The study explores the grammatical means employed for the expression of information structure in standard colloquial Burmese on the basis of a corpus of written and spoken texts. It analyses the morphosyntactic and prosodic devices identified as relevant for its goals, namely the differential subject and object marking, constituent order, particles used to create a range of interpretations related to the notions of topic, focus and contrast, stand-alone sentence nominalisations and prosody.
The study argues for the existence of a grammatical system of informational PACKAGING in Burmese that has no direct linking to information structural categories like topic, focus and contrast. Expressed by various morphosyntactic means, it segregates information into separate informational units (PACKAGES) and establishes structural relations between them. This partition shows a robust correspondence to prosody.
The PACKAGING system is mobilised for creation of diverse information structure-related interpretive effects through its different configurations and interaction with the context. Concepts like topic, focus, contrast and apparent contrast-degrees observed in Burmese are interpretive outcomes of this interaction and have no immediate expression in the language. Furthermore, the usage of PACKAGING is not restricted to information structural effects and the system plays a crucial role in discourse structuring and content management in Burmese.
Analysis of stand-alone nominalised sentences along the lines of a speaker’s subjective channel of communication suggests the resemblance with the function of similar phenomena in many other Tibeto-Burman languages. It proposes PACKAGING motivations for this function and shows how this can be mobilised for information structure-related interpretations.
Hence, the study rejects the view of a direct expression of information structural categories by linguistic means. Instead, similarly to many other linguistic categories, it proposes an indirect interpretive link between a pragmatically-semantically underspecified grammatical system and the derived interpretation.

En aquest treball parlarem de dos fenòmens sintàctics relacionats amb la (in) transitivitat, amb l’objectiu de veure com Fabra s’hi va referir i quin tracta- ment se’n fa en la normativa catalana actual (GIEC 2016). Els dos aspectes de la sintaxi catalana de què ens ocuparem són la concordança del verb "haver-hi" i l’ús de la preposició "a" davant del complement directe.

Portuguese is typically not considered a differential object marking (DOM) language, while Spanish, with its accusative a, is one of the most well-known DOM languages. This chapter uses quantitative multivariate analysis to argue that Portuguese -both Brazilian (BP) and European (EP) -displays a clear-cut DOM system. Unlike Spanish, however, the Portuguese DOM system is limited to strictly anaphoric direct object referents. Both BP and EP oppose null objects with overt pronominal marking of anaphoric DOs, even though the pronouns employed differ in each variety. In both Spanish and Portuguese, animacy, definiteness and specificity constrain the encoding of direct object referents in similar ways; most notably, the hierarchical ordering of these constraints is the same across the two languages.

Conveyor belt marking system involves organising markers into groups in which each marker is assigned a question or questions to mark by the team leader. This type of marking is also referred to as item level marking as asserted by Ofqual (2003). Item level marking reduces bias and removes the influence of the marker on the script. Spear (1996) strengthens this idea in his research study. The process of belt marking starts with allocation of marking scripts to the marking supervisor. Then the supervisor and his team opens the scripts and start the process of tallying with his/her team. This involves counting and recording the number of students who answered each of the questions for each and every centre that sat for examinations. Each marker is then assigned a question or questions to mark. A script control movement form account for the movement of scripts. The supervisor can adjust the allocation of questions if there is a need. Suto et al (2011) postulates that difficult questions can be allocated to seasoned markers while the less experienced markers are assigned easy questions

Many languages exhibit differential object marking (DOM), where only certain types of grammatical objects are marked with morphological cases. Traditionally, it has been claimed that DOM arises as a way to prevent ambiguity by marking objects that might otherwise be mistaken for subjects (e.g., animate objects). While some recent experimental work supports this account, research on language typology suggests at least one alternative hypothesis. In particular, DOM may instead arise as a way of marking objects that are atypical from the point of view of information structure. According to this account, rather than being marked to avoid ambiguity, objects are marked when they are given (already familiar in the discourse) rather than new. Here, we experimentally investigate this hypothesis using two artificial language learning experiments. We find that information structure impacts participants' object marking, but in an indirect way: atypical information structure leads to a change in word order, which then triggers increased object marking. Interestingly, this staged process of change is compatible with documented cases of DOM emergence. We argue that this process is driven by two cognitive tendencies. First, a tendency to place discourse given information before new information, and

This dissertation investigates the variable use of the object preposition ʾet in Biblical Hebrew as an example of Differential Object Marking. Two categories of variation were examined. Asymmetric case alternations involve the variation between overt marking of the direct object with ʾet and zero coding of the object within canonical transitive clauses. Symmetric case alternations involve the variation between the overt marking of the object with ʾet and the realization of this argument as an oblique phrase headed by a preposition.

Chapters 1-4 summarize the previous research on the topic and introduce the theoretical framework for this study including a discussion of the functional-typological literature on Differential Object Marking. Chapter 5 presents the results of a corpus-based study of asymmetric DOM within SBH narrative prose. It is argued that these alternations have discourse-pragmatic motivations related largely to the information status of the referent of the object phrase. Several other parameters are also examined which correlated to particularly low frequencies of object marking. Chapter 6 then examines common examples of symmetric alternations within Biblical Hebrew. These alternations are typically semantic in nature and related to the ‘patient-ness’ of the argument, though the exact effect varies based on the cognitive frame of the verb involved and the semantic roles which it selects.

