The mixed categorial behavior of cel + participle in Romanian

The traditional distinction between verbal and adjectival participles has been fine-grained in the last decades. Recently, Sleeman (2011) brought evidence that Germanic languages display two types of verbal participles: the fully eventive and the less fully eventive one. Using evidence from the Romanian present participle in modifier position, this paper argues that these two types of verbal participles also exist in Romance languages. Next to the fully eventive verbal participle, Romanian displays a less fully eventive structure, containing a verbal present participle preceded by the determiner cel, which typically selects adjectives. Evidence for the lower eventivity of the cel-verbal participle configuration will come from lexical aspect.