Early Non-Finite Forms in Child Romanian

The properties of the early verbal forms in child Romanian are analysed with a view to identifying a possible optional infinitive analogue in this language. In particular, we investigate the following early verbal forms: (i) the imperative, as predicted by the Imperative as the Optional Infinitive Analogue Hypothesis (IAH) (Salustri, Hyams 2003, 2006) and (ii) the third person singular present tense form of the indicative, as proposed for Catalan and Spanish by Grinstead (1998, 2000). We argue that the form which Romanian children overuse is the present tense of the indicative; the optional infinitive analogue, however, is the bare subjunctive, an inflected verbal form without the subjunctive marker să. We therefore propose that the early overused form that children might use does not necessarily have the properties of optional infinitives.