Romanian double definites: The view from demonstratives

Abstract

Double definiteness is always optional in Romanian, and this raises the issue of its semantic contribution. Based on a corpus study, I argue that the semantic import of double definiteness is familiarity, understood as the presence, in the common ground, of a referent characterized as the maximal element satisfying the complex N∧A property (where A is the denotation of the modifier and N the denotation of the NP). The corpus study also shows that the use of double definiteness is register-dependent, occurring more frequently in texts that make us of older forms (poetry, religious texts, fairy tales), where it may be used purely as a stylistic feature or to facilitate a non-restrictive reading. I compare Romanian double definites with recognitional (or evocative) demonstratives (which also involve familiarity) and with the bleached demonstratives licensed by relative clauses, arguing that double definites differ from both. I propose a semantic analysis of demonstratives that is meant to capture the property that recognitional demonstratives share with anaphoric and deictic demonstratives but not with double definites: salience. As for the ‘bleached’ demonstratives licensed by relative clauses, they differ from double definites in that they lack familiarity. Nevertheless, the syntax of double definites resembles that of demonstratives in that it involves an additional functional layer immediately below the definite Determiner.