A comparative study of resultative constructions in English and Romance languages.

Identifier:  TFG:6141

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFG6141

Authors:  Jude, Andrei David

Abstract:
The focus of this paper is on resultative sentences across four languages: English, Spanish or Catalan, and Romanian. Resultative sentences are complex constructions which are possible in English, but impossible in languages such as Spanish and Catalan. Romanian is a special language in this context; it shows mixed properties since it has the possibility to express or exclude these complex constructions. The paper will begin with an introduction to Talmy’s (1985) language typology and continue with Slobin (2004) who introduces the theory of Equipollently-framed languages for mixed languages. After the theoretical framework, the paper compares English, Spanish or Catalan, and Romanian resultative constructions on the basis of an experimental study, which analyses translations from native speakers of Romanian as a heritage language that have Spanish or Catalan as a second L1 and have learnt English as a foreign language.