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Agreement Paradigms across Moods and Tenses: The Case of RomanianSubjunctives and Imperatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Mihaela Pirvulescu
Mihaela Pirvulescu*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

This article argues that the realization of agreement in subjunctive andimperative verbs is a consequence of the syntactic status of Tense in these twomoods. Crucially, certain agreement paradigms across Romance languages show verya close resemblance: the subjunctive and imperative paradigms are identical, inmost cases, to the indicative paradigms. Systematically, moods such as thesubjunctive and the imperative do not show specific tense affixes or specifictense-induced allomorphy on their agreement affixes. The proposal is illustratedwith Romanian verbal agreement, which is analyzed within the DistributedMorphology framework. The analysis shows that tense information is not used insubjunctive and imperative agreement morphology, unless it is exactly the sameinformation as in another paradigm — the present indicative. It isproposed that at the syntactic level, Tense is unspecified in the subjunctiveand absent in the imperative, and that the realization of agreement affixes is aconsequence of this syntactic representation.

Résumé

Résumé

Dans cet article, je propose que les affixes morphologiques d’accord ausubjonctif et à l’impératif sont réalisés enfonction du statut syntaxique du Temps dans ces deux modes. L’observationessentielle est que certains paradigmes à travers les langues romanessont très semblables à d’autres paradigmes : c’estle cas de l’impératif et du subjonctif, qui sont identiques, dansla plupart des cas, à l’indicatif. De manièresystématique, le subjonctif et l’impératif ne montrentpasd’affixes temporels ou d’allomorphie conditionnée par destrais temporels. Cette généralisation est illustrée avecles données du roumain, lesquelles sont analysées dans le cadre dela Morphologie distribuée. Selon cette analyse, les paradigmesd’accord du subjonctif et de l’impératif ne contiennentaucune information temporelle, sauf si cette information est identique àcelle d’un autre paradigme. Le Temps est sous-spécifié ausubjonctif et absent à l’impératif; la réalisationdes affixes d’accord est une conséquence de lareprésentation syntaxique.

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Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 137 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2009 

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