Books by Alexandru Nicolae
Editura Universității din București - Bucharest University Press, 2019
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The book starts with an overview of the diachronic variation in domain of word order as witnessed... more The book starts with an overview of the diachronic variation in domain of word order as witnessed by the passage from Old to Modern Romanian. The most spectacular changes - dealt with in the remainder of the book - took place in the structure of clause and mostly concern the level of verb movement and the grammaticalization of functional elements.
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Dintre cele trei momente din „viaţa” unui cuvânt, naşterea, vieţuirea şi moartea, descrise în det... more Dintre cele trei momente din „viaţa” unui cuvânt, naşterea, vieţuirea şi moartea, descrise în detaliu în volumul introductiv al colecţiei Viata Cuvintelor (Marius Sala "101 cuvinte mostenite, imprumutate si create"), în cartea de faţă, am avut în vedere un moment din etapa „vieţuire”, adică una dintre întâmplările care intervin în perioada existenţei în limbă a unor cuvinte şi expresii. Acestea sunt surprinse în momente diferite ale vieţuirii: imediat după intrarea în limbă, când sunt primite cu ostilitate de lingvişti, dar cu multă prietenie de publicul larg, în momentul în care îşi primenesc sensurile sau preferinţele de combinare, după o (re)întâlnire spectaculoasă cu perechile lor din alte limbi, pe care adesea le imită, în momentul lungirii prin derivare sau al scurtării prin trunchiere, al combinării nefericite cu o rudă care înseamnă acelaşi lucru sau cu una care înseamnă exact opusul, atunci când vorbitorii le înlocuiesc cu alte cuvinte cu care seamănă, când le înţeleg şi le interpretează greşit, când le folosesc excesiv, astfel încât ele ajung să-şi piardă sensul.
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This book presents the essential morphological and syntactic features of the Romanian language.
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Papers by Alexandru Nicolae
in Emili Casanova Herrero, Cesáreo Calvo Rigual (eds.), Actes del 26é Congrés de Lingüística i Filologia Romàniques (València, 6-11 de setembre de 2010), vol. II, Berlin, W. de Gruyter, 2013
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The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics, 2022
After reviewing the different meanings attributed to the concept ‘complex predicate’, a set of sy... more After reviewing the different meanings attributed to the concept ‘complex predicate’, a set of syntactic diagnostics for the identification of a complex predicated is established. This set of diagnostics is then discussed in relation to modern and old Romance structures such as: (i) auxiliary constructions (with habere, esse, and other verbs), most of which emerged in the passage from Latin to Romance, and their Tense-Mood-Aspect make-up; (ii) the periphrastic passive compared to the reflexive passive (with special reference to past participle agreement, the inventory of passive auxiliaries, the double passive, and the ordering of elements in the passive cluster); (iii) aspectual auxiliaries; (iv) modal complex predicates; (v) causative complex predicates; and (vi) complex predicates headed by perception verbs. Putting aside the various meanings associated with the concept ‘complex predicate’ and the enormous variety of the syntactic structures which to varying degress satisfy the complex predicate diagnostics, this chapter seeks an answer to the deeper question of how the Romance languages are theoretically and empirically relevant for a better understanding of complex predicates.
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Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jul 7, 2022
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RODICA ZAFIU: LINGVISTA, PROFESOARA, COLEGA, PRIETENA, 2023
A SYNTACTIC PHENOMENON RESULTING FROM LANGUAGE CONTACT: THE USAGE OF THE RELATIVE PRONOUN CINE
T... more A SYNTACTIC PHENOMENON RESULTING FROM LANGUAGE CONTACT: THE USAGE OF THE RELATIVE PRONOUN CINE
This paper analyses a construction which is unavailable in present-day Romanian, but is attested in old Romanian: the headed relative clause introduced by the pronoun cine (< lat. QUI(S)+NE). In a recent paper (Boioc Apintei, Dragomirescu and Nicolae 2023), we have analysed the possible Slavonic sources of this construction, resulting from literacy contact (Lavidas 2021). The analysis of the old Romanian corpus has revealed an interesting fact: in Palia de la Orăștie, a translation with a Hungarian source, the construction under analysis has the highest frequency of all the old Romanian texts we have analysed. The object of this paper is the analysis of Palia de la Orăștie; the distribution of the cine-relative in this text puzzles out the occurrence of this construction in old Romanian and offers the premises to understand its demise.
