Early subjects in child Romanian: A case study

Abstract

This paper documents the use of early subjects in one longitudinal corpus of monolingual Romanian. The focus is on the null/overt and preverbal/postverbal subject alternation, as well as on pragmatic adequacy. In accordance with previous studies, the results indicate that the syntax of subjects is acquired early. Overt and null subjects are attested from the first available transcript (age 2;1). Overt subjects are correctly placed in both pre- and post-verbal position. The use of null and overt subjects reveals early sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic constraints. The corpus contains, however, several 1st and 2nd person pronominal subjects which are pragmatically infelicitous. This is interpreted as a delay in discourse-pragmatic knowledge of subject use.

Keywords

• null subjects
• overt subjects
• child Romanian
• pro-drop