DIFFERENTIAL OBJECT MARKING IN INANIMATE OBJECTS IN SPANISH.

The aim of this paper is to explain the differential object marking (DOM) of inanimate objects in Spanish. Generally, animate objects in Spanish are marked with an A morpheme; however, it is possible for the A-marker to appear also with inanimate objects in specific circumstances. In this article, I defend the idea that the marking of inanimate objects in Spanish responds to the interaction of the feature of existence presupposition of the verb with the feature that dominates the object's specificity. The analysis will be done using mainly two theoretical tools: the feature geometry of Harley & Ritter (2002) and Chomsky's (2013, 2015) labeling theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]