The MIHI EST construction: An instance of non-canonical subject marking in Romanian

Mihaela Ilioaia

Published by De Gruyter 2023

The MIHI EST construction

An instance of non-canonical subject marking in Romanian

Mihaela Ilioaia

Volume 481 in the series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111055466

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book examines the Romanian mihi est construction (Mi-e foame/frică, me.dat = is hunger/fear ‘I am hungry/ afraid’). While it disappeared from all other Romance languages to be replaced with a habeo structure, the mihi est pattern is in Romanian the most common way of expressing psychological or physiological states. By means of synchronic and diachronic corpus studies, the book investigates the status of the core arguments of the mihi est structure, i.e. the dative experiencer and the nominative state noun, as well as its evolution throughout the centuries.

The data analysis reveals that the dative experiencer syntactically behaves like nominative subjects, whereas the state noun shows predicate behavior. As for the evolution of the mihi est structure, the analysis shows a certain tendency toward innovation, since in present-day Romanian it can coerce nouns coming from other semantic fields into the construction’s psychological or physiological interpretation. Could this be another unique trait of Romanian, which causes it to seemingly go against the tendency of most Romance languages toward canonical marking of core arguments?

Author / Editor information

Mihaela Ilioaia, Ghent University, Belgium.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
List of abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	XV
List of tables Publicly Available Download PDF	XIX
List of figures Publicly Available Download PDF	XXI
Chapter 1 Romanian between Romance and South-East European languages Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 2 The object of the study Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
Part 1: The mihi est construction
Chapter 3 The mihi est construction as a complex-predicate construction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Chapter 4 Corpus and methodology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
Chapter 5 Nouns entering the mihi est construction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Part 2: The subject and its properties
Chapter 6 The subject: Toward a universal definition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Chapter 7 Subject properties in Romanian Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Chapter 8 Identifying the subject of the mihi est construction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Part 3: Expansion of the non-canonical pattern
Chapter 9 Productivity of the mihi est construction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Chapter 10 Summary and conclusions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	278
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291
Appendices
Appendix 1 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	315
Appendix 2 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323
Index of subjects Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327
Index of names Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Linguists
Pages
- Front matter: 22
- Main content: 334
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 5
- Coloured Illustrations: 51
- Tables: 51
Keywords: dative subjects; Romanian; experiencer; corpus study

eBook

Published: December 18, 2023
ISBN: 9783111055466

Hardcover

Published: December 18, 2023
ISBN: 9783111055022