Differential Object Marking, Case and Agreement

Abstract

<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In this paper, we present empirical evidence showing </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">that</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> Differential Object Marking (DOM)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>in Spanish is determined by structural conditions related to Case and agreement. We also argue that semantic concepts </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">such as specificity, definiteness, animacy, or topicality, tightly connected to the presence or absence of <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-variant: small-caps;">A</span>, </em></span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">must be parasitic on the syntactic configurations where DOM is licensed.</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: red; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> presence of the particle<em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> A</em> preceding clitic-doubled </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: windowtext; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">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</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> arguments, which <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>are analyzed as the consequence of a competition between two arguments for a single target. <br /></span>

Non Accusative Objects

“…Concerning the general semantic properties of Differentially Marked animate objects in Spanish, and some qualifications, see Leonetti (2008), Rodríguez Mondoñedo (2007, Zdrojewski (2008), and references therein among others. For arguments that the mechanisms involved in dative clitic constructions are the same as DOM see Ormazabal and Romero (2013b) and references there. 2.…”

“…In Spanish, the list of objects that move to that position is slightly larger than in English, including animate and specific direct objects, pronouns and ECM subjects, both animate and inanimate (7), among others (Ormazabal and Romero 2013b). (7) a. Hizo *(a) la lavadora funcionar.…”

“…In previous work (Ormazabal and Romero 2007, 2013a, 2013b we have argued that some objects do not require any formal licensing -they do not enter into an agreement relation or receive Case-, while others must establish a formal relation with the verb. The kind of objects that belong to one group or the other is not arbitrary, but it is parametrically determined.…”

“…The kind of objects that belong to one group or the other is not arbitrary, but it is parametrically determined. In Ormazabal and Romero (2013b), we argue that Differential Object Marking (DOM) is an overt manifestation of this split. In Spanish, animate and specific direct objects, indirect objects, and raisedto-object subjects of embedded clauses, among other DPs, must establish a formal relation with the verb, and, as a morphological manifestation of that relation, they end up differentially object marked.…”

Differential objects and other structural objects

“…1a, b) a In recent minimalist accounts adpositional differential marking of this type is generally understood as signalling a difference between categories that must undergo licensing (proper names, pronouns, specific definites, etc.) and categories that do not/cannot do so (Lochbihler 2012, López 2012, Ormazabal and Romero 2013, Wiltschko 2014, Levin 2017. Nominals that are subject to licensing have an abstract requirement and must enter into a (phi-) relationship with functional heads in the clausal spine (v, T, C, etc.).…”