Welsh syntactic mutation and Arabic indefinite accusative: Case or configuration?
Welsh marks indefinite direct objects with lenition: Gwelodd Mair dŷ [Sawº Mair house (tŷ)] ‘Mair saw a house’. Welsh also applies “syntactic mutation” in a number of other circumstances: gwelwyd tŷ ar y bryn [was.seenº house on the hill], but with the prepositional phrase interposed: gwelwyd ar y bryn dŷ [was.seenº on the hill house] ‘a house was seen on the hill’.
Formal Arabic marks indefinite direct objects with -an (indefinite accusative): ra’at miryam bait.an [sawºF Miryam house.INDEF.ACC] ‘Miryam saw a house’. “Faulty indefinite accusative” is applied frequently by proficient users of Formal Arabic where there should be indefinite nominative: ru’iya ‘alà t-tall bait.(un) [was.seenºM on the-hill house.(INDEF.NOM)] ‒> ru’iya ‘alà t-tall bait.an [was.seenºM on the-hill house(INDEF.ACC)] ‘a house was seen on the hill’. Every time “faulty indefinite accusative” is found in Arabic, the Welsh equivalent would have “syntactic mutation”. In both cases, the phenomenon seems to be the result of an identical HEAD-TRIGGER-DEPENDENT rule marking the dependent. This rule would account for all cases of syntactic mutation in Welsh, and for both correct and faulty indefinite accusative in Arabic.
Historical evidence suggests that the rule governing indefinite accusative in Arabic has evolved from a semantic, case-based rule to a syntactic one based on simple configuration. If such a case > configuration evolution was possible for Arabic, it could provide a clue to the genesis and evolution of “syntactic mutation” in Welsh, which may also have originally been case-based, but has most likely evolved into a configurational rule. A widely studied rule of Welsh thus helps to explain a persistent, but little studied “faulty” pattern in Formal Arabic, and the likely genesis of that “faulty” rule in Arabic, in turn, may shed light, in this typological exercise, on the origin and development of the Welsh rule.

In this dissertation, I investigate a number of interrelated developments affecting the morphosyntax of nouns in Cappadocian Greek. I specifically focus on the development of differential object marking, the loss of grammatical gender distinctions, and the neuterisation of noun inflection. My aim is to provide a diachronic account of the innovations that Cappadocian has undergone in the three domains mentioned above. Αll the innovations examined in this study have the effect of rendering the morphology and syntax of nouns in Cappadocian more like that of neuters. On account of the historical and sociolinguistic circumstances in which Cappadocian developed as well as of the superficial similarity of their outcomes to equivalent structures in Turkish, previous research has overwhelmingly treated the Cappadocian developments as instances of contact-induced change that resulted from the influence of Turkish. In this study, I examine the Cappadocian innovations from a language-internal point of view and in comparison with parallel developments attested in the other Modern Greek dialects of Asia Minor, namely Pontic, Rumeic, Pharasiot and Silliot. My comparative analysis of a wide range of dialect-internal, cross-dialectal and cross-linguistic typological evidence shows that language contact with Turkish can be identified as the main cause of change only in the case of differential object marking. On the other hand, with respect to the origins of the most pervasive innovations in gender and noun inflection, I argue that they go back to the common linguistic ancestor of the modern Asia Minor Greek dialects and do not owe their development to language contact with Turkish. I show in detail that the superficial similarity of these latter innovations’ outcomes to their Turkish equivalents in each case represents the final stage in a long series of typologically plausible, language-internal developments whose early manifestations predate the intensification of Cappadocian–Turkish linguistic and cultural exchange. These findings show that diachronic change in Cappadocian is best understood when examined within a larger Asia Minor Greek context. On the whole, they make a significant contribution to our knowledge of the history of Cappadocian and the Asia Minor Greek dialects as well as to Modern Greek dialectology more generally, and open a fresh round of discussion on the origin and development of other innovations attested in these dialects that are considered by historical linguists and Modern Greek dialectologists to be untypically Greek or contact-induced or both.

The use of the object marker את in Biblical Hebrew is an example of a Differential Object Marking (DOM) system in which marking is optional for a certain set of object phrases. Along with the other “prose particles” ה (def) and אשר (rel), the object marker is used much less frequently in poetry than in prose, and its absence has been proposed as a diagnostic characteristic of the poetic form. I will argue, however, that the use or non-use of the object marker is related more directly to dialect and discourse structure than to any formal rule of poetry proper.

English:
This thesis proposes a quantitative study of word order variations in Persian, focusing on the relative order between the direct object (DO) and the indirect object (IO). The latter plays a crucial role in the theoretical analyses of the VP, which in the absence of quantitative studies lack solid empirical underpinning. My first goal is to contribute to the study of Persian syntax by providing reliable data in order to evaluate the prevailing hypothesis according to which there exists a dual canonical relative order between the two objects triggered by the Differential Object marking (DOM). My second goal is to contribute to the ongoing debates on word order preferences in general linguistics and typology by bringing in data on an SOV language with mixed head-direction. To this end, I study the effect of factors such as grammatical weight (or relative length), which are claimed to influence the linear order across languages. First, the results of our corpus and experimental studies show that the DOM account of the relative order between the DO and the IO is flawed. Based on this conclusion, I also reject the two object positions hypothesis and plead for a flat structure view of the VP. Second, our data reveal a “long-before-short” preference, which is shown to depend on the effect of salience-enhancing factors such as definiteness, animacy and the grammatical role. I argue that while this preference is, either totally or partially, incompatible with the predictions of processing-oriented dependency-based models, it can be accounted for by production models assuming that the greater conceptual accessibility of longer constituents favors their early position in SOV languages.

