Differential object marking and topicality

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Balearic Catalan. While definiteness and animacy can explain the distribution of DOM in other varieties of Catalan, in Balearic, the split between marked and non-marked objects is not dependent on inherent or referential properties of the object noun phrases, but determined by topicality. A preposition is consistently used to mark a subset of topical objects, namely those occurring in clitic left-and right-dislocation structures, which correspond to two kinds of hearer-known topics: shifting topics and continuing topics. The preposition does not occur, however, with hanging topics, which introduce discourse-new topical entities. In this way, a correlation can be found between formal properties and well-motivated discourse functions that explains the distribution of DOM in Balearic. Similar patterns can be found in other Romance varieties as well, thus suggesting that topicality is relevant to account for both intra-and interlinguistic variation in DOM.

Objects and Information Structure

“…In Old Catalan (the period from the Middle Ages to the 19th century) a was attested in more contexts than those accepted by current standards: it was found on pronominals, proper nouns and human objects, although in all of these functions it was optional and correlated with topicality. This is still observed in some varieties of the language: in Balearic Catalan casemarking appears on pronominal objects and (a subset of) lexical topical objects (Escandell-Vidal 2009). But in other dialects of modern Catalan, object marking became more restricted.…”

“…In Central Catalan, the colloquial variety spoken in Barcelona and adjacent areas, DOM is based on humanness/animacy (Naess 2004). In modern Standard Catalan (the literary variety created by the normalisation process that took place at the beginning of the 20th century) only pronominal objects take the preposition a, and in this function it is obligatory (Escandell-Vidal 2009, Aissen 2003a. This is independent of information structure requirements, as the referential status of the object unambiguously determines its marking.…”

“…Aissen (2003b) andEscandell-Vidal (2009) show that topicality-based DOM was present in Medieval Spanish. The patterns of DOM in modern Spanish have been extensively discussed in the literature, but are rather elusive, and contradictory evidence is cited in available sources; moreover, conditions on marking differ across the dialects of Spanish.…”

On Convergence, Ongoing Language Change, and Crosslinguistic Influence in Direct Object Expression in Catalan–Spanish Bilingualism

“…This is not the case, as "Standard" or "Normative" Catalan is an ideal and unmarked variety, geographically speaking, created to unify and standardize the language, and serves as a reference model for the media, school, and administrative contexts. It was initially proposed by Fabra and seconded by the Institut d'Estudis Catalan (IEC) at the beginning of the XXth century (Segarra 1987 This preposition also appears in Catalan topicalized animate objects, in clitic left or right dislocations, which is a recommended use of DOM by Catalan grammarians, such as Solà (1994) and Ruaix i Vinyet (1994) This preposition is more widespread in Balearic Catalan (Escandell-Vidal 2009), which has been present since the XVII century and is used also in non-animate contexts:…”

From topic to object: Grammaticalization of differential object marking in Romanian

“…Iemmolo (2010) argues that in early Romance data, little evidence can be found that secondary topics are the triggers of DOM. Instead, he sees left-dislocation (see also Escandell-Vidal 2009) as the prime type of example that leads to early DOM. Indeed, in left dislocation constructions one can argue that the grammatical status of the left-dislocated individual needsat least in some casesdisambiguation.…”