Abstract This article explores the relationship between affectedness and Differential Object Marking (DOM) of indefinite direct objects in Turkish Uzbek. We argue that distribution DOM two Turkic languages is determined by objects’ specificity animacy as nominal semantic properties, a verbal property associated with object. provide original empirical evidence from forced-choice studies investig...

In this study we investigate the impact of affectedness on the diachronic development of Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish. DOM in Spanish synchronically depends on (i) the referential features of the direct object, such as animacy and referentiality, and (ii) the semantics of the verb. Several studies have also shown that the diachronic development of DOM proceeds along the Animacy ...

This paper investigates an alternation found with definite noun phrases in direct object position in Romanian that represents a theoretical puzzle for current theories of Differential Object Marking or pe-marking (Dobrovie-Sorin 1994). When in direct object position and unmodified, definite noun phrases can be accompanied either by the differential object marker pe, or by the simple enclitic de...

Two strategies of case marking in natural languages are discussed. These are defined as two violable constraints whose effects are shown to converge in the case of differential object marking but diverge in the case of differential subject marking. The strength of the case bearing arguments will be shown to be of utmost importance for case marking as well as voice alternations. The strength of ...

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 ...

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...

Many authors have argued that there exists a relation between case morphology, on the one hand, and semantic interpretation, on the other. A recurrent pattern is that the presence of overt case corresponds with a strong interpretation, i.e., definite, specific, whereas the absence of case corresponds with a weak interpretation, i.e., indefinite, non-specific. In this paper we argue on the basis...

Romanian is a language which exhibits differential object marking (DOM) using the particle pe and (in most cases) a clitic pronoun (Niculescu 1965, Pan -Dindelegan 1997, von Heusinger & Onea 2008, Stark & Sora 2008). Direct object case marking is optional with human indefinite direct objects, as in (1), and almost obligatory with postverbal human definite direct objects, as reflected in the con...