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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 30, Frankfurt
Edited by Ingo Feldhausen, Martin Elsig, Imme Kuchenbrandt and Mareike Neuhaus
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 15] 2019
► pp. 333–351

Chapter 17
Non-verbal predication and clitics in Aromanian

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This paper discusses predicational structures in some Aromanian varieties which involve PP or AP predicates combining with the copula be. In these structures the internal argument and subject of be is cross-referenced by an accusative clitic, as long as it is 3rd person and a topic. However, Individual-Level APs typically resist cliticisation. We propose that the clitic is the spell-out of topic and gender/number features available in Stage-Level predicates only (a spatio-temporal argument à la Kratzer 1995), with which the subject agrees, before agreeing with T. We argue that this structural property captures the restriction to Stage-Level predicate subject topics, the person restriction, and also the fact that the clitic behaves like a direct object clitic morphosyntactically.

Keywords: nonverbal predication, clitics, stage level predicates, individual level predicates, subject topics, split-person ergative marking, Aromanian, Romance, differential object marking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Socio-linguistic background and methodology
  • 3.The phenomenon and its distribution
    • 3.1The general picture
    • 3.2Environments in which the ia-clitic is found
    • 3.3Further restrictions: The DP subject is a topic
  • 4.The analysis
    • 4.1The structural properties of ia-clitics
    • 4.2Implications
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.15.17mav
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