The dative/accusative alternations in Old Romanian

Abstract

This paper contrasts the dative/accusative alternations in Romance languages with Romanian: In Romance, this alternation mediates the emergence of a DOM particle for direct objects, in addition to the preservation of the same particle with the indirect object (morphological extension). The case assigning property of this particle is paramount in both contexts. On the other hand, in Romanian, the dative/accusative alternation ends up with the complete substitution of one syntactic pattern by the other in the same position; e.g., dative inflected direct objects of Old Romanian (theme/patient theta-role) are substituted by accusatives with or without DOM in Modern Romanian. The change concerns the general option for analytical versus synthetic case in the grammar, irrespective of DOM. This contrast confirms the conclusions of previous studies that the development of DOM in Romanian involves different morpho-syntactic patterns than those proposed for Romance languages (e.g., Spanish), especially with respect to the origin and function of the DOM particle and the pairing of case marking on DP and the theta-roles they spell out.