CLAUSAL ADJUNCTS OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES – A CORPUS-DRIVEN COMPARISON –
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphilo.2022.1.02Keywords:
clausal adjuncts, morphosyntactic analysis, word order, Romance languagesAbstract
Clausal Adjuncts of Romance Languages – a Corpus-Driven Comparison. Continuing the traditional comparative analysis of Romance languages, the present paper brings evidence for the fact that the syntactic configuration (the word order) of a Romance complex sentence (henceforth CS) with clausal adjuncts is the result of many competing forces. The analysis is based on an original media discourse corpus, collected from three Romance varieties (Romanian, Italian, and French), and the focus will be both on the word order of the temporal, causal, and concessive adjuncts (their occurrence in sentence-initial, in sentence-final position, sometimes even in sentence-middle position), and on the comparative analysis of the results. What I intend to prove is that the ordering of a CS in the three Romance languages is motivated by three types of factors: discourse pragmatics, semantics, and parsing.
Article history: Received 8 July 2021; Revised 8 November 2021; Accepted 20 November 2021; Available online 31 March 2022; Available print 31 March 2022.
REZUMAT. Adjuncții propoziționali din limbile romanice – o analiză de corpus din perspectivă comparativă. Continuând tradiția analizelor comparative dedicate limbilor romanice, lucrarea de față își propune să prezinte o serie de dovezi în favoarea ipotezei potrivit căreia configurația sintactică (ordinea constituenților) a structurilor sintactice complexe cu adjuncți din limbile romanice este rezultatul mai multor forțe concurente. Analiza are la bază un corpus original de texte aparținând discursului mediatic contemporan, colectat din trei varietăți romanice (limba română, limba italiană și limba franceză) și se concentrează, pe de o parte, asupra descrierii poziției adjuncților temporali, cauzali și concesivi (de la începutul, sfârșitul sau chiar din mijlocul structurii sintactice complexe), iar, pe de altă parte, asupra comparării rezultatelor obținute în cazul celor trei limbi investigate. Scopul unui astfel de demers este de a demonstra că topica acestor structuri este motivată, atât în limba română, cât și în celelalte două limbi-surori, de trei tipuri de factori: pragmatico-discursivi, semantici și morfosintactici.
Cuvinte-cheie: adjuncți propoziționali, analiză morfosintactică, configurație sintactică, limbi romanice
References
Primary sources
Newspapers
Adevărul (2010-2018), https://adevarul.ro/
Le monde (2010-2018), http://www.lemonde.fr/
Il Giornale (2010-2018), www.ilgiornale.it/
Magazines
Femeia (2010-2018), https://www.femeia.ro/
Femme actuelle (2010-2018), https://www.femmeactuelle.fr/
UnaDonna (2010-2018), http://www.unadonna.it/
Secondary sources
Alkire, Ti, Rosen, Carol. 2010. Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Avram, Mioara. 1986/2001. Gramatica pentru toți. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române.
Chafe, Wallace. 1984. “How people use adverbial clauses.” Berkeley Linguistics Society, 10, 437-49.
Dardano, Maurizio. 2012. Sintassi dell'italiano antico: la prosa del Duecento e del Trecento. Roma: Carocci Editore.
Declerck, Renaat H.C. 1997. When-Clauses and Temporal Structure. London: Routledge.
Diessel, Holger. 2001. “The ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses: a typological study.” Language, no. 77, 343-65.
Diessel, Holger. 2005. “Competing motivations for the ordering of main and adverbial clauses.” Linguistics 43, no. 3, 449-70.
Diessel, Holger. 2008. “Iconicity of sequence: A corpus-based analysis of the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses in English.” Cognitive Linguistics 19 no. 3, 465-90.
Diessel, Holger. 2013. “Adverbial subordination.” Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax, edited by Silvia Luraghi, Claudia Parodi, 341-54. London: Continuum.