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The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages, 2016
This chapter discusses both related phenomena characterizing the Romance languages and phenomena ... more This chapter discusses both related phenomena characterizing the Romance languages and phenomena that emerged in Latin which had important consequences for case inflection and case syntax in Romance, namely (i) the conservation in Romance of different Latin case forms (mostly, the accusative or the nominative); (ii) the relationship between phonetic erosion of the case system, increasing use of prepositions, and rigidification of word order; (iii) modern Romance case systems; (iv) the importance of case systems for alignment variation and differences in head vs dependent marking in Romance; (v) the importance of certain semantic factors (e.g. animacy, topicality) for the evolution of case systems.
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This paper is devoted to the analysis of (DP, AP, and PP) postnominal modifiers of personal prono... more This paper is devoted to the analysis of (DP, AP, and PP) postnominal modifiers of personal pronouns, focusing especially on Romanian. Regarding the internal structure of personal pronouns, we adopt the traditional view that they actually do not have a nominal restriction; instead, they themselves are definite NPs that raise to the D-domain, thus coming to be DPs. By means of the suffixal definite article, Romanian provides a contrast between definite modifiers, which prove to be DP-internal, and non-definite modifiers, which prove to be DP-external. Non-definite modifiers are non-problematic: they are predicates in a small clause configuration. By contrast, the definite postpronominal modifiers are analysed as occupying the specifier position of a Classifier Phrase, present in the extended projection of DPs headed by pronouns and proper names (Cornilescu 2007); the modifier “classifies” the personal pronouns with respect to the kind of the pronoun’s referent (e.g. we linguists / Ro...
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The Syntax of Old Romanian, 2016
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The paper proposes a syntactic and interpretative account of nominal ellipsis in Romanian DPs. Af... more The paper proposes a syntactic and interpretative account of nominal ellipsis in Romanian DPs. After reviewing previous accounts, we conclude that a suitable theory should unify total ellipsis (with no remnant) with partial ellipsis, (with at least one remnant). In the proposed theory, ellipsis is viewed as a discourse grammar phenomenon, presupposing the retrieval of suitable discourse antecedent. Since the ellipsis site is anaphorically related to the antecedent, it will be syntactically definite. Definiteness checking is thus obligatory in any DP which contains an ellipsis site, and it is this step which provides the unity of nominal ellipsis. Therefore, ellipsis is a double figure, involving both the anaphoricity of the elided NP and the contrastivity of the remnant (if present), a feature which triggers movement to the DP left periphery. In light of this theory, we examine two cases of nominal ellipsis in Romanian: partial ellipsis with cardinal remnants and total ellipsis.
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Revue roumaine de linguistique, 67, 2–3, p. 215–229, 2022
In this paper we investigate a novel set of data showing that a Romance variety (Istro-Romanian) ... more In this paper we investigate a novel set of data showing that a Romance variety (Istro-Romanian) manifests a strong preference for the prenominal placement of adjectives. We first provide a description of the position of Istro-Romanian qualifying and classifying/relational adjectives with respect to the head noun, and of the ordering of complement-taking adjectives. Taking stock of this corpus analysis and corroborating it with previous research on the word order of adjectives in old Romanian, we show that the word order patterns of adjectives found in Istro-Romanian can be explained either (i) as an (internal) archaic feature preserved from an older phase of Romanian or (ii) as an effect of the Croatian influence in a language contact setting (external feature); (iii) other features are, however, found both in old Romanian and in Croatian, yielding 'convergence'.
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A life in linguistics: a Festschrift for Alexandra Cornilescu on her 75th birthday (in Gabriela Alboiu, Daniela Isac, Alexandru Nicolae, Mihaela Tănase-Dogaru, Alina Tigău (eds.),Bucharest, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti-Bucharest University Press), 2022
Starting from the analysis of definiteness in Romanian put forward in Cornilescu & Nicolae (2011)... more Starting from the analysis of definiteness in Romanian put forward in Cornilescu & Nicolae (2011), this paper further explores the nature of definiteness in the Balkan languages, focusing especially on the contrast between Romanian and Bulgarian. The hypothesis defended here is that the postpositive definite article (a notorious Balkan Sprachbund property) is uniformly a suffix in all Balkan languages, yet the locus of definiteness is variable: in Romanian, definiteness is a property of Ns, while in Bulgarian it is a property of D. We show that this parameterization account not only for the DP-internal distribution of definite articles, but also other properties (for example, the existence of polidefinite constructions in Romanian and their absence in Bulgarian).
