Differential object marking and the lexical semantics of verbs in Spanish

Abstract

In Spanish, the direct object can be accompanied by the marker a, which is homophone to the preposition a ‘to’; hence, such direct objects are often called ‘prepositional accusative”, which is an type of Differential Object Marking (DOM). DOM is widespread among the languages of the world. Bossong (1985) mentions that at least 300 known languages exhibit DOM in one way or other. DOM or a-marking of the direct object in Spanish is a well studied subject (e.g. Bruge & Brugger 1996, Torrego 1999, Leonetti 2004, Pensado 1995 with a annotated bibliography), but there is no overall account of the different parameters that determine DOM, nor is there a theory that explains the interaction of the parameters. Two main approaches to DOM in general are currently under discussion: The Ambiguity Thesis and the Transitivity Thesis. The Ambiguity Thesis (Comrie 1975, Moravcsik 1978, Croft 1988, Bossong 1985, Aissen 2003) assumes that languages that do not distinguish subject and direct object tend to develop extra markers to indicate direct objects if they are too similar to typical subjects. These approaches focus on the properties of the direct object such as animacy, definiteness, specificity and topicality. The Transitivity Thesis (Hopper & Thompson 1980, Naess 2004), on the other side, assumes that a direct object is marked if it is a “good” argument in a transitive sentence. These approaches focus on semantic properties of the verb such as telicity, aspectuality and thematic information of the argument role of the direct object such as volitionality and agency. De Hoop & Narasimhan (2005) modify the Transitivity-Thesis and use the concept of “Strength of an Argument”. According to them, DOM-languages mark strong arguments in direct object positions. We will develop this thesis further and account for the strength by analyzing the interaction of the properties of the direct object with the lexical semantics of the verb. Most synchronic research on DOM or a-marking in Spanish focuses on the properties of the direct object, while the verbal semantics has been less well investigated. Moreover, diachronic studies focus exclusively on these properties and do not investigate the verb class. In our study we investigate the role of the verb class for the diachronic development of a-marking in Spanish. Our findings clearly show the importance of the verbal semantics and they also motivate the variations that can be found in DOM marking, both in synchronic and diachronic data. DOM in Spanish, as in other languages, can only be explained by the interaction of several parameters. We assume the following three families of parameters for DOM: (i) the properties of the direct object, (ii) its competition with other arguments in the sentence (mainly the subject), and (iii) the lexical semantics of the verb. The properties of the argument include animacy, definiteness, specificity and topicality. Even though these categories originate on

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