Word order and parameter change in Romanian

Abstract

This chapter introduces the phenomena to be studied in detail in the monograph (verb–auxiliary inversion; pronominal enclisis; scrambling; interpolation; the low definite article; changes in the position and linearization of adjectives; hyperbaton; demonstrative specialization; emergence of the freestanding determiner cel) and the theoretical framework adopted; presents the methodology and methodological difficulties, the periodization of Romanian, and the corpus; and discusses the issue of ‘foreign’ syntactic features in the syntax of old Romanian.