Differential Object Marking:Quantitative Evidence for Underlying Hierarchical Constraints acrossSpanish Dialects

Abstract

Differential Object Marking (DOM; see Aissen 2003; Bossong 1991; Comrie 1979, 1989) is a cross-linguistic phenomenon where languages variably overtly mark objects based upon particular semantic and pragmatic features of the object. While DOM has been primarily a qualitative undertaking in prior research, the purpose of this paper is to pursue a variationist investigation of DOM. Of particular interest is the well-known case of DOM that occurs in Spanish, (a.k.a. “personal a”, prepositional accusative, accusative a). Spanish employs a to mark human accusative (direct) objects. This transparent example of DOM relates to the animacy status of the accusative object.

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