Definiteness in Balkan Romance

Abstract This book is a study of micro-variation in the realization of definiteness across languages belonging to the Balkan Romance family (Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Romanian): in some instances, the definite article is spelled out only once, in other situations it is spelled out multiple times, and in still other cases it can be phonologically null. The book proposes a uniform account of these options based on a post-syntactic rule that specifies the conditions under which the definite article can be pronounced on various heads within the nominal constituent. This rule is the same as the rule that affects the pronunciation of movement chains, i.e. the copy that is pronounced is the highest copy, unless realizing the highest copy violates some lexical property of the items involved. I propose that in languages where definiteness is expressed as a suffix, spelling out the highest copy of a definiteness Agree chain does violate a lexical property of D (its affixal nature), and therefore what gets pronounced is a lower copy. In addition, I argue that the option of pronouncing the lower copy of an Agree chain is further limited by two factors: (i) accessibility/locality restrictions and (ii) possible interference with other Agree chains that D might be part of, i.e. Agree chains based on a different feature than [def]. The various patterns of definiteness displayed by specific languages in this family are accounted for by positing that lexical and functional items may bear different features in different languages (which result in different Merge positions and different dislocation options).