Balkan tongues (was: biloxi update)

[R. Rankin]

> A standard analysis is that the article is
> syntactically phrase-INITIAL, so the underlying form is something like "TA
> ... kola", and it "hops" onto the following word through some kind of
> prosody-driven phonological process, very much like other clitics in these
> languages (and a variety of "second position" elements in lots of other
> languages).  Demonstratives are also phrase-initial determiners, but not
> being clitics, they stay initial and don't "hop":   TAZI stara zelena kola
> 'this old green car' / ONAZI stara zelena kola 'that old green car'.

> Is Romanian the same, Bob?

Romanian is mostly the same in that the article attaches to noun modifiers
preceding the noun

copil  'child'
copilu-l  'child-the' = the child
mare-le copil  'big-the child' = the big child

But in Romanian the demonstratives, acest, aceasta, acel, acela, etc. (there are
lots), are not derived from the same base as the articles, so there isn't the
nice synchronic evidence for initial placement and subsequent "hopping" that you
have in Bulgarian/Macedonian.  I don't know the status in Albanian.

BTW, while I'm on Romanian articles, the textbook analysis of the masculine
singular nominative-accusative article as a postposed -ul is wrong.  The
apparent suffix -ul is actually bimorphemic.  The /-u/ is historically the
masculine singular ending on the noun stem.  The article is just the /-l/.  (Or,
more abstractly, /-lu/).  There was a sound change that lost the -u regularly.
So the proper segmentation of, say, calului 'of the horse' is calu + lu + i
'horse + art. + genitive.  Not, as found in standard textbooks, *cal + ul + ui,
or, worse, *cal + ului.  Trust me, I wrote a whole dissertation of this stuff.
:-)

> This is obviously nothing like the situation of articles in Dhegiha
> languages, where they are phrase-FINAL, following the noun and all sorts of
> modifiers.

I completely agree.

> As for the question of whether determiners in European (SVO) languages
> "should" be postposed/phrase-final, that depends on whether determiners are
> modifiers (within NP) or heads (of DP).  If determiners head their own
> projection, you would expect them to be DP-final in OV languages, as they
> in fact are in Omaha-Ponca and the rest of Dhegiha, and you would expect
> them to be DP-initial in VO languages, as they in fact are in European
> languages, including Bulgarian and I think all the other European languages
> that have "postposed" articles.

Yes, if you believe in DP's that would be the analysis.  I won't be drawn into
that one though.  :-)   I think the answer there depends on higer-level
theoretical beliefs.

Bob