scholarly journals The Differential Object Marking of The Arborense Dialect of Sardinian in Language Contact Setting

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-56
Author(s):  
Daniela Boeddu
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Extensive Area ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Mandatory Use

This paper focuses on the Arborense Differential Object Marking (dom) system, which in line with the typical Sardinian dom system marks the object noun phrases characterized by a high degree of animacy and specificity with the preposition a. This is why the Sardinian dom is also called prepositional accusative. Authors dealing with other Sardinian dialects agree in identifying three domains of distribution of the phenomenon: with personal pronouns and personal names the use of the preposition is mandatory; with inanimate common nouns it is excluded; with common nouns referring animate beings, strong variability occurs. On the basis of an oral corpus of contemporary Arborense, it can be stated that the area of mandatory use of dom is restricted in this dialect and that the optionality area turns out to be more extensive than assumed in traditional descriptions of this Sardinian phenomenon. Since all the Arborense speakers of the oral corpus are bilingual (Sardinian-Italian), the data reflect the situation of dom in a contact setting scenario where Sardinian and both Standard and Regional Italian interact. According to Putzu (2005) and Blasco Ferrer and Ingrassia (2010), the extensive area of optionality for the use of the Sardinian dom should be the result of the influence of Standard Italian. However, two facts must be considered that make this idea questionable: first, in the language contact scenario of Modern Sardinian not only Standard Italian but also Regional Italian (with a widespread use of the dom) play a role; second, the synchronic variation observed in contemporary Arborense replicates the same variation which characterizes historical data from texts of the 12th–19th centuries.

scholarly journals The Genitive-Accusative of the Personal Pronouns in Old Church Slavonic

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-144
Author(s):  
Michael Weiss
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Semantic Class ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Slavic Languages ◽  
Human Male ◽  
Case System ◽  
Object Marking

In those Slavic languages that retain both a case system and clitic pronominal forms two case-related phenomena partially overlap: (1) Masculine animate nouns and gendered pronouns display differential object marking with sensitivity to the animacy hierarchy. Some subset of these forms with the highest score on the animacy hierarchy show the original genitive form instead of the expected accusative in contexts that otherwise call for that case, the so-called genitive-accusative. (2) Personal pronouns also show instances of the genitive for the accusative but with important differences. In languages with a clitic~stressed contrast for oblique pronominals the accusative forms generally are continued as clitics and the genitive forms as stressed. It is unlikely that the nominal and personal-pronominal gen.-acc. are unrelated. On the other hand, the case choice for nouns and gendered pronouns is sensitive to the animacy hierarchy, but for the personal pronouns the choice between genitive and accusative is phono-semantic. Whatever semantic structure evokes the stressed forms leads to the production of the gen.-acc. I suggest that gen.-acc. began with o-stem masculine personal names, the most prototypical expression of the semantic class [+human, +male, +free, +definite] and was extended to the interrogative pronoun (gen.-acc. kogo). The interrogative pronoun had just those properties that allowed the remapping of an animacy hierarchy into a tonicity distinction.

Differential object marking and topicality

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 832-884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Escandell-Vidal
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Discourse Functions ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Formal Properties

The aim of this paper is to examine Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Balearic Catalan. While definiteness and animacy can explain the distribution of DOM in other varieties of Catalan, in Balearic, the split between marked and non-marked objects is not dependent on inherent or referential properties of the object noun phrases, but determined by topicality. A preposition is consistently used to mark a subset of topical objects, namely those occurring in clitic left- and right-dislocation structures, which correspond to two kinds of hearer-known topics: shifting topics and continuing topics. The preposition does not occur, however, with hanging topics, which introduce discourse-new topical entities. In this way, a correlation can be found between formal properties and well-motivated discourse functions that explains the distribution of DOM in Balearic. Similar patterns can be found in other Romance varieties as well, thus suggesting that topicality is relevant to account for both intra- and interlinguistic variation in DOM.

scholarly journals Topicality and differential object marking

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giorgio Iemmolo
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Comparative Data ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Left Dislocation ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
The Relationship

The present paper investigates the relationship between dislocation and differential object marking in some Romance languages. As in many languages that have a DOM system, it is usually also assumed that in Romance languages the phenomenon is regulated by the semantic features of the referents, such as animacy, definiteness, and specificity. In the languages under investigation, though, these features cannot explain the distribution and the emergence of DOM. After discussing the main theoretical approaches to the phenomenon, I will analyse DOM in four Romance languages. I will argue that DOM emerges in pragmatically and semantically marked contexts, namely with personal pronouns in dislocations. I will then show that in these languages the use of the DOM system is mainly motivated by the need to signal the markedness of these direct objects as a consequence of being used in (mainly left) dislocation as topics (cf. English “As for him, we didn’t see him”). Finally, the examination of comparative data from Persian and Amazonian languages lends further support to the advocated approach in terms of information structure

scholarly journals Language-Specific Transitivities in Contact: The Case of Coptic

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Eitan Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
P Domain ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Object Indexing

