The syntax and semantics of the direct object in Romanian

The major concern of this thesis is the manner in which relative scope relations involving an indefinite direct object are expressed in Romance and Germanic languages. The thesis addresses the syntax-semantics interface from the combined perspective of minimalist syntax and formal semantics. The topic is an interface one, bearing on LF (which determines the admissible interpretations) and the Conceptual Intentional Module (CIM). Discourse Representation Theory (DRT), a form of dynamic model-theoretic semantics, takes over the task of the CIM by constructing discourse-semantic representations which capture significant generalizations and count as input to model theoretic interpretation, as outlined in Kamp and Reyle (1993) and Farkaş and De Swart 2003).

This account is particularly advantageous in the interpretation of clitic doubled constructions (CD) in Romanian in which the clitic has a crucial syntactic and semantic role: syntactically, clitic doubled (CD-ed) DPs are interpreted out of vP (as inverse binding of the subject by the CD-ed object is always possible); semantically, CD-ed and differentially marked (DOM-ed) objects may take wide scope with respect to the subject and must be discourse bound

The main claim of this thesis is that languages resort to different strategies in order to express relative scope. Germanic languages employ configurational means i.e., c-command: a c-commanding quantifier typically has wider scope. Thus, scope possibilities get modified when a DP moves leftward into a higher position. The indefinite ‘een kabouter’ in (1) below takes scope over the QP ‘iedere appel’ as has in its scope the universal QP:

(1) Een kabouter heeft iedere appel opgegeten.

‘A dwarf has eaten each apple’ Dutch (Philip 2005)

On the other hand, Romance languages (e.g., Romanian, Spanish) do not resort to this strategy when it comes to scope relations. What actually counts in determining scope relations is the internal structure of the DP i.e., whether the object DP is DOMed and CDed or not. Romanian resorts to non-configurational means to render scope. More specifically, DOM-ed and CD-ed indirect objects tend to have wider scope than other competitors, irrespective of their syntactic position. There is, thus, a correlation between the interpretive properties of object DPs (scope) and a morpho-syntactic property, which they may have (CD and DOM). In (2) the object DP acquires wide scope irrespective of its position within the sentence:

(2) a. Pe un vorbitor de seamă l-au aplaudat toţi cei prezenţi la acea lansare de carte.

PE a speaker famous him.cl have applauded all those present at that book release.

‘Everybody present at the book release applauded a (certain) famous speaker

b. Toţi cei prezenţi l- au aplaudat pe un vorbitor de seamă

All those present him.cl have applauded PE a speaker famous

la acea lansare de carte.

at that book release.

‘Everybody present at the book release applauded a (certain) famous speaker’

Yet, DOM+CD does not always ensure a wide scope reading (scopal specificity), but rather specificity in the sense of Enç (1991), Farkas (1995) or anaphoricity (Lopez 2009):

(3) When the school year ends every summer our school principal gives prizes to the most diligent pupils who obtained the best marks. This year fifty pupils received such prizes.

(4) a. La serbarea din vara asta fiecare profesor i- a lăudat pe mulţi elevi.

At festivity from summer this every teacher them.cl has praised PE many pupils.

b. La serbarea din vara asta fiecare profesor a lăudat mulţi elevi.

At festivity from summer this every teacher has praised many pupils.

‘At this summer’s festivity every teacher praised many pupils.’

(4a) is a suitable continuation for the context in (3), whereas (4b) is not: Thus, (4a) states that the pupils that were congratulated by their teachers necessarily belong to the range of fifty pupils mentioned in the context (3), as opposed to (4b). We differentiated between cases where the DOM-ed and CD-ed indefinite appears in the presence of an operator (such as the universal QP ‘every’) and cases where it is the only element with a scoping potential in the sentence. In both types of cases, the indefinite retains its (epistemic) specificity. In the former type of situations, the indefinite can also become scopally specific and it seems to actually favour such an interpretation.

The fact that a DOM-ed and CD-ed indefinite object is epistemically specific points out that it functions like a strong presuppositional quantifier in the sense of Milsark (1977). The main property of strong quantifiers is that their restriction is non-empty: with a CD-ed quantifier, the clitic introduces a discourse referent, which represents the domain over which the indefinite DP ranges. The denotation of the double is a subset of the denotation of the clitic. We thus formalize the semantic import of the clitic in the DRT framework (cf. Farkas and de Swart 2003). Roughly, we assume that the clitic contributes a discourse referent (which is a group-individual) and a condition on this set. Furthermore, since the clitic is a determiner within a big DP, it also places a condition on its associate; this condition connects the discourse referent contributed by the associate DP and the presupposed discourse referent contributed by the clitic. More precisely, the condition requires that the discourse referent contributed by the associate DP be bound to the discourse referent contributed by the clitic.

The theory developed in this thesis makes a number of predictions supported by data: bare NPs, which may never be CD-ed, cannot be specific either and Counting quantifiers (Beghelly and Stowell 1996), which may be CD-ed in Romanian, may be epistemically specific but not scopally specific. References: Beghelli, F. and T. Stowell. 1996. Distributivity and Negation: The Syntax of Each and Every. In A. Szabolcsi (ed.), Ways of Scope Taking. 71–107. Dordrecht: Kluwer; Enç, Mürvet .1991. The Semantics of Specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22: 1-25; Farkas D. 1995. Specificity and Scope. ms. University of Santa Cruz; Farkas, D. and H. de Swart. 2003. The Semantics of Incorporation. Stanford, California: CSLI; Kamp, H. and U. Reyle. 1993. From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer; Lopez, L. 2009. A derivational syntax for information structure. Oxford: OUP; Milsark, Gary. 1977. Toward an explanation of certain peculiarities of the existential construction in English. Linguistic Analysis 3:1-29; Philip, W. 2005. Pragmatic control of specificity and scope: Evidence from Dutch L1A. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 9: 271-286; Uriagereka, J. 1995. Aspects of the Syntax of Clitic Placement in Western Romance. Linguistic Inquiry 26 (1): 79-123