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Rizea on Particularities of Romanian as a Negative Concord Language

We are happy to announce an invited talk by

Monica-Mihaela Rizea (Bucarest)
on
Particularities of Romanian as a Negative Concord Language.
The Idiosyncratic Behaviour of Nici and an HPSG Account of Long Distance Negative Concord

in the Oberseminar English Linguistics, Monday, April 18, 4-6pm, room IG 3.201.

Abstract:

Romanian differs from the other Romance languages since it displays obligatory Negative Concord (NC) in finite sentences; however, even if it is a strict NC language, it also allows Double Negation (DN) structures (under certain conditions). After providing a short contrastive characterization of Romanian with respect to optional and no-NC languages by investigating contexts with preverbal and multiple n-words, the study examines DN readings derived either from NC or from preposed  n-word non-finite structures. Nici shows a number of idiosyncrasies when compared with the rest of the Romanian n-words, both with respect to NC and DN. Finally, an HPSG account of NC as a type of Unbounded Dependency is proposed for structures with nici which, in contrast with other n-words, has no quantificational content.

Everyone interested is welcome!

The next talk in the Oberseminar will be given by Gianina Iordăchioaia (Stuttgart) on April 25.

Monica’s talk is part of her research stay in Frankfurt a.M., which lasts from April 18 till April 30, which is supported by the European network Parsing and Multiword Expressions.

If you would like to meet with Monica, please send a message to Manfred.

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