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.

Integrating Linguistic Theory and Experimentation in L2 Acquisition: Learning of Spanish Differential Object Marking by Portuguese and English speakers

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Nediger ◽  
Acrisio Pires ◽  
Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Group A ◽  
Object Marking

AbstractThis paper focuses on consequences for linguistic theory of a set of experiments on the L2 acquisition of Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM), with three experimental groups: a native control group, a group of L2 learners whose L1 is English, and a group of L2 learners whose L1 is Brazilian Portuguese (BP). The results of the experiments shed light on two questions of theoretical import: (a) how best to characterize the syntax of Spanish DOM, and (b) whether BP should be classified as a DOM language. We argue that our results support López’s (2012, Indefinite objects: Scrambling, choice functions, and differential marking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) syntactic theory account of DOM over that of Torrego (1998, The dependencies of objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), in particular due to the more fine-grained distinctions between non-specific objects made by López (2012) compared to Torrego (1998). We also argue that although BP is a DOM language (as suggested by Schwenter 2014, Two kinds of differential object marking in Portuguese and Spanish. In Patricia Amaral & Ana Maria Carvalho (eds.), Portuguese-Spanish interfaces: Diachrony, synchrony, and contact, 237–260. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), our BP subjects do not show a clear acquisitional advantage over English speakers with regard to Spanish DOM, due to independent reasons that include the morphological realization of DOM in Spanish.

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 Differential object marking in Ibero-Romance languages: Explanatory models in domestic and Russian educational literature

Rhema ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
N. Pakhmutova
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Models ◽  
Explanatory Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Didactic Literature ◽  
Educational Literature ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Object Marking

Differential object marking / dom is the term for the phenomenon of distinguishing two classes of direct objects, one bearing a special marker, while the other lacking it. In modern linguistics, the marker licensing is partially or fully attributed to the features of a direct object: Animacy/Inanimacy and referential status. Russian didactic literature generally contains a reduced explanatory model of Spanish dom, based on the grammar of the Royal Spanish Academy. For Catalan, the explanatory model is complicated by the usus/norm split, the latter reducing the phenomenon’s scope. The paper focuses on the improvement of dom explanatory models for Spanish and Catalan.

Clitic doubling and differential object marking

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oana David
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Clitic Doubling ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Grammatical Construction ◽  
Semantics And Pragmatics ◽  
Object Marking

This work follows the progression of a grammatical construction that unifies the Romanian accusative preposition pe with a coreferential pronominal clitic, together forming the cd-pe construction. On the basis of historical texts, it is argued that these two grammatical phenomena evolved into a clause-level construction with a dedicated semantics and pragmatics in the modern language. A corpus analysis illustrates how cd-pe won out against a competitor pe-only construction that persisted until as recently as the early 20th century, and which is still retained in some dialects and registers. The broader scope is to refocus the discussion of clitic doubling on pragmatic motivators in light of diachronic constructionalization processes, and to reflect on the nature of similar clitic doubling phenomena evident in other Romance languages in terms of the entrenchment of language-specific constructionalization processes.

scholarly journals Differential Object Marking in Spanish: state of the art

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Fábregas
Keyword(s):  
Current Literature ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Internal Properties ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Syntactic Properties

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-right: 18.1pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-left: 1.0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">This state of the art tries to cover as much as possible about the properties, conditions and analyses of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish. Starting with some considerations about the boundaries of the phenomenon, it considers its morphological, semantic and syntactic properties &ndash;with respect both to the internal properties of the direct object and to the wider context in which it appears&ndash;. It also reviews the other morphosyntactic phenomena that have been claimed to correlate with DOM, and finally goes through a number of analysis in different theoretical traditions to highlight the points of agreement and debate in the current literature.</span></p>

The Syntactic Variation of Spanish Dialects

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Boundary Conditions ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Short Range ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Spanish Syntax ◽  
Object Marking ◽  
Spanish Dialects

