Some remarks on right node raising in Romanian

Abstract

Coordinate clauses with a common constituent in final position give rise to an interesting construction (Mary likes, but John hates cats), in which the constituent at the right edge of the first conjunct is missing. This phenomenon, known in the literature as Right Node Raising, has been analyzed either as an instance of movement or as an instance of ellipsis in the first conjunct. Starting from Hartmann (2000), Abels (2004) and Ha (2006), who argue in favour of an in-situ analysis of Right Node Raising, we focus on the licensing conditions on Right Node Raising in Romanian. The paper is organized in two sections. First we outline the deletion/ellipsis analyses of Right Node Raising constructions in English. Then we present empirical data related to the pre-Right Node Raising elements, the types of right-peripheral constituents that can be elided and the contexts which allow or block Right Node Raising in Romanian.

Keywords

• right node raising
• conjunct
• ellipsis
• target
• islands