Français:
Cette thèse propose une étude quantitative de la variation de l'ordre des constituants en persan avec un intérêt particulier pour l'ordre relatif entre le COD et le COI étant donné son rôle crucial dans les analyses de la structure du SV. Afin de remédier à une lacune empirique dont souffre l’étude de la syntaxe du persan, notre premier objectif est d’évaluer, à partir de données empiriques robustes, l’hypothèse largement admise selon laquelle il existe un ordre relatif canonique dichotomique entre les compléments verbaux, dépendant du marquage différentiel de l'objet (MDO). Notre second objectif, relatif à la linguistique générale et à la typologie, est de contribuer aux débats controversés sur les préférences translinguistiques de l'ordre des mots en étudiant, dans une langue SOV à structure mixte, les effets des facteurs tels que le poids (ou la longueur relative). Les résultats de nos études de corpus et de nos expériences montrent l’inadéquation du critère MDO pour expliquer l’ordre relatif entre le COD et le COI. Cette conclusion nous conduit à réfuter également l’hypothèse de la position syntaxique double de l’objet au profit d’une structure plate pour le SV. De plus, nos données révèlent une préférence « long-avant-court » subordonnée aux facteurs contribuant à la saillance, tels que la définitude, l'animéité et le rôle grammatical. Nous arguons que cette préférence échappe, en partie ou totalement, aux modèles du traitement se fondant sur la distance entre la tête et ses dépendants, alors qu’elle est compatible avec l'hypothèse selon laquelle dans les langues SOV l'accessibilité conceptuelle des constituants longs favorise leur production plus en amont dans la phrase.

ABSTRACT
Syntactic Effects of Inflectional Morphology Restructuring in Aché
On Language Change and Language Contact in Tupí–Guaraní Subgroup–1
This dissertation presents a comparative study on the nature of contact-induced grammar change at the morphology–syntax interface in Aché. The language is for long considered an outlier or contact variety within the Tupí-Guaraní family (TG, Dietrich, 1990; Rodrigues, 1985, 2000). Using a formal and comparative approach to morphosyntax, I examine aspects of inflectional erosion and possibly associated syntactic restructuring in Aché when compared to several, contemporary varieties of Guaraní (Roessler, 2008, 2015). The Aché and Guaraní data are consistently presented in parallel fashion since some historical variety of Guaraní is taken to be the most likely lexical and grammatical source language in the emergence of Aché.
Three general goals guide this research: First, I aim at contributing to language documentation and description, specifically regarding the understudied TG language Aché. Second, this dissertation provides a formal study of historical developments and language contact phenomena in Aché grammar. And third, I introduce data from a novel genetic background into recent debates on language contact within the diachronic syntax framework. I suggest that extending the empirical base in this field may provide us with an unique opportunity to test and possibly revise long-standing generalizations in comparative syntax and (minimalist) parameter theory.
Guaraní languages are notoriously rich in agreement, allowing verbal marking of external and internal arguments. This system of agreement is governed by a person hierarchy (1P | 2P> 3P) and inverse argument alignment (Freitas, 2011a, b, Nevins and Sandalo, 2010, Oxford, 2015, 2017a, Sandalo, 2009, 2014, Zubizarreta and Pancheva, 2017). Aché, on the other hand, lost all agreement markers and seems almost isolating in structure. Additionally, I show that all Guaraní varieties and Aché display consistent differential object marking (DOM) patterns. The Aché system, however, underwent partial erosion of the morphology inventory of DOM (Roessler, 2015). In two case studies, I examine a diverse set of syntactic effects associated to this inflectional restructuring and the licensing of overt and null core arguments.
The first case, I specifically debate diachronic aspects of differential object marking (DOM) and object scrambling for Aché and the Guaraní cluster (see Shain and Tonhauser, 2011 on Paraguayan Guaraní). The data suggest that Guaraní differential objects are far from being exclusively highlighted in morphology. Instead, the DOM system also triggers particular operations in syntax. Focusing on [+animate] direct objects, I supply evidence that presuppositional direct object (DOs) may scramble out of their base position into a higher vP– internal, projections (Lopéz, 2012). This short object scrambling is shown in simple transitive, ditransitive/applicative constructions as well as in constructions with object conjunction. Then, from within vP, another direct object scrambling operation is enabled in Guaraní, namely a φ– feature associated object dislocation into the TP–domain (see Freitas, 2011a, b).
For Aché, this, φ–feature related DO–scrambling seems to be entirely lost. I observe that full erosion of agreement and partial erosion of DOM in Aché led to very little change in word order patterns, despite clear alternation in the formal licensing of the involved syntactic operations. Provided the debate on DOM, I claim that Aché and Guaraní data equip us with novel evidence in support of a weak version of the so-called ‘Rich Agreement Hypothesis’ – RAH as suggested in Bobaljik and Thráinsson (1998).
The second case study is the first formal account of the nature of pro-drop in Aché and Guaraní. I demonstrate that current minimalist approaches to pro typologies allow us to formalize Guaraní pro-drop systems, even though several innovative aspects to the theoretical debate and the respective parameter theory come to light (Barbosa, 2011a; b; Holmberg, 2005; Roberts, 2010; Roberts and Holmberg, 2010). For Guaraní, I attest pro-drop patterns so far undescribed in specialized literature, which I refer to as Person Split Pro-Drop. In such a pattern both subjects and objects can be omitted and identified by verbal agreement. In addition, I observe the realization of null topics that occur in environments without agreement. The Guaraní system of pro-drop operates determined by the p—hierarchy and inverse voice. Guaraní-style agreement-based pro is licensed asymmetrically, differentiating local and non- local arguments, since φ-features under the T° and v° heads play a more decisive role than the grammatical function of the core arguments. Consequently, I argue that the licensing of pro in Guaraní languages can be modeled quite naturally once formal proposals on p—hierarchy and inverse alignment are both included in the account. Finally, I observed changes regarding null arguments found in Aché. Strikingly, there the complete erosion of verbal agreement does not lead to the erosion of pro-drop options. To the contrary, syntactic reanalysis in Aché yields a rather classical radical or discourse anchored pro-drop pattern, such as normally attested in East Asian languages (Huang, 1984, 1989).
In general, both case studies aim at demonstrating how contact-induced grammatical change at the morphology-syntax interface of TG outlier Aché can be formally understood.

