Nominal ellipsis as definiteness and anaphoricity: The case of Romanian

The paper presents a unitary syntactic and interpretative account of nominal ellipsis in Romanian DPs. As a Discourse Grammar phenomenon, nominal ellipsis is a double trope, involving both anaphoricity and contrastivity. On the one hand, it presupposes the retrieval of a suitable discourse antecedent. Since the ellipsis site is anaphorically related to the antecedent, it will be syntactically definite. Definiteness valuation is thus obligatory in any DP which contains an ellipsis site, and it is this step which provides the unity of nominal ellipsis. On the other hand, ellipsis also involves contrastivity of the remnant with respect to the same antecedent, a feature which entails the existence of a Focus projection, filled by merger or movement to the left periphery. In light of this theory, we examine several cases of nominal ellipsis in Romanian, investigating definite and indefinite DPs in turn. After briefly presenting our theoretical assumptions on nominal ellipsis and on the syntax of the Romanian definite articles, we study definite DP ellipsis with a variety of remnants, and then turn to ellipsis with indefinite quantifier remnants (cardinals included). Finally, the indefinite quantifiers unul (one.the) and altul (other.the) are also examined. Special attention is paid to ellipsis with lexical remnants: adjectives and nominal arguments, both situations being very well represented in Romanian, in contrast with other languages.