Word Order and Parameter Change in Romanian

Abstract

The book provides a comprehensive description and in-depth analysis of the major word order changes affecting the clausal and the nominal domains in the transition from old to modern Romanian. The Romanian data are set in a comparative Romance perspective, and the impact of the Balkan Sprachbund and the influence of Old Church Slavonic on the word order changes taking place in the transition from old to modern Romanian are also analysed. The book examines a large number of phenomena: some of them are found across Romance (e.g. scrambling, interpolation, discontinuous constituents, variation in the position and linearization of DP-internal adjectival modifiers), others are rare in Romance (e.g. a low pronominal cliticization site), and still others are specific to old or modern Romanian (e.g. the double, proclitic and enclitic, realization of the same pronominal clitic, the low definite article, the adjectival article construction).