KEYWORDS:

Работа посвящена дифференцированному маркированию объекта в испанском языке. Представлен обзор традиционных филологических подходов к DOM, принятых в академических грамматиках Испанской академии и русскоязычной учебной литературе в сопоставлении с формально-типологическими подходами.

Master thesis. Manuscript.

In this article, I explore the effect of the four factors animacy, definiteness, specificity, and topicality on differential object marking (DOM) in a sample of ten Semitic languages. I will argue that in spite of their theoretical differences, the two main approaches to DOM, i.e. the distinguishing and the highlighting approach, lead to identical predictions concerning the directionality of the effect that these four factors have on DOM. The effect of animacy, definiteness, specificity, and topicality on the DOM systems in the sample is assessed, and the proposed predictions are tested against the Semitic data. I show that this survey on DOM in Semitic challenges some of the hypotheses that have been put forward concerning the interaction between information structure and DOM; some languages in the sample contradict the predicted direction of effect for topicality. The Semitic data confirm the predicted direction of effect for the other factors, i.e. animacy, definiteness, and specificity. In light of these results, I conclude that the cross-linguistic hypotheses concerning the effect of topicality on DOM must either be rejected or seriously restricted in scope.

Jenni (2007) and Kroeze (2008) have explained the variational use of the particle את in Classical Biblical Hebrew on the basis of the semantic and pragmatic properties of verbal arguments. Malessa (2006), on the other hand, has observed a correlation between the use of את and word order. Malessa’s word order parameter poses a problem for theories that relate the use of את to the properties of individual constituents. Widening the scope to the grammatical properties of the sentence, I will take information structure theory (Lambrecht 1994; Erteschik-Shir 2007) as a starting point to account for the use of את. The use and non-use of את with subjects and direct objects will be shown to be motivated by both word order and the specific pragmatic structure of the sentence.

This study develops a probabilistic theory of efficiency in natural language. The first part is theoretical and presents the foundation of this theory: the Principle of Efficiency Communication and the related High-Cost and Low-Cost Heuristics. It argues that language users have a bias towards efficient communication, trying to maximize the benefit-to-cost ratio. According to these principles, highly predictable, accessible, activated, expected, stereotypical, etc. information tends to be expressed by less costly forms, which require less effort, whereas less predictable, accessible, etc. information tends to be expressed by costlier forms. Different examples are provided, and possible diachronic mechanisms are discussed.

In Parts II and III, the author zooms in on two well-known phenomena in languages of the world: causative constructions and differential case marking. The author uses data from her own typological database and other typological sources, as well as evidence from numerous corpora of different languages, and reports the results of an artificial language learning experiment. The convergent evidence demonstrates that the more probable meanings and more probable associations between the syntactic function and the referential properties of an argument lead to less costly forms. Part IV contains corpus-based synchronic and diachronic studies of several English alternations: help + (to) Infinitive, stative verb + (at) home and go (and) Verb, and want to/wanna + Infinitive. The author provides statistical evidence for the hypothesis of correlation between slot-filler predictability and formal length of constructions.

The results of this study are important for functional and cognitive linguistics because they provide a coherent framework for discussing different manifestations of efficiency on all levels of language structure – from phonology to discourse patterns.

The purpose of this study is to examine specific issues within the grammar of the Sika dialect of the Yaeyama language, a Southern Ryukyuan language spoken on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa, Japan. The paper has three chapters: an overview dealing with major typological features, a chapter dedicated to verbs (morphophonology, TAM system), and a chapter examining some syntactic issues. Regarding the verbs of Sika, previous studies have recommended many phonological rules to explain the process from the underlying layer to the phonetic layer of roots and affixes. It is the insistence of this study that the phonetic changes in all applications can be explained with relatively few phoneme rules. It can contribute greatly to simplifying the description of the phonetic morphology of Sika. As for the accusative verb, it has been argued in previous literature that the direct object selected by the transitive verb is typically "bare case" that has no particle, and the rare object markers [=ba] and [=ju] are merely optional elements. In the present research, these object markers select highly distinctive objects in a certain markedness hierarchy, and "definiteness," "specificitiy," and givenness /naturalness" It has been found to have a deep relationship with their distribution. Therefore, it can be said that these direct object markers in Sika are not optional but are obligatory based on the O that they mark.

