In:Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2017: Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 31, Bucharest
Edited by Alexandru Nicolae and Adina Dragomirescu
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 355] 2021
► pp. 297–310
Moving towards an event
The Romanian prepositional supine construction
Published online: 1 December 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.355.15soa
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.355.15soa
Abstract
This chapter addresses the status of the prepositional supine construction with the locative preposition la “at”, especially as complement of motion verbs. This construction encodes a goal of motion event, and it interestingly admits a continuation in which this event goal is not reached. In Romanian, locative prepositions have the following properties: (i) they select bare nouns; (ii) they can introduce dative arguments; (iii) in accomplishments, they undo the telos of the predicate when introducing an argument. The analysis proposed in this contribution provides a unified account for these three properties, in which the preposition selecting a bare noun introduces a non-achieved goal meaning in the shape of a [–bounded] Path.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Types of supine constructions
- 2.1Clausal and prepositional supine
- 2.2Verbal and nominal supine
- 2.3Definite and bare supine
- 3.The contribution of the lexical preposition
- 3.1The conative construction, the defeasible telos and the prepositional dative
- 3.2The prepositional supine and the unachieved goal
- 3.3Unfolding the unachieved goal meaning
- 4.Conclusion
Notes References
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