ORom, contrasting to MRom, possesses a single definite article, the suffixal one, which is equally used for licensing nominal ellipsis and for substantivization, like in other Romance languages (French, cf. MRom strictly distinguishes between nominal ellipsis (with "cel") and substantivization (with the suffixal article) (Cornilescu, Nicolae 2012). – bolnavul sick.DEF ‘the sick man’ – galbenul yellow.DEF ‘the yellow colour’), and is not subject to an anaphoricity condition. Substantivization is a lexical process, which presupposes the incorporation of a silent noun (Kayne 2005) with a precise lexical content (e.g. Nominal ellipsis is a Discourse Grammar phenomenon (Williams 1977, López 2000), which presupposes the PF-deletion of an anaphoric constituent otherwise syntactically present. Theoretically, we distinguish between nominal ellipsis and substantivization. "Cel" also occurs in polydefinite DPs, being preceded by a full definite DP (copilul meu cel cuminte child.DEF my DEF nice), with an information structure related function. In contrast to ORom and to the other Romance languages, Modern Romanian possesses two definite articles, in complementary distribution (Cornilescu 2004): (i) the suffixal article (-l, -a, -i, -le) attaches to the first noun or prenominal adjective of the DP (băiatul boy.DEF, frumosul băiat beautiful.DEF boy) (ii) the freestanding article "cel" occurs when the DP-initial position is occupied by a cardinal or ordinal quantifier (cei trei oameni DEF three men). The aim of the paper is to examine the relevance of this diachronic difference for the emergence of a second definite article ("cel") in Romanian. In Old Romanian (centuries 16-18), nominal ellipsis with (active/passive) past participles is licensed by the suffixal definite article, while in Modern Romanian it is the freestanding article "cel" that licenses ellipsis with participial or wh- remnants.
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