This collective volume offers an up-to-date and comprehensive state-of-the-art presentation of the research that has been done in the syntactic variation of Spanish dialects, taking into account both European and American varieties. In so doing, this book seeks to set the boundary conditions for subsequent investigations on the different manifestations of Spanish syntax and its geographic contours, a very rich (though largely neglected) area of inquiry. Such investigations should ideally lead us not only to pin down the short-range microparameters of Spanish but also to explore its similarities with other languages (closely related or not) and, ultimately, to understand the variation margins that the faculty of language offers. The volume is divided into two parts, each of them dealing with varieties of Europe and America. Empirically, the different chapters cover a wide set of syntactic phenomena and constructions, such as agreement, clitics, doubling, expletives, word order, differential object marking, pro-drop, and more. All in all, this book represents not only an important contribution in the study of Spanish syntax, but also the beginning of a new wave of formal studies of dialectal syntax.

scholarly journals REFLEXÕES SOBRE A MARCAÇÃO MORFOLÓGICA DO OBJETO DIRETO POR A EM PORTUGUÊS BRASILEIRO | OBSERVATIONS ON THE MORPHOLOGICAL A-MARKING OF DIRECT OBJECTS IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

2017 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Sônia Cyrino
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
The Other ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Object Marking

<p>Como é sabido, o espanhol é uma língua românica que requer que certos objetos diretos (OD) sejam morfologicamente marcados por <em>a</em>, a chamada Marcação Diferencial do Objeto (DOM). Em outras línguas românicas, tais como o português europeu e brasileiro, por outro lado, objetos diretos animados não são geralmente marcados. Contudo, vários estudos diacrônicos mostram que a marcação morfológica por <em>a </em>do objeto direto era possível nos séculos XVI a XVIII em português, e houve um declínio nesse uso a partir dessa época. Interessantemente, no português brasileiro a marcação do objeto direto por <em>a </em>é ainda possível (ou opcional) em alguns contextos restritos. Neste trabalho, observo o espanhol e o português brasileiro para mostrar que essas línguas são diferentes com relação à marcação por <em>a</em> do objeto direto, mas semelhantes com relação ao fato de que objetos diretos animados são computados externamente ao vP. O trabalho pretende contribuir para a discussão dos efeitos da animacidade do objeto direto na sintaxe.</p><p><strong>Abstract: </strong>As is well-known, Spanish is a Romance language which requires that certain direct objects (DO) be morphologically marked by the preposition “<em>a”</em> (to), the so-called Differential Object Marking (DOM). In other Romance languages, such as European and Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, animate direct objects are not generally marked<em>. </em>However, several diachronic studies show that the morphological <em>a</em>-marking of the direct object was possible from the 16<sup>th</sup> to 18<sup>th</sup> centuries in Portuguese, and there was a decline of that use from then on. Interestingly, in Brazilian Portuguese, DO <em>a</em>-marking is still possible (or optional) in some restricted contexts. In this paper, I look at Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese to show that these languages are different with respect to the occurrence of the <em>a</em>-marking of the DO, but similar in relation to the fact that animate direct objects are moved to a position  above the vP. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the effects ofanimacy of direct objects in syntax.</p>

Differential Object Marking (DOM) and Clitic Subspecification in Catalonian Spanish

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Ordóñez ◽  
Francesc Roca
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Differential Object Marking ◽  
Object Clitics ◽  
Object Marking

In this chapter we propose an analysis for Differential Object Marking (DOM) constructions. We also suggest a particular use of the pronominal object clitic le (which we call differential clitic marking) in some dialects of Spanish. Our approach to DOM is based on the existence of syntactic variation in little v—in the sense that it cannot license a particular kind of DPs and in the analysis of the preposition a as a probe that licenses these DPs. We also consider that pronominal l-clitics are elements that do not encode animacy and that the object clitic le is a form not specified for gender used for masculine referents in colloquial Catalonian Spanish. This allows us to capture some correlations between DOM and some instances of leísmo (understood as a particular marking of object clitics, not as a case of dativization).

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.

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