Diacronia construcției cu complement intern în română și maghiară†
The diachrony of the cognate object construction in Romanian and Hungarian†

Summary/Abstract: Building on the cross-linguistic observation generally valid in the majority of languages according to which cognate object constructions are frequently subject to diachronic changes, this paper provides an analysis of the history of diachronic changes in the cognate constructions of two typologically unrelated languages. We demonstrate that, although the present stage of Romanian and Hungarian lacks the canonical (aspectual) cognate object construction illustrated in to sleep a sound sleep, this structure does exist in both languages but either at an earlier language stage (the case of Romanian) or at the present language stage, as a result of a clear increase in it towards the modern period, but the cognate nominal is expressed by a pseudo-object (the case of Hungarian). Consequently, the diachronic change in these constructions of these languages is in two different directions.

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