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Differential object marking

May 04, 2023

In linguistics, differential object marking (DOM) is the phenomenon in which certain objects of verbs are marked to reflect various syntactic and semantic factors. One form of the more general phenomenon of differential argument marking, DOM is present in more than 300 languages. The term "differential object marking" was coined by Georg Bossong.[1][2]

Overview

In languages where DOM is active, direct objects are partitioned into two classes; in most such DOM languages, only the members of one of the classes receive a marker (the others being unmarked), but in some languages, like Finnish, objects of both classes are marked (with different endings). In non-DOM languages, by contrast, direct objects are uniformly marked in a single way. For instance, Quechua marks all direct objects with the direct-object ending -ta, whereas English has no overt markers on any direct objects.

A common basis for differentially marking direct objects is the notion of "prominence," which reflects two properties that can be understood along decreasing scales:[3]

Animacy: human > animate > inanimate
Definiteness (or specificity): personal pronoun > proper name > definite NP > indefinite specific NP > non-specific NP

These same scales are also reflected in Silverstein’s person/animacy hierarchy.[4] Besides animacy and definiteness, another property that triggers differential object marking in some languages is the way the action of a verb affects the direct object.[5] Some languages mark for only one of these properties (e.g., animacy), while others' markings reflect combinations of them. Typically, direct objects that are more prominent are more likely to be overtly case-marked.[3]

 
Triggers of differential object marking

Examples

Spanish

A well-known DOM language is Spanish. In Spanish, direct objects that are both human and specific require a special marker (the preposition a "to"):[6][7][8][9]

  • Pedro besó a Lucía. = Peter kissed Lucy. (Literally, "Peter kissed to Lucy")

Inanimate direct objects do not usually allow this marker, even if they are specific:

  • Pedro besó el retrato. = Peter kissed the picture.

Yet, some animate objects that are specific can optionally bear the marker:

  • Pedro vio (a) la gata. = Peter saw (to) the cat-FEM

Some dialectal variation has been attested regarding the use of DOM in different varieties of Spanish. Balasch finds that, while the linguistic factors conditioning the use of DOM remain the same in both Mérida (Venezuela) Spanish and Madrid Spanish, DOM appears much more often in Madrid data.[10] Furthermore, Tippets and Schwenter find that a factor known as relative animacy (the animacy of the direct object relative to that of the subject) is quite important in the implementation of DOM in varieties of Spanish such as Buenos Aires and Madrid Spanish. [11]

Sakha

In languages like Turkish, Kazakh language and Sakha, more "prominent" objects take an overt accusative marker while nonspecific ones do not. Lack of an overt case marker can restrict an object's distribution in the sentence.[12] Those orders are permitted in Sakha if accusative case is overtly expressed:

Sakha

a. кини яблоко-ну сии-р-∅
a. kini yabloko-nu sii-r-∅[12]
NOM apple-ACC eat
’She/he is eating the/a (particular) apple.’
b. яблоко-ну кини сии-р-∅
b. yabloko-nu kini sii-r-∅
c. кини сии-р-∅ яблоко-ну
c. kini sii-r-∅ yabloko-nu
d. кини яблоко-ну бүгүн сии-р-∅
d. kini yabloko-nu bügün sii-r-∅
NOM apple-ACC today eat
‘She/he is eating the/a (particular) apple today.’

However, when the object is nonspecific, alternative ordering is not permitted: Sakha

a. кини яблоко сии-р-∅
a. kini yabloko sii-r-∅[12]
NOM apple eat
’She/he is eating some apple or other.’
b. яблоко кини сии-р-∅
b. yabloko kini sii-r-∅
c. кини сии-р-∅ яблоко
c. kini sii-r-∅ yabloko
d. кини яблоко бүгүн сии-р-∅
d. kini yabloko bügün sii-r-∅
NOM apple today eat
‘She/he is eating some apple or other today.’

When the direct object is low on the definiteness scale, it must directly precede the verb, whereas alternative ordering is possible when the direct object is higher in prominence.

