Comparative Syntax of the Balkan Languages (Oxford ... - Cryptm.org

6 MARIA LUISA RIVERO AND ANGELA RALLIA more recent distinction closely connected to the infinitive/finite contrastis the phenomenon often called obviation in the Romance literature, which isexemplified in (3) (Picallo 1984, among others).(3) a. Brigitte veut [qu'elle chante.} Fre'Brigitte wants her to sing.'b. Brigida quiere [que cante.] Spa'Brigitte wants her/him to sing.'In languages like French and Spanish, when the volition verb takes an infinitivecomplement as in (2), reference must be to only to one individual, so the assumptionis that the subjects of the two clauses corefer (i.e., control). However,when the verb takes a complement in the subjunctive, such as chante/ cante in(3), reference is to two individuals, or the subjects are disjoint (i.e., obviation).It is well known that the Balkan languages have lost nonfinite clauses(Joseph 1983) and substituted for them clauses with verbs variously inflected fortense/aspect, person/number, and/or mood, usually labeled "subjunctives" byAlbanian and Modern Greek grammarians and "conjunctives" by some Bulgarianand Romanian grammarians. As a result, these languages offer a picture thatdiffers from the one described for French and Spanish, which poses a variety ofchallenges to received views on control and raising with infinitives and on obviationwith subjunctives. We know, for instance, that Ancient Greek displayedinfinitival clauses reminiscent of those of French and Spanish above, but thatsuch clauses are now absent from Modern Greek, where they correspond to socalledna-clauses or subjunctives, and that other languages of the region haveevolved along parallel lines. To illustrate, the French and Spanish alternationswith raising verbs in (1) correspond in Modern Greek to (4) (Roussou, thisvolume) with the complement in (4b), the clause with na, shown in bold fromnow on. Syntactic alternations with raising verbs in Romanian are shown in (5),and these examples contain embedded sa-clauses sometimes called conjunctives.(4) a. Fenete [oti la pedja dulevun.] Grkseem-3SG that the children work-3PL'It seems that the children work.'b. Ta pedja fenonde [na dulevun.}the children seem-3PL na work-3PL'The children seem to work.'(5) a. S-a nimerit [ca copiii sa sa RomREFL-has-3SG happened that children.the safie acolo.]were here'It happened that the children were here.'