Differential object marking and Scales: insights from diachrony

Monica Alexandrina Irimia,Anna Pineda

doi:10.3765/plsa.v4i1.4561

Abstract

This paper addresses a generally ignored counterexample to the Scales, comparing Old Catalan and Old Romanian on the one hand to Old Spanish on the other hand. Contrary to widely assumed marking hierarchies, Old Catalan/Old Romanian 3rd person pronouns show differential object marking, to the exclusion of or to a higher degree than 1st/2nd persons. We propose these patterns can be straightforwardly derived once we pin down micro-parameters in the composition of Romance DPs and the consequences various types of perspectival/sentience features have on the syntactic licensing of arguments.

Highlights

Differential object marking (DOM) is a split in the morpho-syntactic marking of objects based on animacy, specificity, topicality, etc. (Comrie 1989, Bossong 1991, Aissen 2003, López 2012, a.o.)
In (5) we provide some examples from the chivalry novel Curial e Güelfa, where several 3rd person pronouns show DOM (5)a-b, whereas 1st and 2nd pronouns tend to lack it (5)c-d: (5) Old Catalan - Curial e Güelfa, 15th c
An analysis in terms of accusative case doesn’t work. von Heusinger and Onea (2008, p.79) have preliminarily proposed that the puzzling presence of DOM with 3rd person could have a straightforward explanation if we look at the case morphology shown by the pronouns in (Old) Romanian

Summary

Introduction

Differential object marking (DOM) is a split in the morpho-syntactic marking of objects based on animacy, specificity, topicality, etc. (Comrie 1989, Bossong 1991, Aissen 2003, López 2012, a.o.). We examine the hypothesis put for forward by von Heusinger and Onea (2008), who connected the obligatoriness of DOM with 3rd person to the need of signaling accusative case in the absence of dedicated inflectional morphology for the accusative case. We show that this assumption is problematic from several points of view. Von Heusinger and Onea (2008, p.79) have preliminarily proposed that the puzzling presence of DOM with 3rd person could have a straightforward explanation if we look at the case morphology shown by the pronouns in (Old) Romanian.

DAT mine mie noi tine ţie voi el lui ei

DOM objects

ADDITIONAL α

Findings

OLD ROMANIAN