This paper sketches the integration of Greek-origin loan verbs into the valency and transitivity patterns of Coptic (Afroasiatic, Egypt), arguing that transitivities are language-specific descriptive categories, and the comparison of donor-language transitivity with target-language transitivity reveals fine-grained degrees of loan-verb integration. Based on a comparison of Coptic Transitivity and Greek Transitivity, it is shown that Greek-origin loanwords are only partially integrated into the transitivity patterns of Coptic. Specifically, while Greek-origin loan verbs have the same coding properties as native verbs in terms of the A domain, i.e., Differential Subject Marking (dsm), they differ in important respects in terms of the P domain, i.e., Differential Object Marking (dom) and Differential Object Indexing (doi). A main result of this study is that language contact – specifically, massive lexical borrowing – can induce significant transitivity splits in a language’s lexicon and grammar. Furthermore, the findings of this study cast doubt on the usefulness of an overarching cross-linguistic category of transitivity.

scholarly journals Asimetrías gramaticales asociadas a la animacidad en la lengua vasca: una perspectiva tipológica / Animacy-based grammatical asymmetries in Basque: a typological perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iván Igartua ◽  
Ekaitz Santazilia
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
The Other ◽  
Case Assignment ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
The One

This study provides a typological analysis of two phenomena related to case-marking in Basque. In both of them, animacy —or the distinction between what is animate and what is not— turns out to be determinant: we discuss case assignment to direct objects, on the one hand, and marking of locative cases, on the other hand. We have compared the two phenomena with diverse typological parallels in order to account for the variety of possible morphological strategies and identify particular conditions and restrictions. Furthermore, we have argued that differential object marking in Basque is a recent phenomenon, induced by language contact, whereas differential locative marking has an intralinguistic nature. Finally, we have defended that the role of animacy in both types of differential marking is different: in the first example it conditions case assignment and in the second it operates as a grammatical gender.

Differential nominal marking in Circassian

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-751 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Arkadiev ◽  
Yakov G. Testelets
Keyword(s):  
Structural Model ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Case Alternation ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Syntactic Position ◽  
Object Marking

Abstract In this paper we describe a peculiar pattern of case alternation from the polysynthetic Circassian (West Caucasian) languages, where specificity-driven differential marking of noun phrases is attested in all syntactic positions and with the absolutive and the oblique cases alike. We call this phenomenon differential nominal marking (DNM). We show that the presenсe resp. absenсe of overt case marking in Circassian fits in the two-level (DP vs. NP) structural model for nominal constructions and is in some ways similar to the phenomenon of pseudo-incorporation described for various languages with differential object marking. For instance, unmarked nominals in Circassian show number-neutrality and scope inertness with respect to negation and quantifiers. However, DNM in Circassian crucially differs from all known instances of pseudo-incorporation or case alternation in that it is not restricted to any particular syntactic position. We argue that this feature of the Circassian DNM calls all the existing approaches (both functionalist and generative) to the phenomenon of differential case marking in question.

Syntactic Change in Contact: Romance

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta D'Alessandro
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
Syntactic Change ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Selection Of

Language change as a result of language contact is studied in many different ways using a number of different methodologies. This article provides an overview of the main approaches to syntactic change in contact (CIC), focusing on the Romance language group. Romance languages are widely documented both synchronically and diachronically. They have been in extensive contact with other language families both in bilingual contexts and in creolization contexts. Furthermore, they present great microvariation. They are therefore ideal to tackle language change in contact. Given the breadth of studies targeting Romance languages in contact, only a selection of facts is considered here, namely pro-drop, differential object marking (DOM), and deixis. The article shows that microcontact, i.e., contact between minimally different grammars, is a necessary dimension to be considered within contact studies, as it provides insights that are often radically different from those provided by the observation of contact between maximally different languages. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Morpho-syntactic Variation in Romance v: A Micro-parametric Approach

Probus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-437
Author(s):  
Ángel J. Gallego
Keyword(s):  
Romance Languages ◽  
Parametric Approach ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
University Of Leiden ◽  
Parametric Variation ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Auxiliary Selection ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Syntactic Properties

AbstractThis paper discusses a series of morpho-syntactic properties of Romance languages that have the functional projection vP as its locus, showing a continuum that goes from strongly configurational Romance languages to partially configurational Romance languages. It is argued that v-related phenomena like Differential Object Marking (DOM), participial agreement, oblique clitics, auxiliary selection, and others align in a systematic way when it comes to inflectional properties that involve Case-agreement properties. In order to account for the facts, I argue for a micro-parametric approach whereby v can be associated with an additional projection subject to variation (cf. D’Alessandro, Merging Probes. A typology of person splits and person-driven differential object marking. Ms., University of Leiden, 2012; Microvariation and syntactic theory. What dialects tell us about language. Invited talk given at the workshop The Syntactic Variation of Catalan and Spanish Dialects, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, June 26–28, 2013; Ordóñez, Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan. In Sergio Baauw, Frank AC Drijkoningen & Manuela Pinto (eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2005: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005, 259–280. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007). I label such projection “X,” arguing that its feature content and position varies across Romance. More generally, the present paper aims at contributing to our understanding of parametric variation of closely related languages by exploiting the intuition, embodied in the so-called Borer-Chomsky Conjecture, that linguistic variation resides in the functional inventory of the lexicon.

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