Differential Object Marking in Spanish: state of the art

Antonio Fábregas

doi:10.7557/1.2.2.2603

Abstract

<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>

Highlights

Differential object marking: what it is Probably the most debated issue related to the grammar of accusatives and datives in Spanish is the phenomenon of Differential Object Marking (DOM), which is illustrated in the contrast between (1a) and (1b).1 (1) a
This section will discuss Bossong’s definition of DOM in order to see why Spanish direct object marking has been considered part of the phenomenon and, in order to discuss what other cases of alternation could potentially fall within the definition. §2 will discuss in detail the different factors that influence DOM in Spanish. §3 will present a set of morphosyntactic phenomena that at one point or another have been claimed to connect somehow to DOM in Spanish. §4 goes through some recent analyses, §5 considers possible extensions of DOM in Spanish grammar and §6 summarises the aspects where there seems to be consensus about how Spanish DOM works, and highlights some areas which are under debate or in need of further empirical research
Whatever underlies the contrast between a-marking and its absence must imply syntactic and / or semantic differences (b) An a-marked direct object shares substantial properties with dative arguments, either because of its position, because of its agreement or because of a semantic similarity to recipients (c) There are semantic conditions that correlate with DOM; they have to do with animacy, definiteness and the argument and aspect structure of the verb (d) None of these semantic conditions is enough by itself to account for DOM (e) Some particular items have special properties that force or block DOM

Summary

PP el dos

P el uno a this analysis would produce more questions than answers: somehow, one needs to know why a verb like obedecer ‘obey’, but not one like merecer ‘deserve’(66) –which is another transitive stative, and one with a similar morphological shape– would require the structure in (44). The first three require a-marking as direct objects This is independent of whether one assumes a definite group of people nadie or alguien is evaluated with respect to or not; the marking is necessary even if the pronoun is non-specific in all possible interpretations. It does seem that a-marking correlates more generally with the repetitive reading, where the event happens several times during a time period This is a judgement that is shared by (77), (75a) and, for some speakers, (74a), and it is compatible with at least one interpretation of telicity: that the event has a definite end point, even if it is not necessarily followed by a result state.

Inés is knowing

NP clitic

IO α α

VP PP la chica

Conclusions