CLITIC DOUBLING AND DIFFERENTIAL OBJECT MARKING IN NON-SPECIFIC CONTEXTS IN ROMANIAN

This paper provides empirical insights into the semantic import of the Differential Object Marker pe (DOM) and of accusative pronominal clitics (CD) as specificity triggers with indefinite direct objects (DOs) in Romanian. The experiment we discuss investigates the behaviour of unmarked and marked DOs when occurring in various contexts forcing a non-specific reading. We compared two types of marked DOs: single differentially marked DPs (DOMed DOs) and clitic doubled and differentially marked ones (CDed+DOMed DOs). First inspection shows that, even though marking seems to render the DO a less suitable candidate for non-specific contexts, items containing marked DOs are not actually excluded as unacceptable. Closer inspections reveal, however, that the variation of acceptability judgements can be divided into more homogeneous groups of speakers with a distinctive behaviour. Some groups do not accept marked DOs in the non-specific contexts, while others accept both marked and unmarked DOs. This observation leads us to assume that we see a diachronic development of the function of CD and DOM from a marker of specificity towards a marker of true argumenthood of the DO. The paper also contributes to the syntactic analysis of CD and DOM as part of the general layout of the DP.