1.3. Romanian sentence structure
Landing sites are central to issues that refer to movement and licensing. The analysis in this book suggests that the Romanian clause structure has at its disposal a number of substantive (i.e., lexical) and non-substantive (i.e., functional) projections which may or may not be present in the derivation, depending on the properties of the lexical items inserted from the lexicon, alongside more abstract dimensions, such as tense, aspect, voice, and mood, or point of view. In (12), we illustrate all the projections that we assume could in principle enter into the build-up of a Romanian clause.
Let us clarify the terminology used in (12). CP refers to the projection headed by complementizers roughly equivalent to English ‘that’, which is realized in Romanian as cã and ca in the indicative and subjunctive, respectively. We assume CP is absent in main clauses and analyse all main clauses as IPs. The IP projection can be expanded to include several projections, as follows. The Mood Phrase (MP), whose head hosts the subjunctive particle sã, as well as the infinitive particle a; M° also hosts the imperative operator which is present in imperative clauses and has to be lexically realized (see chapter 2). In negative clauses, the inflectional domain constains a Negative Phrase (NegP), headed by the negative element nu not’. The Clitic Phrase (CliticP), which hosts pronominal clitics and is recursive, depending on the number of pronominal clitics present in the derivation, is situated immediately below NegP; in affirmative sentences which lack an MP, CliticP will be the highest projection of the IP. The AgrP, headed by auxiliaries marks person and number agreement with the subject. The Tense Phrase (TP), whose head T° hosts a strong verbal feature (i.e., [+ V] or the EPP feature) responsible for attracting lexical verb raising into the inflectional domain in Romanian, is essential to the IP. The Aspect Phrase, which hosts the perfective marker fi, may appear below the TP. Moved phrases cannot target positions that are internal to this domain. This restriction on movement is a direct consequence of the fact that the Romanian IP consists exclusively of clitic material. The syntactic clitics comprising the Romanian IP are analysed in chapter 2 as heads projecting maximal phrases without specifiers. Given that for the purposes of NP movement, the inflectional domain constitutes a single phrase, we only use an expanded IP where relevant (e.g., when analysing its build-up, discussing verb movement, or fine-graining an analysis).
We assume that the Romanian IP is minimally a TP. In fact, the Minimalist Program has renounced IP as the sentence label in favour of TP. However, throughout this book, we maintain I° as the umbrella term for the inflectional head and, consequently, IP for the sentence. Our use of T° is limited to refer specifically to the Tense head. This choice is based on the fact that, in Romanian, Tense is not the only relevant inflectional head. As shown in (12), there are other inflectional projections that contribute significantly to the build-up of the Romanian sentence. However, when citing or referring to other authors, we adopt their notations unless otherwise specified.
Consider next material below the IP. The light verb projection (vP) is present in active voice derivations, but absent in passives and unaccusatives; when present, its specifer position hosts the subject of the clause. The VP (or verb phrase) is headed by the lexical verb which may require complement NPs, as illustrated. In all probability, the Romanian noun phrase has an internal structure that is as complex as that illustrated for the IP (see Cornilescu 1995b). For our present purposes, however, the label NP will suffice.
In (12), we also show the formal feature we assume to be present in all Romanian clauses. This is the [+ V] (i.e., EPP) FF on T°, a selectional feature which we assume is checked by head-adjunction and, therefore, triggers overt verb raising into the inflectional domain. Given that, in Romanian clauses, the lexical verb always inhabits I°, material to the left of I° will be referred to as preverbal or as inhabiting the sentence left-periphery, while material below I° will be referred to as postverbal.
Other formal features may also inhabit the Romanian IP. Some of these are non-selectional features and are checked without movement (e.g. [+ neg], Case, phi-features), others are selectional features which require a strict locality relationship in order to be checked off and, therefore, trigger movement of the agreeing element. These are the [+wh] feature and the [+ focus] feature (with [+ emphasis] as a sub-type) discussed in chapters 4 and 5, respectively. We show these to be parasitic non-verbal features which inhabit the highest IP head present in the respective derivation. As a consequence, they engender syncretic heads and a specifier to host their matching lexical item.
The presence of selectional FFs on functional heads or lexical items will require movement in order for feature-checking to apply, a necessary condition for convergent derivations. However, we will show that the dynamics of movement are not conditioned exclusively by the presence of features. Pragmatic forces (see chapters 3-5) may also result in dislocations. In this case, constituents scramble out of their base-generated positions and adjoin to vP or IP, depending on interpretation: de-focused constituents adjoin to vP, while topicalized constituents adjoin to IP. There are several difference between XP adjunction and specifer-insertion. While, adjunction is in principle unlimited and proceeds against a maximal phrase (i.e., an XP), specifer-insertion is more restricted and proceeds against a head (i.e., an X°; recall that X’ is only relevant for architectural purposes). This distinction in positioning (i.e., against an XP, or against an X°), which is a direct consequence of the forces behind movement, is in fact crucial: adjunction is optional, while specifier-insertion is obligatory in the presence of the relevant formal features.