This work follows the progression of a grammatical construction that unifies the Romanian accusative preposition pe with a coreferential pronominal clitic, together forming the CD-pe construction. On the basis of historical texts, it is argued that these two grammatical phenomena evolved into a clause-level construction with a dedicated semantics and pragmatics in the modern language. A corpus analysis illustrates how CD-pe won out against a competitor pe-only construction that persisted until as recently as the early 20th century, and which is still retained in some dialects and registers. The broader scope is to refocus the discussion of clitic doubling on pragmatic motivators in light of diachronic constructionalization processes, and to reflect on the nature of similar clitic doubling phenomena evident in other Romance languages in terms of the entrenchment of language-specific constructionalization processes.

Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish has been studied under various aspects: Spanish as typical DOM language in typology; Spanish as the most salient Romance DOM language, Spanish and its diachronic evolution and diatopic variation. The present paper discusses different accounts that were given in the literature for the emergence and the tendencies of DOM in Spanish. It tries to show that there is, apart from all the semantic and syntactic factors traditionally discussed, an overall basic value of DOM in Spanish which can be extracted analysing those cases where the presence or absence of DOM establishes an obvious opposition in meaning. It is claimed that the contemporary system emerged in Early Modern Spanish and that it seems rather stable in the Spanish speaking world. Furthermore, as a contemporary tendency within this system there seems to be an increase of DOM in cases where marking is facultative, with regional differences within the Spanish speaking world.

In this paper we will provide a formal characterization of the category Dative. Basing on data from a wide range of languages (Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Albanian, Romance), we will show that Dative is the superficial case normally associated with animacy/definiteness in Indo-European languages, independently of the particular morphology employed to spell out dative (for instance inflectional or prepositional). We will show that there is a syntactic category Dative coinciding with the morphological one and encompassing both thematic and D (i.e. definiteness/animacy) Dative. We will provide a characterization of thematic dative as an elementary predicate introducing a part-whole (i.e. possession) relation, arguing that there is no need to conceive the D-dative/oblique but as an instance of this same elementary predicate/ operator.

El Presente trabajo de investigación tuvo por objetivo tratar con el estatus sintáctico y las propiedades formales que posibilitan la aparión cideó una forma invariable homófona al crítico de acusativo de tercera persona masculino singular <lo> del español general en el dialecto del español de Teopantlán, Puebla (México) en el contexto de verbos transitivos.

Partiendo de la base de que esta forma clítica no es un clítico verdadero, propongo que sus propiedades sintácticas son mejor explicadas si se asume un análisis en términos de la Marcación de Objeto, por tanto la forma lo bajo estudio en este dialecto no es, categorialmente, un clítico pronominal como el del español estándar, sino un Marcador de Objeto. Así, tomando como punto de partida los mecanismos teóricos y analíticos de la gramática generativa hago una propuesta en la que la operación de Concordancia y el Ensamble, en un afán minimalista, son suficientes para explicar la distribución y propiedades de este Marcador de Objeto. Cabe destacar que lo dicho hasta ahora es cierto para oraciones principales, puesto que parece ser, como se verá, que esta misma forma puede fungir algunas veces como complemento de V en contextos de oraciones subordinadas o de marcado tópicos discursivos.

En la propuesta final asumí que el núcleo funcional v-ligera tiene rasgos-phi no-interpretable y completos, en contraste a lo que se ha propuesto para el español estándar (Rodríguez-Mondoñedo 2006, 2007). Al fungir v-ligera como Sonda sobre el complemento de V se obtienen dos resultados de Concordancia: la asignación de caso acusativo in situ a la FD y también se propicia el ensamble externo de lo en la frontera superior de v-ligera. Para obtener estos dos resultados, tras la concordancia entre v-ligera y el complemento de V se deben cumplir dos condiciones: la primera es que el complemento de V sea una FD con un rasgo de tercera persona. Si esta condición no se cumple lo no se ensamblará. La segunda condición es que se garantice la posición de segundo especificador de v-ligera. De este modo, considero, es posible explicar de manera natural la posición proclítica y la falta de exponentes explícitos de concordancia de género y número en la forma clítica. Esta parte de la propuesta también nos permite explicar por qué el Marcado Diferenciado de Objeto no es obligatorio en esta variante, esto es, si asumimos que la legitimación del Caso acusativo puede darse in situ como resultado del proceso de Concordancia entre Sondas y Metas con rasgos completos (Chomsky 2001, 2002), explicando así la violación de la Generalización de Kayne.

In this introductory article we provide an overview of the range of the phenomena that can be referred to as differential argument marking (DAM). We begin with an overview of the existing terminology and give a broad definition of the DAM to cover the phenomena discussed in the present volume and in the literature under this heading. We then consider various types of the phenomenon which figured prominently in studies of DAM in various traditions. First, we differentiate between arguments of the same predicate form and arguments of different predicate forms. Within the first type we discuss DAM systems triggered by inherent lexical argument properties and the ones triggered by non-inherent, discourse-based argument properties, as well as some minor types. It is this first type that traditionally constitutes the core of the phenomenon and falls under our narrow definition of DAM. The second type of DAM is conditioned by the larger syntactic environment, such as the clause properties (e.g. main vs. embedded) or properties of the predicate (e.g. its TAM characteristics). Then, we also discuss the restrictions that may constrain the occurrence of DAM cross-linguistically, other typical features of DAM systems pertaining to the morphological realization (symmetric vs. asymmetric) or to the degree of optionality of DAM. Finally, we provide a brief overview over functional explanations of DAM.

