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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16: Selected papers from the 47th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Newark, Delaware
Edited by Irene Vogel
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16] 2020
► pp. 203–218

Articles in an article-less language

Romanian-Serbian code-switching

| University of Connecticut

I will explore the interaction between Romanian and Serbian elements within the Traditional Noun Phrase (TNP) that participate in code-switching, including Romanian definite articles (D), Romanian and Serbian adjectives (A), and Serbian nouns (N), focusing on the definite article affixation. Following Bošković (2008, 2012), I assume Serbian to be an NP language (lacking definite articles) and Romanian a DP language (having definite articles), leading to semantic and syntactic consequences for the rest of the structure. Finally, I argue against CS-specific constraints such as Free Morpheme Constraint (Poplack 1980), Functional Head Constraint (Belazi, Rubin, & Toribio 1994), and PF Disjunction Theorem (MacSwan 1999), and in support of Bandi-Rao and den Dikken (2014) reformulated PF Disjunction Theorem.

Keywords: code-switching, syntax, Romanian, Serbian, DP/NP parameter setting, Free Morpheme Constraint, Functional Head Constraint, PF Disjunction Theorem
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Romanian DP
  • 3.Serbian NP
  • 4.Code-switched TNP
    • 4.1Distribution and issues
    • 4.2Description and analysis
  • 5.Towards an analysis
  • 6.Constraints on CS: A brief discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.16.13pet
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