accusative + analytical DO markers

Sun May 26 15:55:38 UTC 2013

SORRY! The letter escaped before I had finished to write it!....

From: Paolo Ramat 
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 4:55 PM
To: Eitan Grossman ; LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
Subject: Re: accusative + analytical DO markers

Dear Typologists,
May 26 Sergey has written: the noun of these Romance varieties lost its inflection for case long ago. It is clear that both Standard Spanish and  South Italian developed their famous He visto a Maria/ Ho visto a Maria after the loss of cases. He’s right. and the introduction of the preposition a means a return to a case marking system. Of course  García-Miguel is right when he writes that “Nouns do not vary for case, and I would not say that Maria is accusative [case] in Ho visto a Maria”. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Maria is the OBJ (the goal) of the action of seeing. We have to distinguish between case marking and roles (theta roles): a system where the OBJ (= Patient/Goal) has a marker is usually called a nomin./accusat. oriented system.

To Etan Grossman (et alii):
a mí non me pesa (Cantar de Mio Cid, v. 1480)

to me.pron neg me.cl grieve.prs.3sg,  i.e. ‘It does not grieve me’ 

has a perfect pendant in Mod. It. a me non mi pesa. However I wonder whether pesar(e) is really a transit. verb with an object -at least in this context (what could be the OBJ in this sentence?). Speaking again in traditional terms, I think that mi is more a kind of Dative (the Experiencer)  rather than an Accus. (the Patient) and that a me is the emphatic focussing of mi, placed in  first position (=left dislocation). A better example would be A me non mi ha visto nessuno ‘Nobody saw me’ with a clear transit. verb like ‘to see’. Here we have a good case of two distinct flags for the OBJ. Without left dislocation (but without emphasis) you can also have Non mi [OBJ] ha visto nessuno (see M. Berretta, Accusat. preposizionale in ital. settentrionale, Vox Rom. 48/1989. She speaks (p. 34) of  the usage of a as OBJ marker as a “small step from a pragmatic to a syntactic order” ) 

Best wishes 

Paolo 

From: Eitan Grossman  
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 3:55 PM
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
Subject: Re: accusative + analytical DO markers

It's interesting that the terminology used seems to determine the way that languages look to us. So if we take the view that 'accusative case' and 'analytic direct object markers' are really different, then one can say that Spanish has a case distinction in pronouns as well as an 'analytic direct object marker.' 

But since clitics and affixes are often hard to tell apart, as are adpositions and case markers, one might just say that some varieties of Spanish have both differential indexing (la vs. nothing) and differential flagging (a vs. nothing). This would give a different grouping, since the person indexes ('pronominal clitics') wouldn't be an instance of 'case-marked pronouns,' but the accusative marker (a) would be a flag.

There are some examples already in Old Spanish of both indexing and flagging in the same clause, taken from an article by Dufter & Stark 2008*, e.g.,

a mí non me pesa (Cantar de Mio Cid, v. 1480)

to me.pron neg me.cl grieve.prs.3sg

‘It does not grieve me.’

a Él le plaziendo, muriera (Rimado de Palacio, 1378-1406)

to God him.cl like.ger die.fut.3sg

‘If He (God) likes it, he will die.’

There are also plenty of examples of this sort of thing in Semitic languages (e.g., Ge'ez, different varieties of Aramaic), where it's often called 'prolepsis.' But I'm sure that Sergey knows a lot more about this than I do. 

So I think that in order to focus the question, one might ask: are there cases in which P is simultaneously marked by two distinct flags?

*Dufter, A. & Stark, E., 2008. ‘Double indirect object marking in Spanish and Italian,’ in Seoane, E. & López-Couso, María José (eds.). Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization. Amsterdam/Philadelphia : John Benjamins. 111-129.

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Sergey Lyosov <sergelyosov at inbox.ru> wrote:

  Dear Paolo,
  yes, this is correct, but the noun of these Romance varieties lost its inflection for case long ago. It is clear that both Standard Spanish and  South Italian developed their famous He visto a Maria/ Ho visto a Maria after the loss of cases. 