NOTE: This paper has been completely cannibalized as part of "Proto-Uralic primary argument case-marking". This is a draft paper which is going to be the basis for a talk I'll have later this summer. It builds heavily on my 2014 paper on Proto-Uralic ergativity, but aims to present my views on the Proto-Uralic accusative in a more detailed and organized manner.

The sign language phenomenon that some scholars refer to as " agreement " has triggered controversial discussions among sign language linguists. Crucially, it has been argued to display properties that are at odds with the notion of agreement in spoken languages. A thorough theoretical investigation of the phenomenon may thus add to our understanding of the nature and limits of agreement in natural language. Previous analyses of the phenomenon can be divided into three groups: (i) gesture-based non-syntactic analyses, (ii) hybrid solutions combining syntactic and semantic agreement, and (iii) syntactic accounts under which agreement markers are reanalyzed as clitics. As opposed to these accounts, we argue in this paper that sign language agreement does represent an instance of agreement proper, as familiar from spoken language, that is fully governed by syntactic principles. We propose an explicit formal analysis couched within the Minimalist Program that is modality-independent and only involves mechanisms that have been independently proposed for the analysis of agreement in spoken language. Our proposal is able to capture the (apparent) peculiarities of sign language agreement such as the distinction of verb types (only some verbs show agreement), the behavior of backwards verbs (verbs displaying agreement reversal), and the distribution of the agreement auxiliary. However, we suggest that the combination of mechanisms is modality-specific, that is, agreement in sign language, and in German Sign Language in particular, involves modality-independent ingredients , but uses a modality-specific recipe which calls for a (somewhat) unusual combination of independently motivated mechanisms.

Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Burmese is usually analysed as directly related to the expression of information structure. Yet, this corpus-based study of DOM and the associated prosody finds that DOM is not based on information structure alone, but is also additionally motivated by discourse structure and content management.
The suggested analysis proposes that DOM in Burmese provides a grammatical structure of information PACKAGING: a system of separating information into units (PACKAGES) and establishing relations between them. Different configurations of PACKAGING are employed to create an array of context-dependent interpretive effects related to information structure, discourse structure and other factors. Hence, it is argued that information structure is not directly expressed in the language. Instead, it stems from an interpretation of the interplay between information PACKAGING and various pragmatic-semantic factors, and is but one of the possible effects created by PACKAGING.

格体系を調べる⽅⾔調査票の開発・利⽤と問題点︓九州・琉球⽅⾔の事例報告 下地 理則 １ 研究のきっかけ 宮崎県椎葉村尾前⽅⾔のフィールドワーク 2013 年から，友人たち(方言研究者)と学生たち(現勤務先の学部生)と一緒に，宮崎県椎葉村尾前 地区で記述文法・辞書・テキストを作るためのフィールドワークを⾏っている。2015 年から，基礎的 な構⽂論のスケッチを開始し，学部の演習科目などを使って格体系の調査をはじめたところである。 対格交替 尾前方言には，九州・琉球⽅⾔に特徴的な主節主格の交替(ガ系 vs. ノ系)がある。一方，ほかの九州 方言にあまりない特徴として，目的語(P)の有形標示(ヲバ)vs. 無助詞(ハダカ標示)の交替がよくみ られる。全国の諸方言にも同様の対格交替が多数報告されており，①P と動詞の隣接性，②取り⽴て，

Modern Hebrew differentiates between definite and indefinite objects, using a prepositional object marker only in front of definites. This article explores the hypothesis that lack of an object marker when the object is indefinite follows from lack of abstract Case on indefinite objects. It is shown that indefinites in Hebrew are allowed in various other positions in which Case seems to be unavailable and in which definites are not allowed, a fact that gets a straightforward account under the proposed hypothesis that indefinites do not require Case. The possibility of having Caseless indefinites is then argued to follow from lack of a DP projection in Hebrew indefinites. The second part of this article aims to show that an analysis of indefinites in Hebrew as lacking a DP projection is indeed possible and can be motivated on independent grounds. This involves a reexamination of the arguments that have motivated the influential N-to-D analysis of Semitic noun phrases. I claim that most previous work on Semitic nominals is in fact compatible with an analysis in which nouns do not raise as high as the D position, and that the hypothesis that indefinites in Hebrew are not full DPs has some explanatory advantages over the view that all construct state nominals in Hebrew are DPs.

