A look at High Applicatives in Romanian: dative experiencers

Romanian has both Low Applicative Phrases and High Applicative Phrases. At present, Romanian dative experiencers are High Applicatives with a dative phrase as specifier, and an (obligatory) dative clitic as head. Earlier Romanian dative experiencers differed from their modern counterparts. They were not Applicatives but Locatives, so they did not need to be expressed by a dative clitic, and did not require clitic doubling. Raising constructions display a restriction dubbed here as Experiencer Island. They cannot combine a dative experiencer in the matrix clause with a dative experiencer in the embedded clause. This is because experiencer clitics must be licensed by a deictic Tense. In raising constructions, deictic Tense is in the matrix clause, so locality prevents such a Tense from licensing more than one experiencer clitic at a time.