Cover not available
Part of
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. 297–310

Moving towards an event

The Romanian prepositional supine construction

| Université Paris VIII | Université Paris Lumières & CNRS
This chapter addresses the status of the prepositional supine construction with the locative preposition la “at”, especially as complement of motion verbs. This construction encodes a goal of motion event, and it interestingly admits a continuation in which this event goal is not reached. In Romanian, locative prepositions have the following properties: (i) they select bare nouns; (ii) they can introduce dative arguments; (iii) in accomplishments, they undo the telos of the predicate when introducing an argument. The analysis proposed in this contribution provides a unified account for these three properties, in which the preposition selecting a bare noun introduces a non-achieved goal meaning in the shape of a [–bounded] Path.
Keywords: Romanian, supine, locative prepositions, irresultative predicates, dative, conative construction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Types of supine constructions
    • 2.1Clausal and prepositional supine
    • 2.2Verbal and nominal supine
    • 2.3Definite and bare supine
  • 3.The contribution of the lexical preposition
    • 3.1The conative construction, the defeasible telos and the prepositional dative
    • 3.2The prepositional supine and the unachieved goal
    • 3.3Unfolding the unachieved goal meaning
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.355.15soa
References (18)
References
Alexiadou, Artemis, Gianina Iordăchioaia & Elena Soare. 2010. Number/aspect interactions in the syntax of nominalizations: A distributed morphology approach. Journal of Linguistics 46. 537–574. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bar-el, Leora, Henry Davis & Lisa Matthewson. 2005. Non-culminating accomplishments. Proceedings of NELS 35. 79–92.Google Scholar
Borer, Hagit. 2005. Structuring sense, Volume 2, The normal course of events. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen & Ion Giurgea (eds.). 2013. A reference grammar of Romanian, Volume 1, The noun phrase. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dragomirescu, Adina. 2013. Particularități sintactice ale limbii române în context romanic. Supinul. Bucharest: Editura Muzeului Național al Literaturii Române.Google Scholar
Guțu Romalo, Valeria (ed.). 2008. Gramatica limbii române, 2 volumes. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth. 1986. Notes on world view and semantic categories: Some Warlpiri examples. In Pieter Muysken & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Features and projections, Volume 25, 233–254. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hale, Kenneth & Samuel J. Keyser. 2002. Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iordăchioaia, Gianina & Elena Soare. 2009. Structural patterns for plural blocking in Romance nominalizations. In Enoch Aboh, Elisabeth van der Linden, Josep Quer & Petra Sleeman (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2007, 145–160. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. A further insight into the syntax-semantics of pluractionality. Proceedings of SALT, 95–114. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. Pluractionality with lexically cumulative verbs: The supine nominalization in Romanian. Natural Language Semantics 23(4). 307–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray 1985. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations. A preliminary investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Mardale, Alexandru. 2008. Prépositions et article défini en roumain. In Adèle de Saint-Pierre & Mélanie Thibeault (eds.), Actes des 21èmes Journées de Linguistique, 78–93. Québec: Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche sur les activités langagières, Universitaire de Laval.Google Scholar
Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela. 2008. Supinul. In Valeria Guțu Romalo (ed.), Gramatica limbii române, Volume 1, 509–524. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române.Google Scholar
(ed.). 2013. The grammar of Romanian. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ramchand, Gillian Catriona. 2008. Verb meaning and the lexicon. A first phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Soare, Elena. 2002. Le supin roumain et la théorie des catégories mixtes. Doctoral dissertation, Université de Paris VIII.Google Scholar