A questionnaire-based study of impersonalization in Romanian and English : With special attention to passivization

Rădulescu, Valentin and Van Olmen, Daniel (2022) A questionnaire-based study of impersonalization in Romanian and English : With special attention to passivization. Languages in Contrast, 22 (1). pp. 1-42. ISSN 1387-6759

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Abstract

This paper is the first contrastive study of impersonalization in Romanian and English. Taking an acceptability judgment approach, we describe the functional potential in all impersonal uses of not only the pronouns ‘one’, ‘you’ and ‘they’ but also the lesser studied passive. We find inter alia: a similar division of labor in the languages between ‘you’ and ‘they’ for contexts paraphrasable as, respectively, ‘everyone’ and ‘someone/some people’; a wider range of uses for pro-dropped ‘they’ than for its overt counterpart, as hypothesized in previous research; and a preference in English, but not Romanian, for passives to ‘they’ especially in contexts like ‘they’ve stolen my wallet!’, where the referent is entirely unidentifiable and likely to be singular. Levels of identifiability and number, each of which has been suggested in a separate semantic map as necessary for capturing impersonalization, are also shown to interact, supporting a proposal to combine them in one map.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Languages in Contrast
Additional Information:
This article has been accepted for publication in Languages in contrast, Volume 22, Issue 1, 2022, pages: 1-42, © 2021 John Benjamins, the publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use the material in any form.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200/3200
Subjects:
?? romaniangeneral psychologylinguistics and languagegeneral social sciencesgeneral arts and humanitiespsychology(all)social sciences(all)arts and humanities(all) ??
ID Code:
155329
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
25 May 2021 08:55
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
08 Aug 2024 00:43