Differential Subject Marking
Differential Subject Marking

Author: Helen de Hoop

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-12-04

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1402064977

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Not all sentences encode their subjects in the same way. Some languages overtly mark some subjects depending on certain features of the subject argument or the sentence in which the subject figures. This is known as Differential Subject Marking (DSM). Containing illuminating discussions of DSM from languages all over the world, this book shows that DSM is often the result of interactions between conflicting constraints on language use.

The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking
The Acquisition of Differential Object Marking

Author: Alexandru Mardale

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 9027261091

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Differential Object marking (DOM), a linguistic phenomenon in which a direct object is morphologically marked for semantic and pragmatic reasons, has attracted the attention of several subfields of linguistics in the past few years. DOM has evolved diachronically in many languages, whereas it has disappeared from others; it is easily acquired by monolingual children, but presents high instability and variability in bilingual acquisition and language contact situations. This edited collection contributes to further our understanding of the nature and development of DOM in the languages of the world, in acquisition, and in language contact, variation, and change. The thirteen chapters in this volume present new empirical data from Estonian, Spanish, Turkish, Korean, Hindi, Romanian and Basque in different acquisition contexts and learner populations. They also bring together multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives to account for the complexity and dynamicity of this widespread linguistic phenomenon.

Diachrony of differential argument marking
Diachrony of differential argument marking

Author: Ilja A. Seržant

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 3961100853

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While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM.

The Semantics of Case
The Semantics of Case

Author: Olga Kagan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-04-16

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 110841642X

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Based on data from a wide range of languages, the book discusses the ways in which case interacts with meaning.

Differential Object Marking in Romance
Differential Object Marking in Romance

Author: Johannes Kabatek

Publisher: de Gruyter

Published: 2021-11-13

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9783110646566

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The book series Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie is among the most renowned publications in Romance Studies. It covers the entire field of Romance linguistics, including the national languages as well as the lesser studied Romance languages. The series publishes high-quality monographs and collected volumes on all areas of linguistic research, on medieval literature and on textual criticism.

Case, Agreement, and their Interactions
Case, Agreement, and their Interactions

Author: András Bárány

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-06-22

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 3110666235

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Differential argument marking has been a hot topic in linguistics for several decades, both because it is cross-linguistically widespread and because it raises essential questions at multiple levels of grammar, including the relationship between abstract processes and overt morphological marking, between case and agreement, and between syntax and information structure. This volume provides an introduction into the current state of the art of research on differential case marking and chapters by leading linguists addressing theoretical questions in a wide range of typologically and geographically diverse languages from the Indo-European, Sinitic, Turkic, and Uralic families. The chapters engage with current theoretical issues in the morphology, syntax, semantics, and processing of differential argument marking. A central issue addressed by all the authors is the adequacy of various theoretical approaches in modelling (different varieties of) differential case marking, such as those determined by topicality, those driven by cumulative factors, and those that involve double marking. The volume will be of interest to students and researchers working on cross-linguistic variation in differential marking and its theoretical modelling.

Basque and Romance
Basque and Romance

Author: Ane Berro

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9004395393

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This is a collection of articles describing and analyzing several of the most important morphosyntactic features for which the formal comparison between Basque and its surrounding Romance languages is relevant, such as word order, inflection, case, argument structure and causatives. In the context of a language virtually all of whose speakers are bilingual in either Spanish or French, the theoretically informed in-depth description offered in this volume focuses on the fine grain of linguistic structures from languages typologically quite apart but coexisting and probably interacting in the minds of speakers. It therefore aims at shedding some light on the types of interactions between different systems and on the systems themselves.

Cross-linguistic Variation in Object Marking
Cross-linguistic Variation in Object Marking

Author: Peter de Swart

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation shows how languages differ in their morphosyntactic sensitivity to variations in the semantics of direct objects. Whereas some languages reflect semantic changes of the direct object in its marking others do not. As a result, we observe mismatches between semantic and morphosyntactic transitivity in the latter type of languages. This becomes particularly clear in a detailed study of the cognate object construction in English. Besides, this dissertation shows that a cross-linguistically uniform phenomenon can be driven by various motivations. This is demonstrated for differential object marking, a cross-linguistically recurrent phenomenon in which direct objects are overtly case marked depending on their semantic features. Two factors appear to govern differential object marking cross-linguistically: prominence-based marking and recoverability of grammatical roles. For some languages only one of these factors can be identified to be of importance, but in other languages, they are simultaneously responsible for object marking. In order to accommodate the full pattern of differential object marking, a bidirectional optimality-theoretic model is developed in which speakers take into account the perspective of the hearer. By doing so, this study shows how typological and optimality theoretical insights can be combined in order to gain more insight in the interaction of the universal principles that guide the marking of direct objects in natural language.

The Typology of Semantic Alignment
The Typology of Semantic Alignment

Author: Mark Donohue

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-01-24

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0199238383

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Semantic alignment refers to a type of language that has two means of morphosyntactically encoding the arguments of intransitive predicates, typically treating these as an agent or as a patient of a transitive predicate, or else by a means of a treatment that varies according to lexical aspect. This collection of new typological and case studies is the first book-length investigation of semantically aligned languages for three decades. Leading international typologists explore thedifferences and commonalities of languages with semantic alignment systems and compare the structure of these languages to languages without them. They look at how such systems arise or disappear and provide areal overviews of Eurasia, the Americas, and the south-west Pacific, the areas wheresemantically aligned languages are concentrated. This book will interest typological and historical linguists at graduate level and above.

Indefinite Objects
Indefinite Objects

Author: Luis Lopez

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2012-09-28

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 0262304708

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A novel view of the syntax-semantics interface that analyzes the behavior of indefinite objects. In Indefinite Objects, Luis López presents a novel approach to the syntax-semantics interface using indefinite noun phrases as a database. Traditional approaches map structural configurations to semantic interpretations directly; López links configuration to a mode of semantic composition, with the latter yielding the interpretation. The polyvalent behavior of indefinites has long been explored by linguists who have been interested in their syntax, semantics, and case morphology, and López's contribution can be seen as a synthesis of findings from several traditions. He argues, first, that scrambled indefinite objects are composed by means of Function Application preceded by Choice Function while objects in situ are composed by means of Restrict. This difference yields the different interpretive possibilities of indefinite objects. López's more nuanced approach to the syntax-semantics interface turns out to be rich in empirical consequences. Second, he proposes that short scrambling also yields Differential Marking, provided that context conditions are fulfilled, while in situ objects remain unmarked. Thus, López contributes to the extensive literature on Differential Object Marking by showing that syntactic configuration is a crucial factor. López substantiates this approach with data from Spanish, Hindi-Urdu, Persian (Farsi), Kiswahili, Romanian, and German.