Perfect and imperfect modals in Romance. Some syntactic remarks on the tense/modality interaction
Perfect and imperfect modals in Romance. Some syntactic remarks on the tense/modality interaction
Author(s): Elena SoareSubject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: epistemic vs. abilitative readings of modals; actuality entailment (AE); perfective raising; restructuring
Summary/Abstract: This paper addresses the interplay between Tense-Aspect and Modality in Romanian and some Romance languages, in ambiguous sentences that exhibit what has been called 'perfective raising'. It is observed that Romanian does not bahve like French, for instance, inasmuch perfective forces actuality entailment on modals. I show that this contrast is connected to the structure of Romanian modal sentences.
Journal: Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics
- Issue Year: 2008
- Issue No: 1
- Page Range: 39-55
- Page Count: 16
- Language: English
