Alternation between two overt markers on direct objects

Giorgio Iemmolo giorgio.iemmolo at GMAIL.COM
Wed Nov 30 16:29:10 UTC 2011


Dear all, 

I am writing to inquire whether anyone on this list is aware of languages where direct objects exhibit an alternation between two (or more) overt case markers.
Examples of such languages are Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc.) quite a few Indo-European languages (Russian, Polish, Ancient Greek, Vedic, etc.), and a few Polynesian languages (Samoan, Tongan, etc.), where there is an alternation i) between accusative and partitive/genitive or ii) between two overt markers, depending on a variety of factors, such as event (un)boundedness, polarity, affectedness, quantification. 

My general impression is that such an alternation in direct object encoding is fairly rare cross-linguistically. So if anybody is familiar with examples of languages where this pattern is found and is not limited to just a handful of verbs, please let me know. I would be very grateful. 

Thank you very much in advance,

Giorgio Iemmolo



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