THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF A DIFFERENTIALLY MARKED DP IN ROMANIAN
THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF A DIFFERENTIALLY MARKED DP IN ROMANIAN

Summary/Abstract: This paper starts from the observation that clitic doubling and DOM-pe may alternate as differential marking mechanisms for direct objects. Our hypothesis is that the clitic and pe are able to substitute to each other for the object marking purpose. We propose that the clitic and pe compete for merging in the same functional head at the left periphery of nominal phrases in Old Romanian, and eventually co-occur, in different functional heads in the same domain in Modern Romanian. This analysis clarifies the locus of the DOM particle insertion (i.e. in the nominal versus the verbal extended projection), its combinatorial possibilities (e.g. with clitic doubling), and how these syntactic properties correlate with changes in interpretation.

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