Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics, 2014

This paper presents a novel study of resultative secondary predication constructions in Old and early Middle French (12th-15th centuries). We show that the Old French period saw the emergence of new resultative structures that did not exist in Latin. Thus, contrary to claims in the literature (i.e. Stolova 2008, Kopecka 2009, Iacobini and Fagard 2011, among others), we argue that the development of the Modern French resultative system should not be thought of as a “slow drift" from the Latin system to the modern system. Rather, the evolution of resultatives in the Gallo-Romance family should be characterized as passing through three distinct grammatical stages: (i) the Latin stage containing pre xed prepositional resultative constructions; (ii) the Old French stage, which shows a completely di erent pattern of resultative predication featuring unpre xed prepositional resultatives and weak (i.e. non-aspect changing) adjectival resultatives; and (iii) the Classical French/Modern ...

Revue roumaine de linguistique, 2020

By studying the grammaticalization of Romanian auxiliaries from a diachronic Romanian and a comparative Romance perspective, this paper argues that the output of grammaticalization is a predictable pattern in a given language, i.e. a language-specific parametric choice. Specifically, in the passage from old to modern Romanian we observe that a number of emergent periphrastic structures (innovations in contrast to Latin) died out, against the well-known transition from syntheticity to analyticity in the development of the Romance languages (i.e. the profusion of auxiliary structures in this particular situation). In order to account for what appears to be a diachronic paradox, we show that, under a rich cartographic structure of the IP, Romanian auxiliaries systematically grammaticalize as exponents of the category mood; the auxiliaries of the now-defunct periphrases have a richer feature matrix (and this accounts for their demise). The MoodP is also the target of synthetic (finite) verb movement, hence Romanian is, (micro)parametrically, a mood-oriented language, a hypothesis which accounts for the particular diachrony of periphrastic constructions in this language, as well as other properties.

Diacronia

This paper aims at demonstrating the explanatory advantages of the old hypothesis concerning the origins of the auxiliary of the Romanian analytic conditional (aș + infinitive) as deriving from the imperfect tense form of the verb (a) vrea ‘(to) want’ < *volere (< VELLE). The grammaticalization process, reconstructed through the comparison with the other Romance languages and by relating it to typical directions of the linguistic change, presupposes intermediary semantic phases (the future-in-the-past value, the hypothetical value which is mostly counter-factual), whose traces may be found in the first Romanian (translated) texts, but which have been generally considered a consequence of the simple loan translation from the language source. The uses of the conditional with a reduced auxiliary (aș, ai, etc. + infinitive) are related to those (co-occurring in the old texts) of the conditional with a recognisable auxiliary (vrea ‘wanted’ + infinitive), for which the value specifi...

Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, 2022

In this paper, I examine cognate object constructions in Old Romanian. The analysis reveals that, in addition to the existence of a large number and wide variety of transitive and transitivizing verb-cognate object pairs, aspectual cognate constructions are also present in this stage of the language. Moreover, I show that the verb can be not only (atelic) unergative but also (telic) unaccusative. As for the cognate object, the generalization is that it denotes a result; therefore, objects that are (almost) exclusively event-denoting (e.g. the supine nominal) are barred from occurring in this construction and those nominals that are ambiguous between an event and a result interpretation (e.g. the infinitive nominal) can appear in this construction but then the result interpretation becomes prominent.