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Editura Academiei Române, 2017
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Actes du XXVIIe Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes: (Nancy, 15-20 juillet 2013), Vol. 1 / Éva Buchi (aut.), Jean-Paul Chauveau (aut.), Jean-Marie Pierrel (aut.), Tomo 1, 2016, ISBN 9782372760072, págs. 471-486, 2016
In Old Romanian [ORom] (centuries 16-18), nominal ellipsis with (active/passive) past participles... more In Old Romanian [ORom] (centuries 16-18), nominal ellipsis with (active/passive) past participles is licensed by the suffixal definite article, while in Modern Romanian it is the freestanding article &quot;cel&quot; that licenses ellipsis with participial or wh- remnants. The aim of the paper is to examine the relevance of this diachronic difference for the emergence of a second definite article (&quot;cel&quot;) in Romanian. In contrast to ORom and to the other Romance languages, Modern Romanian [MRom] possesses two definite articles, in complementary distribution (Cornilescu 2004): (i) the suffixal article (-l, -a, -i, -le) attaches to the first noun or prenominal adjective of the DP (băiatul boy.DEF, frumosul băiat beautiful.DEF boy); (ii) the freestanding article &quot;cel&quot; occurs when the DP-initial position is occupied by a cardinal or ordinal quantifier (cei trei oameni DEF three men). &quot;Cel&quot; also occurs in polydefinite DPs, being preceded by a full definite DP (copilul meu cel cuminte child.DEF my DEF nice), with an information structure related function. Theoretically, we distinguish between nominal ellipsis and substantivization. Nominal ellipsis is a Discourse Grammar phenomenon (Williams 1977, López 2000), which presupposes the PF-deletion of an anaphoric constituent otherwise syntactically present. Substantivization is a lexical process, which presupposes the incorporation of a silent noun (Kayne 2005) with a precise lexical content (e.g. [HUMAN] – bolnavul sick.DEF ‘the sick man’; [COLOUR] – galbenul yellow.DEF ‘the yellow colour’), and is not subject to an anaphoricity condition. MRom strictly distinguishes between nominal ellipsis (with &quot;cel&quot;) and substantivization (with the suffixal article) (Cornilescu, Nicolae 2012). ORom, contrasting to MRom, possesses a single definite article, the suffixal one, which is equally used for licensing nominal ellipsis and for substantivization, like in other Romance languages (French, cf. Sleeman 1996). In the 16th century, the structure [past participle + suffixal article] marking nominal ellipsis is rather frequent; however, it gradually disappears by the 19th century. It has currently survived with a few words (bătuta – name of a dance, spusele ‘the said things’). This change is parallel to the grammaticalization of the article &quot;cel&quot;, which began in the 17th century (Iordan, Manoliu 1965; Nicolae 2012, 2013), when the structure [past participle + suffixal article] had already become rare; as to nominal ellipsis and substantivization, the two articles gradually specialised their function, eliminating the ambiguity typical of ORom.
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Books by Alexandru Nicolae
Papers by Alexandru Nicolae
This paper analyses a construction which is unavailable in present-day Romanian, but is attested in old Romanian: the headed relative clause introduced by the pronoun cine (< lat. QUI(S)+NE). In a recent paper (Boioc Apintei, Dragomirescu and Nicolae 2023), we have analysed the possible Slavonic sources of this construction, resulting from literacy contact (Lavidas 2021). The analysis of the old Romanian corpus has revealed an interesting fact: in Palia de la Orăștie, a translation with a Hungarian source, the construction under analysis has the highest frequency of all the old Romanian texts we have analysed. The object of this paper is the analysis of Palia de la Orăștie; the distribution of the cine-relative in this text puzzles out the occurrence of this construction in old Romanian and offers the premises to understand its demise.
This paper analyses a construction which is unavailable in present-day Romanian, but is attested in old Romanian: the headed relative clause introduced by the pronoun cine (< lat. QUI(S)+NE). In a recent paper (Boioc Apintei, Dragomirescu and Nicolae 2023), we have analysed the possible Slavonic sources of this construction, resulting from literacy contact (Lavidas 2021). The analysis of the old Romanian corpus has revealed an interesting fact: in Palia de la Orăștie, a translation with a Hungarian source, the construction under analysis has the highest frequency of all the old Romanian texts we have analysed. The object of this paper is the analysis of Palia de la Orăștie; the distribution of the cine-relative in this text puzzles out the occurrence of this construction in old Romanian and offers the premises to understand its demise.