Other languages

Other examples of languages with differential object marking are Persian, Turkish, Copala Triqui, Khasi, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Kham, Hebrew and Amharic. A number of languages in Mozambique also show differential object marking.[13] In Turkish, the direct object can either have accusative case or have no (visible) case at all; when it has accusative case, it is interpreted as specific (e.g. one specific person), and otherwise it is interpreted as nonspecific (e.g. some person).[14] Most modern Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi and Marathi also exhibit something similar, where direct objects must be explicitly marked as accusative in the case of definite or often animate participants.[15]: 3 [16]: 327–334  Due to the accusative and dative markers being identical for many Indo-Aryan languages, some analyses assert that the accusative case is always unmarked (like the nominative), and instead the dative markers are identical to those for differential object marking.[17]: 5–12 

Other DOM languages include some Aromanian dialects, precisely those of Krania, in Thessaly, Greece; and in the western dialects of Ohrid, in North Macedonia. Romanian also has DOM through the marker pe, these two and Spanish being the only Romance languages with this linguistic feature.[18]

In addition to spoken languages, DOM is also found in some sign languages. In German Sign Language, for example, animate direct objects receive an additional marker while inanimate direct objects do not.[5]

References

  1. ^ Bossong 1985.
  2. ^ Bossong 1991.
  3. ^ a b Aissen 2003
  4. ^ Silverstein, Michael. (1976) "Hierarchy of Features and Ergativity". In R. M. W. Dixon (ed.) Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages.
  5. ^ a b Bross, Fabian (2020). "Object marking in German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache): Differential object marking and object shift in the visual modality". Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics. 5 (1): 63. doi:10.5334/gjgl.992. S2CID 220333386.
  6. ^ Fernández Ramírez, Salvador. 1986. Gramática española 4. El verbo y la oración. Madrid: Arco/Libros.
  7. ^ Pensado 1995.
  8. ^ Rodríguez-Mondoñedo 2007.
  9. ^ Torrego 1998.
  10. ^ Balasch, Sonia (December 22, 2016). "Factors Determining Spanish Differential Object Marking within Its Domain of Variation" (PDF). Factors Determining Spanish Differential Object Marking within Its Domain of Variation. University of New Mexico. Retrieved December 22, 2016.
  11. ^ Schwenter, Tippets, Scott, Ian (December 22, 2016). "Relative Animacy and Differential Object Marking in Spanish" (PDF). ling.upenn.edu. The Ohio State University.
  12. ^ a b c van de Visser, Mario. (2006) "The Marked Status of Ergativity". PhD. Dissertation.
  13. ^ Ngunga, Armindo Saúl Atelela, Fábio Bonfim Duarte, and Quesler Fagundes Camargos. 2016. Differential object marking in Mozambican languages. Diversity in African languages pp. 333ff. Doris L. Payne, Sara Pacchiarotti, Mokaya Bosire, eds. Language Science Press.
  14. ^ See Jaklin Kornfilt and Klaus von Heusinger (2005). The case of the direct object in Turkish. Semantics, syntax and morphology. In Turkic Languages 9, 3–44
  15. ^ Beck, Christin; Butt, Miriam; Deo, Ashwini (2021). "Tracking Case Innovation: A Perspective from Marathi" (PDF). Retrieved 2022-12-10.
  16. ^ de Hoop, Helen; Narasimhan, Bhuvana (2005-01-01). "Differential Case-Marking in Hindi". In Amberber, Mengistu; De Hoop, Helen (eds.). Chapter 12 - Differential Case-Marking in Hindi. Competition and Variation in Natural Languages. Perspectives on Cognitive Science. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 321–345. doi:10.1016/b978-008044651-6/50015-x. hdl:11858/00-001M-0000-0013-1748-5. ISBN 9780080446516. Retrieved 2022-12-10.
  17. ^ Bobaljik, Jonathan David (March 2017). "In defense of a universal: A brief note on case, agreement, and differential object marking" (PDF). Retrieved 2022-12-10.
  18. ^ Bužarovska, Eleni (2020). "The contact hypothesis revised: DOM in the South Slavic periphery". Journal of Language Contact. 13 (1): 57–95. doi:10.1163/19552629-bja10003. S2CID 225734803.

