Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics (Jan 2010)
A few remarks on romanian supine relatives
Abstract
The aim of the current study is to examine the temporal values available for Romanian non-finite relatives containing supine verbal forms. Starting from the research in the area of the temporal interpretation of nominals, the paper highlights the mutual influence between the head nominal and the modifying Supine Relative as regards temporal interpretation. On the one hand, the semantics of the supine verb may locate the three times associated with nominal temporal interpretation: i) the time of the nominal predicate, ii) the time of the possessive relation or iii) the time of existence of the entity denoted by the nominal in question (cf. Musan 1995, Lecarme 2005). On the other hand, from the three aforementioned times, only the third one affects the temporal interpretation of the adnominal participle in that a past time of existence of the entity denoted by the nominal head triggers a past interpretation of the modifying supine. These facts are accounted for within a novel theory, along the Cognitive Pragmatics of Sperber and Wilson (1986).