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. 1994. The Syntax of Romanian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Foulet, Lucien. 1930. Petite syntaxe de l’ancien français. Paris : Honoré Champion Éditeur.
Ford, Cecilia E. 1993. Grammar in Interaction. Adverbial Clauses in American English Conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gheorghe, Mihaela. 2004. Propoziţia relativǎ. Piteşti: Editura Paralela 45.
Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax. A Functional-typological, vol. II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing House.
Glinert, Lewis. 1989. The Grammar of Modern Hebrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gorăscu, Adriana. 2008. „Organizarea focală a enunțului (topic/focus).” Gramatica limbii române, tiraj nou, revizuit, vol. II (Enunţul), edited by Valeria Guțu-Romalo, 929-45. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române.
Graur, Alexandru, Avram, Mioara (ed.). 1966. Gramatica limbii române, vol. I, II. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române.
Grice, Paul. 1975. “Logic and conversation.” Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, edited by P. Cole and J. J. Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press.
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1967. “Notes on transitivity and theme in English.” Journal of Linguistics, no. 3, 199-244.
Hasselgård, Hilde. 1996. Where and When: Positional and Functional Conventions for Sequences of Time and Space Adverbials in Present-Day English. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.
Hasselgård, Hilde. 2010. Adjunct adverbials in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kayne, Richard S. 1975. French Syntax: The Transformational Cycle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kiss, Katalin E. (ed.). 1995. Discourse Configurational Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ledgeway, Adam, Maiden, Martin (eds.). 2016. The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maiden, Martin, Smith, John Charles, Ledgeway, Adam (eds.). 2011. The Cambridge History of Romance Languages, vol. I (Structures). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Manea, Dana, 2008a. „Circumstanțialul de cauză.” Gramatica limbii române, tiraj nou, revizuit, vol. II (Enunţul), edited by Valeria Guțu-Romalo, 557-71. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române.
Manea, Dana, 2008b. „Circumstanțialul concesiv.” Gramatica limbii române, tiraj nou, revizuit, vol. II (Enunţul), edited by Valeria Guțu-Romalo, 592-602. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române.
Mussafia, Alfredo. 1888. “Enclisi o proclisi del pronome personale atono quale oggeto.” Romania, no. 27, 145-146.
Posner, Rebecca. 1996. The Romance languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, Svartvik, Jan (eds.). 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Ramsay, Violetta. 1987. “The functional distribution of preposed and postposed ‘if’ and ‘when’ clauses in written discourse.” Coherence and Grounding in Discourse, edited by Russell Tomlin, 383-408. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing House.
Rizzi, Luigi (ed.). 2004. The Structure of CP and IP. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol. II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tenbrink, Thora. 2007. Space, time, and the use of language: an investigation of relationships. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Thompson, Sandra A. 1985. “Grammar and written discourse. Initial and final purpose clauses in English.” Quantified Studies in Discourse, Text 5 (special issue), edited by Talmy Givón, 55-84. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing House.
Thompson, Sandra A. 1987. “Subordination and narrative event structure.” Coherence and Grounding in Discourse, edited by Russell Tomlin, 435-54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing House.
Thompson, Sandra A., Longacre, Robert E. 1985. “Adverbial clauses.” Language Typology and Syntactic Description, vol. II (Complex Constructions), edited by Timothy Shopen, 171-234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Verstraete, Jean-Christophe. 2004. “Initial and final position of adverbial clauses in English: the constructional basis of the discoursive and syntactic differences.” Linguistics, no. 42, 819-53.
Zafiu, Rodica. 2001. Diversitate stilistică ȋn româna actuală. Bucureşti: Editura Universității din Bucureşti.
Zafiu, Rodica. 2013. “Information structure.” The Grammar of Romanian, edited by Gabriela Pană Dindelegan, 568-74. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1997. Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Philologia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
©Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai Philologia. Published by Babeș-Bolyai University.