Linkers in Aromanian in comparison to Albanian and Romanian

We present data from Aromanian varieties spoken in South Albania, including the towns of Divjakë and Fier. Unlike Romanian and like Albanian, Aromanian has preadjectival linkers. Furthermore, Aromanian has linkers in front of both datives and genitives and agreeing with the latter. These configurations are absent from Albanian and Romanian, which have linkers in front of genitives, but not of datives, and agreeing with the head noun. The fact that the same elements that appear as linkers also occur as demonstratives/articles leads us to categorize them as Ds. We propose that the preadjectival linker provides a (partial) saturation for the argument of adjectival predicates, to be ultimately satisfied by the head DP. We characterize oblique case as introducing an inclusion/ part-whole relation, which takes the oblique DP as one of its arguments (i.e. the whole, or possessor, etc.). The linker provides a (partial) lexicalization of the second argument (i.e. the part, or possessee etc.).