Differential object marking and Scales: insights from diachrony

Abstract

This paper addresses a generally ignored counterexample to the Scales, comparing Old Catalan and Old Romanian on the one hand to Old Spanish on the other hand. Contrary to widely assumed marking hierarchies, Old Catalan/Old Romanian 3rd person pronouns show differential object marking, to the exclusion of or to a higher degree than 1st/2nd persons. We propose these patterns can be straightforwardly derived once we pin down micro-parameters in the composition of Romance DPs and the consequences various types of perspectival/sentience features have on the syntactic licensing of arguments.

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