Bibliography

Although the phenomenon has been known for a very long time, it was considered a minor quirk in a few languages until the 1980s, when Bossong presented evidence of DOM in more than 300 languages. Since then, it has become an important topic of research in grammatical theory. This is a selection of works that deal with the phenomenon:

  • Aissen, Judith (2003). "Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy". Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. 21 (3): 435–483. doi:10.1023/A:1024109008573. ISSN 0167-806X. JSTOR 4048040. S2CID 170258629.
  • Bittner, Maria (1994). Case, scope, and binding. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 9780792326496.
  • Bossong, Georg (1983–1984). "Animacy and Markedness in Universal Grammar" (PDF). Glossologia: 7–20.
  • Bossong, Georg (16 April 1985). "Empirische Universalienforschung: Differentielle Objektmarkierung in den neuiranischen Sprachen". Ars Linguistica (in German). doi:10.5281/zenodo.4697660.
  • Bossong, Georg (1991). "Differential Object Marking in Romance and Beyond". Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. 69: 143. doi:10.1075/cilt.69.14bos. ISBN 978-90-272-3566-4.
  • Bossong, Georg (1997). "Le Marquage Différentiel de L'Objet dans les Langues d'Europe". In Feuillet, Jack (ed.). Actance et Valence dans les Langues d'Europe (in French). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 193–258. ISBN 9783110157499.
  • Brugè, Laura; Brugger, Gerhard (1996). "On the accusative a in Spanish". Probus. 8 (1): 1–52. doi:10.1515/prbs.1996.8.1.1. S2CID 170516795.
  • Dalrymple, Mary; Nikolaeva, Irina (2011). Objects and Information Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521199858.
  • Heusinger, Klaus von; Kaiser, Georg A. (2003). "Animacy, Specificity, and Definiteness in Spanish". Proceedings of the Workshop Semantic and Syntactic Aspects of Specificity in Romance Languages. Konstanz: Universität Konstanz: 41–65.
  • Heusinger, Klaus von; Kaiser, Georg A. (2005). Heusinger, Klaus von; Kaiser, Georg A.; Stark, Elisabeth (eds.). "The evolution of differential object marking in Spanish". Proceedings of the Workshop "Specificity and the Evolution / Emergence of Nominal Determination Systems in Romance". Konstanz: Universität Konstanz: 33–70.
  • Iemmolo, Giorgio (20 August 2010). "Topicality and differential object marking: Evidence from Romance and beyond" (PDF). Studies in Language. 34 (2): 239–272. doi:10.1075/sl.34.2.01iem. S2CID 51471322.
  • Kwon, Song-Nim; Zribi-Hertz, Anne (2008). "Differential Function Marking, Case, and Information Structure: Evidence from Korean". Language. 84 (2): 258–299. doi:10.1353/lan.0.0005. S2CID 121422063.
  • Leonetti, Manuel (2004). (PDF). Catalan Journal of Linguistics. 3: 75–114. doi:10.5565/rev/catjl.106. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-08-09.
  • Öztürk, Balkız. (2005). Case, referentiality, and phrase structure. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. ISBN 9781588116451.
  • Pensado, Carmen, ed. (1995). El complemento directo preposicional. Gramática del Español (in Spanish). Madrid: Visor Libros. ISBN 978-84-7522-456-5.
  • Rodríguez-Mondoñedo, Miguel (2007). (PDF) (PhD). University of Connecticut. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-24.
  • Swart, P.J.F. de (2007). Cross-linguistic Variation in Object Marking (PhD). University of Nijmegen. ISBN 978-90-78328-39-1.
  • Torrego, Esther (1998). The dependencies of objects. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs. Vol. 34. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262201124.
  • Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena; Seržant, Ilja A. (April 24, 2018). "Differential argument marking: Patterns of variation". In Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena; Seržant, Ilja A. (eds.). Diachrony of differential argument marking. Berlin: Language Science Press. pp. 1–40. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1228243. ISBN 978-3-96110-085-9.

