Verb Movement and Clause Structure in Old Romanian: (18 Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics)

The book provides a formal analysis of root and complement clauses in Old Romanian. Virginia Hill and Gabriela Alboiu examine the combination of Balkan syntactic patterns such as generalized subjunctive complementation on the one hand, and the Romance morphology that supplies complementizers and grammatical mood forms on the other. The consequences of this mixed typology range from root clauses with non-finite verbs to split heads and repeated recycling in clausal complements. The book argues that discourse triggers at the left periphery are responsible for fluctuations in verb movement in finite clauses, while with gerunds and imperatives verb movement follows from functional constraints. It further argues that clausal complements to control and raising verbs systematically display the pattern of the Balkan subjunctive, and that the spell out of these clausal complements has been repeatedly recycled during the development of Romanian. Verb Movement and Clause Structure in Old Romanian presents a new perspective on the manifestation of Balkan Sprachbund properties in the language, and on the nature of parametric differences in relation to other Romance languages. It provides a unified explanation for a range of constructions that have previously been treated as separate phenomena, and places diachronic changes in Romanian in a wider context.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations in glosses Preface: Medieval Romania and Old Romanian 1: Research background and theoretical framework 2: Subjects, complementizers, and clitics 3: High verb movement in finite clauses 4: Imperative clauses 5: Gerund clauses 6: De-indicatives: A faithful replica of the Balkan subjunctive 7: A-infinitive: A version of the Balkan subjunctive 8: S&a subjunctives: Another version of the Balkan subjunctive 9: Supine clauses: On the road to balkanization 10: Conclusions and remarks on the recycling of the Balkan subjunctive References Index

About the Author :
Virginia Hill has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Geneva (1991) and has been teaching at the University of New Brunswick-Saint John since 1990. She has published extensively on verb movement and complementation in Old and Modern Romanian, and on the interaction of conversational pragmatics and clause structure. She is the author of Vocatives: How Syntax Meets with Pragmatics (Brill 2014) and the editor of Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax (Elsevier 2000) and of Formal Approaches to DPs in Old Romanian (Brill 2015). Gabriela Albiou has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Manitoba (2000) and has been teaching at York University since 2003. She has published on clause structure, Case and obligatory control in Romanian, and on the internal structure of clauses in Onondaga (Iroquoian). She is the author of The Features of Movement in Romanian(Bucharest University Press 2002), and the co-editor, with Andrei Avram, Larisa Avram, and Daniela Isac, of Pitar Mos: A Building with a View. Papers in Honour of Alexandra Cornilescu (Bucharest University Press 2007).

Review :
This book focuses on a stage in the history of the language that has not benefited so far from a thorough investigation within a formal theoretical framework. It is extremely valuable both in terms of its empirical coverage but also in terms of the subtlety with which the analysis captures unifying patterns for some Old Romanian facts that would otherwise seem disconnected. In this most interesting and well-researched work, authors Hill and Alboiu apply the techniques of historical generative syntax to a knotty problem in the synchronic syntax of Old Romanian with an eye as well to the diachronic syntax of Romanian more generally. This not only is a contribution to historical syntactic studies but it also enriches our understanding of a key, and often overlooked, member of the Romance language group. This data-rich, diachronic investigation of changes from Old to Modern Romanian provides a fascinating record of verb-movement and challenges some earlier views of the architecture of the clause, the expression of mood, and the structure of complementation. The book also asks questions about why certain languages are the way they are and how they each display certain cycles of change. The framework is cartographic, with sophisticated yet accessible argumentation, well-glossed examples and transparent trees. This book is highly recommended for its empirical coverage and theoretical insights. recommend the book to linguists of any theoretical persuasion interested in Balkan linguistics, diachronic variation and the syntax of control structures.