Search

The present paper explores Differential Object Marking in a variety of Asturian (Western Iberian Romance) spoken in western Asturias (northwestern Spain). This ancestral form of speech stands out from Central Asturian and especially from Standard Spanish. For a number of reasons, ranging from profound changes in pronunciation, vocabulary, morphology and information structure to slight but very relevant effects on syntax. The main goal of this study is to examine the special marking of direct objects in order to find out what triggers the distribution of Differential Object Marking in this variety. To this aim, this paper will examine, from a variationist perspective, the influence of a number of semantic and discourse-pragmatic parameters on the marking of direct objects in this Western Asturian language as well as in Standard Spanish 1 and Central Asturian (which is generally considered the normative variety of Asturian). The results obtained from this comparison will allow us to outline the differences between these three varieties in terms of object marking, shedding more light on the origin and function of Differential Object Marking in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide an explanation of the emergence of DOM in peripheral Macedonian dialects through a reevaluation of the contact hypothesis. The southern and south-western dialects in the contact zones with Greek and Aromanian use a dative-based pattern to mark specific, predominantly human and animate referents. However, the contact hypothesis cannot fully explain the origin of DOM in the southernmost dialects because it overlooks the wider interlingual context within which this change occurred. Relying on the analysis of the examples from the oldest sources with DOM, the author argues in favor of a multifactorial explanation of its origin: contact obscured the case marking functions of clitics and provided an analytic direct object pattern. The introduction of na -marking on direct objects satisfied both the semantic and pragmatic requirements of a successful message by discriminating between the syntactic functions and discourse prominence of the object participant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referential expressions are used to introduce and continue reference to entities with particular referential properties, but also with particular discourse properties. In this paper we investigate the referential and discourse properties of pe-marked indefinite direct objects in Romanian, which are an instance of Diff erential Object Marking (DOM). Pe-marking is generally obligatory for definite noun phrases but optional for indefinite ones. The optionality of pe marking with indefinite descriptions constitutes the focus of the present article. We will show that, on the one hand, pe with indefinite descriptions allows the realization of referential properties such as specific or wide scope readings, but that on the other hand, pe also signals discourse prominence, in particular in such contexts where referential properties are neutralized. We assume three parameters for discourse prominence, namely referential persistence, the topic-shift potential and the type of anaphoric referring expressions. We used these three parameters in a web-based story continuation experiment. The findings of the experiment revealed several interesting patterns: (i) that pe -marked direct objects are referentially more persistent than their unmarked counterparts, (ii) that pe -marked direct objects show a systematic preference to become topics two or three sentences after being introduced in the discourse, and (iii) that (modified) definite NPs were chosen to refer back to the referent of the marked as well as to the referent of the unmarked direct object. On the basis of the first two parameters we conclude that the relevant discourse contribution of pe is to signal to the hearer that subsequent information about that referent will follow, whereas the third parameter indicates that the referent of the pe -marked indefinite is not necessarily associated with a high level of activation. The general findings of the experiment support Kehler et al.'s (2008) intuition to differentiate between referential persistence and the activation level of the referent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the close relation between the verb (V) and its direct object (DO) in Greek ditransitive structures, bringing together a formal analysis of the inherent nature of this special bond and a performance motivated treatment of factors determining variation in linearisation, i.e. the effects of performance principles on the permutation of the original order of arguments. Thus, first, by means of lexico-syntactic criteria, we propose that Greek –a relatively free word order language– exhibits the asymmetry between the DO and the IO which has also been observed in other languages (e.g. English, Icelandic, and Mainland Scandinavian languages). On the basis of such criteria, we conclude that in the underlying structure of both the PP Object Construction (PPOC) and the Double Object Construction (DOC), the DO is a sister to V. This structural relationship, represented in the single tree diagram we propose for the two constructions, reveals the V-DO special affinity. Second, we investigate the factors involved in the alternation from the basic to the derived orders both in the PPOC and the DOC. Thus, we suggest that the derivation of the orders V-NPacc-PP and V-NPacc-NPgen from V-PP-NPacc and V-NPgen-NPacc, respectively, is motivated by a number of largely interrelated factors (e.g. information focus, internal complexity, and syntactic weight), which may function either individually or compositionally. Finally, it is observed that the insights about the special affinity between the V and its DO expressed in our formal account of ditransitive orders are also captured in Lascaratou’s (1994) performance principles motivated analysis of a small corpus of Greek ditransitive constructions, in terms of the strong preference of the DO to be linearised immediately after the verb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims at further investigating the relative degree of flexibility of constituent order in Greek, which has been classified as a free word order language (Tzartzanos 1946, 1963; Greenberg 1963; Philippaki-Warburton 1982, 1985, 1987; Lascaratou 1984, 1989, 1994, among others). In this study we present additional evidence in support of the view expressed in Lascaratou (1989, 1994, 1999) that, though very flexible, Greek word order is not completely free, but rather it is the result of tension between competing forces determining linear arrangements. Focusing on the analysis of various VP structures drawn from the Hellenic National Corpus (HNC)", we observe that no single (syntactic and/or lexical/semantic) factor appears to override the others in a salient manner, the relative strength of each individual factor not always being clearly and reliably measurable. In particular, it seems that constituent length does not constitute a more important factor than the syntactic and/or lexical/semantic relations holding between elements in the Greek VP. What is more, with respect to the concept of "adjacency" put forward by Hawkins (2001, 2004) to interpret the preference for certain linearization patterns vs. others, we propose that constituent length essentially operates in a substantially different way and direction than syntactic and/or lexical/semantic dependency relations. More specifically, while-for parsing efficiency-constituent length may often be responsible for the postposition of heavy constituents thus resulting in the disruption of adjacency by separating elements which "belong together", syntactic and/or lexical/semantic relations, on the other hand, intrinsically motivate the adjacency of elements which "belong together", thus resisting any rearrangement that would bring them apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]