This paper investigates the phenomenon of the substitution of the accusative case marking of the direct object of a transitive infinitive (or, rarely, participle) by the genitive when the non-finite clause is embedded under a negated matrix verb. Basing on the data collected from native speakers, corpora and the Internet, I show that the phenomenon of long distance genitive of negation in Lithuanian is acceptable (and often obligatory) with various kinds of matrix verbs: subject control verbs, object control verbs with dative, genitive and accusative objects, and some complex noun+verb predicates. In some of these cases, genitive of negation can affect more than one direct object. Besides that, the case marking rule is virtually unbounded in its application, being able to target deeply embedded direct objects, provided that there is a chain of infinitival clauses. The application of this rule shows considerable variation, which depends on the type of the matrix verb, on the degree of syntactic embedding, on word order and also to a large extent on individual preferences of speakers. From an areal perspective Lithuanian is shown to pattern with the more conservative Slavic languages (Polish and Slovene), Latgalian and the Baltic Finnic languages Estonian and Finnish, rather than with the closely related Latvian, which, like Czech, has abolished genitive of negation almost altogether.

This paper discusses the origin of the Circum-Baltic modal construction with the nominative case-marking on the infinitival object: the same verbs assign the accusative case to their object in finite clauses. Independent infinitival clauses with the NOM-INF pattern has the semantics of alethic (external) modality: either "p is necessary" or "p is possible", e.g. the Old Russian example TOLIKO VODA(NOM) PITI (INF) conveys the meaning 'It is only possible to drink water there'. There are two main approaches towards the origin of this construction in Baltic and Slavic. The first approach is based on the reanalysis hypothesis: the nominative argument presumably originated as the subject of the archaic gerund-type Indo-European construction with the approximate meaning 'This water (NOM) is potable", while this archaic construction was inherited by the Baltic and Slavic languages from Proto-Indo-European. The second approach is based on the grammatical borrowing hypothesis: Baltic and Slavic languages presumably borrowed the construction with the nominative case-marking on the infinitival complements from the substratum Finno-Ugric languages. There are also attempts to reconcile these approaches by a stipulation that later Finno-Ugric influence superimposed on the inherited Indo-European construction. I argue that the grammatical borrowing hypothesis is more reliable than the hypothesis on the inherited Indo-European syntactic pattern since the infinitival syntax in Baltic and Slavic languages is different. Slavic languages have a longer written period, while Baltic languages show a larger variety of infinitival patterns. Moreover, of all Slavic dialects, the NOM-INF construction is characteristic only for the Northwestern and Western Russian dialects, which developed in a contact with the neighboring Baltic dialects. I follow the geographical and genre distribution of the NOM-INF construction in the nonbookish Russian texts from ca. 1100-1500 localized in the Great Novgorod, Pskov, and Polotsk-Smolensk areas and argue that two features in Old Russian syntax, which occasionally show up in the texts from this group-1) the "potable water" gerund-type construction with the secondary agreement and 2) the embedded NOM-INF structures after an overt modal verb or predicative-represent not the relics of the inherited Indo-European syntax, but a possible borrowing from the neighboring Baltic dialects.

Articolo espletivo e marcatura differenziale dell'Oggetto nel dialetto reggino di San Luca * 1. Nel 2015, in occasione della revisione di una tesi di laurea triennale (Giorgi 2015), ebbi modo di notare una particolarità sintattica presente nel dialetto reggino di San Luca 1 : la presenza dell'articolo cosiddetto espletivo 2 (m.sg. u; f.sg. a; m.f.pl. i) davanti ai nomi propri di persona, maschili e femminili, in posizione argomentale 3 . Si tratta di una caratteristica assai rara nei dialetti dell'area reggina (nel caso specifico del versante jonico), sorprendentemente non documentata da Rohlfs, né da Falcone (1976) nella monografia dedicata al profilo linguistico della Calabria, e segnalata per la prima volta, a quanto io ne sappia, solo cursoriamente da Ledgeway (2006:112) in un esempio dal dialetto di Bianco 4 . Ben diversa la situazione del salentino, per il quale è ben nota la presenza dell'articolo espletivo a precedere i nomi propri di persona, maschili e femminili. La comparsa di questo tratto in aree caratterizzate in passato da una massiccia presenza greca è una chiara prova corografica (in senso ascoliano) a favore dell'ipotesi di un calco morfo-sintattico dalle varietà italo-greche, dove l'impiego dell'articolo definito è la norma sia davanti ai nomi propri di persona, maschili e femminili, sia davanti ai nomi di luogo, tanto nel grico salentino, tanto in bovese (Rohlfs 1977:181; Katsoyannou 1995:182 e Violi 2004:25 per il greco bovese). Valga per tutti quanto afferma in proposito Rohlfs (1977:181) relativamente ai dialetti italo-greci: «Sono preceduti dall'articolo determinativo: il nome di Dio, i nomi di persona, i nomi di città e di stati […]». E ancora: «Si premette l'articolo ai giorni della settimana» (Rohlfs 1977:181).

This paper analyses the differential object marking in the Finnic
languages. The first part of the article describes the main principles of the Finnic DOM that is based on the superposition of two contrasts. The main contrast is the opposition of partial vs. total objects based on the semantic category of partiality. The other contrast is the opposition of total cases (nominative, genitive and pronominal accusative) that serves for the hierarchical marking of syntactic roles. The second part of the paper analyses deviations from the described system that are observed in various Finnic languages including the less described Votic and Ingrian. Four types of constructions are considered in the paper:
(a) constructions with pronominal objects;
(b) constructions with objects expressed by the “numeral + substantive”
group;
(c) sentences with impersonal forms functioning as personal;
(d) sentences with predications expressed by two verbs.
The paper shows that in spite of the common principles of the differential object marking system, every Finnic language demonstrates its own specific preferences in the distribution of the object cases. Sometimes the deviations can be explained by the influence of a contact language (first of all, Russian), but in most cases the changes do not have an obvious explanation.

