Main clause că ‘that’ in Romanian
Main clause că ‘that’ in Romanian

Summary/Abstract: Romanian că ‘that’ is the Force head of subordinated clauses (Hill 2004). In this paper I point out that the complementizer că ‘that’ may occur in root (vs. subordinated) declarative clauses as well, but only in certain environments, which I identify as being the speech act domain promoting the speaker’s point of view. I argue that in such contexts, main clause că ‘that’ marks the border between various pragmatic sub-fields derived at the left periphery of clauses, rather than typing the clause, as it does in CP complements to V or N. In particular, main clause că ‘that’ draws the border between the injunction field and the Mood adverbial field (Cinque 1999), and between the latter and the discourse pragmatic field (ForceP-FinP).

• Details
• Contents