Abstract
In this paper, we present empirical evidence showing that Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish is determined by structural conditions related to Case and agreement. We also argue that semantic concepts such as specificity, definiteness, animacy, or topicality, tightly connected to the presence or absence of A, must be parasitic on the syntactic configurations where DOM is licensed. We also present some consequences of our analysis for the general theory of agreement. We argue that the same structural relation is involved in all cases of DOM, as well as in Dative Clitic Constructions, where the presence of the particle A preceding clitic-doubled datives is syntactically unified with DOM phenomena. The accusative/dative distinction traditionally attributed to the Spanish pronominal system does not correspond, in synchronic terms, to different case relations, but distinguishes between agreeing and non-agreeing arguments. Similarly, the distribution of DOM corresponds to a Case-checked/Caseless difference. We extend the analysis to account for well-known restrictions on the co-appearance of two DOM arguments, which are analyzed as the consequence of a competition between two arguments for a single target.
Highlights
The vast majority of the papers in the literature on the Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish focus on the semantic properties that determine the presence or absence of the marker
We show that DOM in Spanish is determined by structural conditions related to Case and agreement
We do not deny that semantic concepts such as specificity, definiteness, animacy, or topicality are tightly connected to the presence or absence of A, but we argue that they must be parasitic on the syntactic configurations where DOM is licensed
Summary
The vast majority of the papers in the literature on the Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish focus on the semantic properties that determine the presence or absence of the marker (see Fábregas 2013, this volume, for an overview, and references therein). B. *Les enviaron (a) Mateo/tu hijo a los doctores 3pl sent.3pl DOM Mateo/your son A the doctors ‘They sent the doctors Peter/your son’ This paradigm does not show overt verbal agreement with the animate DO, the restriction is reminiscent of the Person Case Constraint (PCC). Le llevé (a tu hijo) a casa 3sg.a brought.1s A your son to home ‘I brought your son home' In both cases, the ban on the presence of the marker A in the DO argument or the ungrammaticality of the clitic le in the verbal complex are triggered by the agreement relation of the dative argument with the verb, and a repair strategy is available that demotes the animate object and treats it as an agreementless inanimate object: the DOM marker disappears in all dialects and, in addition, the third person animate clitic le is substituted by lo(s)/la(s) in NPLD. They are active for further agreement relations in a higher projection, again supporting the one-to-one relation between DOM and Case
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