Classifying pronouns: the view from Romanian

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the analysis of (DP, AP, and PP) postnominal modifiers of personal pronouns, focusing especially on Romanian. Regarding the internal structure of personal pronouns, we adopt the traditional view that they actually do not have a nominal restriction; instead, they themselves are definite NPs that raise to the D-domain, thus coming to be DPs. By means of the suffixal definite article, Romanian provides a contrast between definite modifiers, which prove to be DP-internal, and non-definite modifiers, which prove to be DP-external. Non-definite modifiers are non‑problematic: they are predicates in a small clause configuration. By contrast, the definite postpronominal modifiers are analysed as occupying the specifier position of a Classifier Phrase, present in the extended projection of DPs headed by pronouns and proper names (Cornilescu 2007); the modifier “classifies” the personal pronouns with respect to the kind of the pronoun’s referent (e.g. we linguists / Rom. noi lingviştii). Corroborative data from English and other Romance languages support the proposed analysis.

Keywords

• personal pronouns
• postpronominal modifiers
• Classifier Phrase
• kind-level modifiers