May 04, 2023
differential, object, marking, linguistics, differential, object, marking, phenomenon, which, certain, objects, verbs, marked, reflect, various, syntactic, semantic, factors, form, more, general, phenomenon, differential, argument, marking, present, more, than. In linguistics differential object marking DOM is the phenomenon in which certain objects of verbs are marked to reflect various syntactic and semantic factors One form of the more general phenomenon of differential argument marking DOM is present in more than 300 languages The term differential object marking was coined by Georg Bossong 1 2 Contents 1 Overview 2 Examples 2 1 Spanish 2 2 Sakha 2 3 Other languages 3 References 4 BibliographyOverview EditIn languages where DOM is active direct objects are partitioned into two classes in most such DOM languages only the members of one of the classes receive a marker the others being unmarked but in some languages like Finnish objects of both classes are marked with different endings In non DOM languages by contrast direct objects are uniformly marked in a single way For instance Quechua marks all direct objects with the direct object ending ta whereas English has no overt markers on any direct objects A common basis for differentially marking direct objects is the notion of prominence which reflects two properties that can be understood along decreasing scales 3 Animacy human gt animate gt inanimate Definiteness or specificity personal pronoun gt proper name gt definite NP gt indefinite specific NP gt non specific NPThese same scales are also reflected in Silverstein s person animacy hierarchy 4 Besides animacy and definiteness another property that triggers differential object marking in some languages is the way the action of a verb affects the direct object 5 Some languages mark for only one of these properties e g animacy while others markings reflect combinations of them Typically direct objects that are more prominent are more likely to be overtly case marked 3 Triggers of differential object markingExamples EditSpanish Edit A well known DOM language is Spanish In Spanish direct objects that are both human and specific require a special marker the preposition a to 6 7 8 9 Pedro beso a Lucia Peter kissed Lucy Literally Peter kissed to Lucy Inanimate direct objects do not usually allow this marker even if they are specific Pedro beso el retrato Peter kissed the picture Yet some animate objects that are specific can optionally bear the marker Pedro vio a la gata Peter saw to the cat FEMSome dialectal variation has been attested regarding the use of DOM in different varieties of Spanish Balasch finds that while the linguistic factors conditioning the use of DOM remain the same in both Merida Venezuela Spanish and Madrid Spanish DOM appears much more often in Madrid data 10 Furthermore Tippets and Schwenter find that a factor known as relative animacy the animacy of the direct object relative to that of the subject is quite important in the implementation of DOM in varieties of Spanish such as Buenos Aires and Madrid Spanish 11 Sakha Edit In languages like Turkish Kazakh language and Sakha more prominent objects take an overt accusative marker while nonspecific ones do not Lack of an overt case marker can restrict an object s distribution in the sentence 12 Those orders are permitted in Sakha if accusative case is overtly expressed Sakha a kini yabloko nu sii r a kini yabloko nu sii r 12 NOM apple ACC eat She he is eating the a particular apple b yabloko nu kini sii r b yabloko nu kini sii r c kini sii r yabloko nu c kini sii r yabloko nud kini yabloko nu bүgүn sii r d kini yabloko nu bugun sii r NOM apple ACC today eat She he is eating the a particular apple today However when the object is nonspecific alternative ordering is not permitted Sakha a kini yabloko sii r a kini yabloko sii r 12 NOM apple eat She he is eating some apple or other b yabloko kini sii r b yabloko kini sii r c kini sii r yabloko c kini sii r yablokod