Romance and Croatian in Contact: Non-Clitic Auxiliaries in Istro-Romanian

Languages

Alexandru Nicolae¹  Adina Dragomirescu¹ 

[1] “Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” Institute of Linguistics, 050711 Bucharest, Romania;

关键词: auxiliary;    VP-ellipsis;    verb movement;    language contact;    Istro-Romanian;    old Romanian;   

DOI  :  10.3390/languages6040187

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This paper focuses on Istro-Romanian and argues that the TAM auxiliaries of this variety are not morphophonological clitics. This analysis is supported by the existence of several empirical phenomena (auxiliary-licensed VP-ellipsis, scrambling, and interpolation), some not found in modern Romance, others very rare in modern Romance. This property of Istro-Romanian auxiliary verbs accounts, in conjunction with other features of this variety (e.g., the availability of C-oriented and I-oriented pronominal clitics), for the massive variation in the word order of pronominal clitics, auxiliaries, and the lexical verb found in the Istro-Romanian sentential core. An endangered Romance variety spoken in Istria and in the diaspora, historically related to (Daco-)Romanian, Istro-Romanian has been in contact with Croatian since the settlement of Istro-Romanians in the Istrian peninsula. As some of the Istro-Romanian features and phenomena are found both in Croatian and in old Romanian, it appears that contact with Croatian acts as a catalyst of structural convergence engendering the retention of an archaic property of Istro-Romanian auxiliaries: a lower position on the grammaticalization cline, closer to the full word status of their etyma.

【 授权许可】

Unknown