Semantics of Differential Object Marking in Persian ∗

Differential Object Marking (DOM) is a prevalent phenomenon in the world’s languages in which the case marking of the object NP is determined by certain semantic factors. Notions such as “animacy”, “definiteness”, “specificity”, and “topicality” are often invoked to explain the semantic contribution of the case marker in languages with DOM. In this paper, I investigate the semantic contribution of the accusative marker rā in Persian. I propose that when rā appears on an NP object, it triggers an existential presupposition. In other words, a construction such as “book-rā” in Persian, presupposes that the set denoted by “book” is non-empty (∃x book(x )). This explains why rā appears on all definite NPs. Definite NPs carry both existential and uniqueness presuppositions. This proposal further predicts that an indefinite NP marked by rā carries an existential presup∗I would like to thank Paul Kiparsky, Cleo Condoravdi, Vera Gribanova, Eve Clark, Chris Potts, Dan Lassiter, and James Collins for their helpful comments on the analysis and ideas in this paper. I am also grateful to Fahimeh Jasbi, Elham Jasbi, Tahereh Hajebrahimi, Amir Azad, Taha Hajitarkhani, Amireza Saheb, Morteza Farazmand, Mohammad Reza Shahidi, and Ata Esmaili for their patience with my numerous acceptability questions.