kini yabloko bүgүn sii r d kini yabloko bugun sii r NOM apple today eat She he is eating some apple or other today When the direct object is low on the definiteness scale it must directly precede the verb whereas alternative ordering is possible when the direct object is higher in prominence Other languages Edit Other examples of languages with differential object marking are Persian Turkish Copala Triqui Khasi Tamil Malayalam Hindi Marathi Kham Hebrew and Amharic A number of languages in Mozambique also show differential object marking 13 In Turkish the direct object can either have accusative case or have no visible case at all when it has accusative case it is interpreted as specific e g one specific person and otherwise it is interpreted as nonspecific e g some person 14 Most modern Indo Aryan languages like Hindi and Marathi also exhibit something similar where direct objects must be explicitly marked as accusative in the case of definite or often animate participants 15 3 16 327 334 Due to the accusative and dative markers being identical for many Indo Aryan languages some analyses assert that the accusative case is always unmarked like the nominative and instead the dative markers are identical to those for differential object marking 17 5 12 Other DOM languages include some Aromanian dialects precisely those of Krania in Thessaly Greece and in the western dialects of Ohrid in North Macedonia Romanian also has DOM through the marker pe these two and Spanish being the only Romance languages with this linguistic feature 18 In addition to spoken languages DOM is also found in some sign languages In German Sign Language for example animate direct objects receive an additional marker while inanimate direct objects do not 5 References Edit Bossong 1985 Bossong 1991 a b Aissen 2003 Silverstein Michael 1976 Hierarchy of Features and Ergativity In R M W Dixon ed Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages a b Bross Fabian 2020 Object marking in German Sign Language Deutsche Gebardensprache Differential object marking and object shift in the visual modality Glossa A Journal of General Linguistics 5 1 63 doi 10 5334 gjgl 992 S2CID 220333386 Fernandez Ramirez Salvador 1986 Gramatica espanola 4 El verbo y la oracion Madrid Arco Libros Pensado 1995 Rodriguez Mondonedo 2007 Torrego 1998 Balasch Sonia December 22 2016 Factors Determining Spanish Differential Object Marking within Its Domain of Variation PDF Factors Determining Spanish Differential Object Marking within Its Domain of Variation University of New Mexico Retrieved December 22 2016 Schwenter Tippets Scott Ian December 22 2016 Relative Animacy and Differential Object Marking in Spanish PDF ling upenn edu The Ohio State University a b c van de Visser Mario 2006 The Marked Status of Ergativity PhD Dissertation Ngunga Armindo Saul Atelela Fabio Bonfim Duarte and Quesler Fagundes Camargos 2016 Differential object marking in Mozambican languages Diversity in African languages pp 333ff Doris L Payne Sara Pacchiarotti Mokaya Bosire eds Language Science Press See Jaklin Kornfilt and Klaus von Heusinger 2005 The case of the direct object in Turkish Semantics syntax and morphology In Turkic Languages 9 3 44 Beck Christin Butt Miriam Deo Ashwini 2021 Tracking Case Innovation A Perspective from Marathi PDF Retrieved 2022 12 10 de Hoop Helen Narasimhan Bhuvana 2005 01 01 Differential Case Marking in Hindi In Amberber Mengistu De Hoop Helen eds Chapter 12 Differential Case Marking in Hindi Competition and Variation in Natural Languages Perspectives on Cognitive Science Oxford Elsevier pp 321 345 doi 10 1016 b978 008044651 6 50015 x hdl 11858 00 001M 0000 0013 1748 5 ISBN 9780080446516 Retrieved 2022 12 10 Bobaljik Jonathan David March 2017 In defense of a universal A brief note on case agreement and differential object marking PDF Retrieved 2022 12 10 Buzarovska Eleni 2020 The contact hypothesis revised DOM in the South Slavic periphery Journal of Language Contact 13 1 57 95 doi 10 1163 19552629 