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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2017: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 31, Bucharest
Edited by Alexandru Nicolae and Adina Dragomirescu
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 355] 2021
► pp. 91–110

Is there a dative alternation in Romanian?

Remarks on the cross-categorial variation of datives in ditransitive constructions

| University of Bucharest
| University of Bucharest
Against recent claims that Romance languages lack a genuine dative alternation since they lack a genuine Prepositional Dative Construction (e.g., Pineda 2012), we bring evidence that, in Romanian, even in Recipient ditransitive constructions, datives manifest either DP or PP properties. In order to establish this result, we examine both the (internal) structure of the Romanian inflectional dative, and the prepositional dative, marked by the preposition la “at”/“to” and show that both forms require a ‘dual categorial analysis’, in order to allow licensing of their case and person features. While the default interpretation of datives in Recipient ditransitive constructions is that of DPs (whence the possibility of clitic doubling (CD)), there is a class of contexts (e.g., double datives, featuring a possessive dative and a Goal/Recipient dative), where the Recipient must be projected as a PP, since otherwise it cannot be licensed. The dual categorization of the Recipient as a DP/PP proves the existence of a genuine dative alternation in Romanian.
Keywords: dative alternation, inflectional dative, prepositional dative, re-analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Background and aim
    • 1.1The aim of the chapter
    • 1.2Background, properties of Romanian ditransitives
  • 2.The structure of Romanian dative phrases
    • 2.1Inflectional and prepositional marking
    • 2.2Sensitivity to the animacy hierarchy
      • Conclusion
    • 2.3The thematic range of datives in ditransitive constructions
    • 2.4The internal structure of dative vs accusative la
      • Why is the clitic possible and sometimes required?
      • Conclusions
    • 2.4The internal structure of the inflectional dative phrase
      • Conclusions
  • 3.On the dual categorial status of datives in ditransitive constructions
    • 3.1Aim of the section, framework of the analysis
    • 3.2Multiple datives
    • 3.3Narrow (asymmetric) scope
    • 3.4The interference with Differential Object Marking (DOM)
    • 3.5Non-configurational semantic effects of the Romanian dative alternation
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.355.05cor
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