Sintaxa specială a substantivelor neologice cu finalele -a, -o și -i în limba română

This paper discusses the syntactic features of neological nouns ending in -a, -o, and -i, such as lasagna, ebola, panda, flamingo, mango (fruit/tree), broccoli, emoji. Their special syntactic behavior is examined in relation to several aspects revealed by the analysis of the roTenTen16 electronic corpus: (i) genitive-dative relation expression, (ii) unmarked syntactic relation (neither synthetically, with case suffixed morphemes, nor analytically, through prepositions), (iii) (non)articulation (in argument positions, direct object doubling, possessive dative contexts, after the topic marker în (ceea) ce privește ‘with regard to’, after the preposition cu ‘with’, when nouns are accompanied by modifiers, possessors or postposed determiners and in comparative constructions), (iv) use with classifiers, (v) “adjectival” use, and (vi) agreement issues. The highlighted syntactic particularities correlate with morphological features (invariability or tendency towards invariability is dominant) and phonological ones (atypical final vowels -a, -o, and -i allow their use without articles, whereas nouns with typical endings are used with articles).