bja10003 S2CID 225734803 Bibliography EditThis section s use of external links may not follow Wikipedia s policies or guidelines Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references December 2016 Learn how and when to remove this template message Although the phenomenon has been known for a very long time it was considered a minor quirk in a few languages until the 1980s when Bossong presented evidence of DOM in more than 300 languages Since then it has become an important topic of research in grammatical theory This is a selection of works that deal with the phenomenon Aissen Judith 2003 Differential Object Marking Iconicity vs Economy Natural Language amp Linguistic Theory 21 3 435 483 doi 10 1023 A 1024109008573 ISSN 0167 806X JSTOR 4048040 S2CID 170258629 Bittner Maria 1994 Case scope and binding Dordrecht Kluwer Academic Publishers ISBN 9780792326496 Bossong Georg 1983 1984 Animacy and Markedness in Universal Grammar PDF Glossologia 7 20 Bossong Georg 16 April 1985 Empirische Universalienforschung Differentielle Objektmarkierung in den neuiranischen Sprachen Ars Linguistica in German doi 10 5281 zenodo 4697660 Bossong Georg 1991 Differential Object Marking in Romance and Beyond Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 69 143 doi 10 1075 cilt 69 14bos ISBN 978 90 272 3566 4 Bossong Georg 1997 Le Marquage Differentiel de L Objet dans les Langues d Europe In Feuillet Jack ed Actance et Valence dans les Langues d Europe in French Berlin De Gruyter Mouton pp 193 258 ISBN 9783110157499 Bruge Laura Brugger Gerhard 1996 On the accusative a in Spanish Probus 8 1 1 52 doi 10 1515 prbs 1996 8 1 1 S2CID 170516795 Dalrymple Mary Nikolaeva Irina 2011 Objects and Information Structure Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521199858 Heusinger Klaus von Kaiser Georg A 2003 Animacy Specificity and Definiteness in Spanish Proceedings of the Workshop Semantic and Syntactic Aspects of Specificity in Romance Languages Konstanz Universitat Konstanz 41 65 Heusinger Klaus von Kaiser Georg A 2005 Heusinger Klaus von Kaiser Georg A Stark Elisabeth eds The evolution of differential object marking in Spanish Proceedings of the Workshop Specificity and the Evolution Emergence of Nominal Determination Systems in Romance Konstanz Universitat Konstanz 33 70 Iemmolo Giorgio 20 August 2010 Topicality and differential object marking Evidence from Romance and beyond PDF Studies in Language 34 2 239 272 doi 10 1075 sl 34 2 01iem S2CID 51471322 Kwon Song Nim Zribi Hertz Anne 2008 Differential Function Marking Case and Information Structure Evidence from Korean Language 84 2 258 299 doi 10 1353 lan 0 0005 S2CID 121422063 Leonetti Manuel 2004 Specificity and Differential Object Marking in Spanish PDF Catalan Journal of Linguistics 3 75 114 doi 10 5565 rev catjl 106 Archived from the original PDF on 2017 08 09 Ozturk Balkiz 2005 Case referentiality and phrase structure Amsterdam J Benjamins Pub Co ISBN 9781588116451 Pensado Carmen ed 1995 El complemento directo preposicional Gramatica del Espanol in Spanish Madrid Visor Libros ISBN 978 84 7522 456 5 Rodriguez Mondonedo Miguel 2007 The Syntax of Objects Agree and Differential Object Marking PDF PhD University of Connecticut Archived from the original PDF on 2011 05 24 Swart P J F de 2007 Cross linguistic Variation in Object Marking PhD University of Nijmegen ISBN 978 90 78328 39 1 Torrego Esther 1998 The dependencies of objects Linguistic Inquiry Monographs Vol 34 Cambridge Mass MIT Press ISBN 9780262201124 Witzlack Makarevich Alena Serzant Ilja A April 24 2018 Differential argument marking Patterns of variation In Witzlack Makarevich Alena Serzant Ilja A eds Diachrony of differential argument marking Berlin Language Science Press pp 1 40 doi 10 5281 zenodo 1228243 ISBN 978 3 96110 085 9 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Differential object marking amp oldid 1130846538, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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