This paper discusses differential argument realization in Abui, a Papuan language (Eastern Indonesia) with semantic alignment (in terms of . The paper examines the roles of volitionality, referential hierarchy, and specificity in differential argument realization (employing light verbs and pronominal co-indexing) and shows that their effects are observable throughout the argument realization system and can be therefore considered the counterpart of differential case marking (DOM/DSM) reported for syntactically aligned, casemarking languages and others). Although Abui differential argument realization correlates with the referential hierarchy , verbal subclasses (in terms of Tsunoda's 1985: 388 affectedness hierarchy) determine whether differential argument realization appears or not (cf. von Heusinger and Kaiser 2011). The paper also considers the diachronic origins of differential argument realization in Abui. Most constructions are argued to originate from two-clause constructions, such as topic/focus constructions gradually merging into single-clause structures. Information-structure related morphemes (light verbs in Abui) serialize with lexical verbs. The process starts with 1 st and 2 nd person participants (interlocutors) and may extend to human or human-like third persons. Grammaticalization ends in the fusion of the light verb and pronominal prefix, creating new pronominal paradigms, as manifested in several central Alor-Pantar languages (Kratochvíl et al. 2011).

Studies of the object marker *ʾyt in Northwest Semitic have been largely concerned with its origin and etymology, but the function of the object marker has been poorly understood. While the use of the object marker may be optional, the typological research on Differential Object Marking (DOM) shows that the distribution of object marking in Northwest Semitic is not erratic. Object marking clearly correlates to the definiteness and animacy scales, with objects that fall higher on these scales more likely to be marked. Further, the identifiability of the referent of the object phrase also correlates to the use of the object marker as the majority of marked objects have either been mentioned previously in the text or are available in the immediate situation of the audience. Finally, comparison of the DOM systems in the individual Northwest Semitic languages indicates that Hebrew and Moabite use more developed systems than Phoenician and Aramaic, lending support to the conclusion that the presence of object marking is a result of areal diffusion through language contact.

The aim of this paper is to examine Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Balearic Catalan. While definiteness and animacy can explain the distribution of DOM in other varieties of Catalan, in Balearic, the split between marked and non-marked objects is not dependent on inherent or referential properties of the object noun phrases, but determined by topicality. A preposition is consistently used to mark a subset of topical objects, namely those occurring in clitic left-and right-dislocation structures, which correspond to two kinds of hearer-known topics: shifting topics and continuing topics. The preposition does not occur, however, with hanging topics, which introduce discourse-new topical entities. In this way, a correlation can be found between formal properties and well-motivated discourse functions that explains the distribution of DOM in Balearic. Similar patterns can be found in other Romance varieties as well, thus suggesting that topicality is relevant to account for both intra-and interlinguistic variation in DOM.

Abstract
This paper addresses the East Slavic/Old Russian construction with nominative case-marking on the infinitival object, cf. zemlja paxati, ryba loviti, which has been a matter of a long debate in Slavic Studies. I discuss the probability and verifiability of diverse hypotheses on the origin, evolution and distributive features of this construction in the history of Russian.
I argue that the nominative case-marking on infinitival non-subject arguments instantiates the mechanism of differential object marking, since the speakers were able to use both the accusative and the nominative objects in the same syntactic position: the choice of the nominative vs accusative case was triggered by such pragmatic factors as communicative status and referentiality. The data provided by the historical text corpora testify that the modal semantics of the zemlja paxati construction did not favor its use in most types of embedded clauses, especially in infinitival complements of causative and volitive predicates.
In these syntactic contexts, the accusative remained the strongly preferred option.
With impersonal modal verbs and predicatives, the nominative and the accusative have
comparable frequency figures.

The differential object marking (the accusative case) emerges very early, with very few errors in the speech of children acquiring Turkish. However, its early use is restricted to definite objects, although in adult speech it can be used with a variety of different interpretations, among which are specificity, presuppositionality, and wide scope with respect to other constituents. In this study, through experiments, 4;0, 5;0 and 6;0 year old children’s comprehension of accusative indefinites was tested. The results of the experiments suggested that the children did not differentiate accusative-marked and non-case-marked objects in terms of their scope-taking properties, therefore provided evidence for an incomplete acquisition pattern despite the early emergence of the accusative case in spontaneous productions.

The article deals with the problem of transformation of animacy and personhood in the situation of Interslavic language contact. The aim of the present paper is to identify what kind of changes category of animacy (personhood) have undergone in several island dialects. This problem is considered on the material of Polish and Czech (primarily immigrant) dialects and Ruthenian idioms that are also in the situation of language island. The data of immigrant dialects were consistently compared with the dialects in the original territory. The data of each idiom were considered against the background of West and East Slavic language landscape. The main trend in the development of the grammar of the island dialect in the surrounding of the closely related language is to level the asymmetry between grammar system of this dialect and the system of dominant language. The ACC.PL=GEN.PL syncretism, that is the main marker of animacy (or of personhood), has a different coverage of vocabulary in Slavic languages. In the island dialects the syncretism tends to spread to those groups of lexemes, for which it is characteristic in the surrounding language. In some idioms the spread of the ACC.PL=GEN.PL syncretism occurs without foreign influence.