  You say:

  The use of DOM is subject to certain constraints: the OBJ has to be [+human] or, at least, [+anim],[+definite] etc.   

    I believe the [+definite] constraint does not apply at least to Spanish. 
    With all best wishes,

    Sergey

  Воскресенье, 26 мая 2013, 11:53 +02:00 от Paolo Ramat <paoram at UNIPV.IT>: 

    Dear All,
    DOM as obligatory marking of Direct Object (DO) is a well-known feature of (South)Italian dialects and other Romance varieties (e.g. Catalan)
    I wouldn’t consider Ich gehe durch den Gang as an ex. of DO. As Sergey rightly states, we have here a PP  specifying the notion of ‘gehen’.
    But when you have Ho visto a Maria ‘I saw Mary’ instead of standard Italian Ho visto Maria, Catal. les monges   no estimen a les nenes  ‘the nuns don’t lik the girls’, a is a real DO marker and the construction is Nomin./Accus. The use of DOM is subject to certain constraints: the OBJ has to be [+human] or, at least, [+anim],[+definite] etc.
    References: A. Ledgeway, From Latin to Romance, OUP 2012. Iemmolo, Giorgio (2009), La marcatura differenziale dell’oggetto in siciliano antico.  Arch. Glottol. Ital. 94: 185-  225; Iemmolo, Giorgio and Gerson Klumpp (in preparation). Differential Object Marking: theoretical and empirical issues. Special issue of Linguistics.

    All best
    Paolo

    From: Sergey Lyosov 
    Sent: Saturday, May 25, 2013 9:20 PM
    To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG 
    Subject: Re: accusative + analytical DO markers

    Dear Ewa,

    thanks a lot!

    Your Polish example is as follows:

    -         zaatakować ‘attack, assault’ + NPACC

    -         napaść ‘attack, assault’ + preposition na with a NPACC (a grammaticalized allative construction).

    The cognate Russian verbs have the same government:

    atakovat' ‘attack, assault’ + NPACC

    napast' ‘attack, assault’ + preposition na with a NPACC

    Our colleague Scott T. Shell suggests me (within this thread) a similar example from

    German:

    Den            Mann    habe    ich                gesehen.

    DEF.ACC  man      AUX   1SG.NOM   saw

    'I say the man.'

    Ich                 gehe   durch     den               Gang

    1SG.NOM    go       through  DEF.ACC    hallway

    'I go through the hallway.'

     Yet neither Polish/Russian na nor German durch are Direct Object Markers pure and simple, they both retain their meanings as lative/locative prepositions. What I am looking for is a “pure” and (under certain conditions) obligatory Direct Object Marker (like `et in Hebrew) which synchronically has no other (more concrete) meanings. I wonder if this kind of DOM is at all compatible with ACC (which would amount to double marking of the Direct Object).

    I will address your Coptic example in the next email.

      All best,

      Sergey

    Суббота, 25 мая 2013, 16:37 UTC от "Zakrzewska, E.D." <E.D.Zakrzewska at uva.nl>:

      Dear Sergey,

      A good example is Polish, compare:  

      -         zaatakować ‘attack, assault’ + NPACC 

      -         napaść ‘attack, assault’ + preposition na with a NPACC (a grammaticalized allative construction).

      Another example may be Coptic (Afroasiatic, the final stage of Ancient Egyptian). In Coptic there are two strategies to mark the direct object: head-marking and dependent-marking. Head-marking involves the use of the so-called construct or pronominal state allomorph of the verb to which a nominal, respectively pronominal direct object is attached. When the verb appears in the absolute state allomorph, dependent-marking of the object by means of a preposition is required. Several prepositions can occur in this function, of which n- (dedicated preposition) and e- (grammaticalization of the allative) are most important.   

      Basic information about Coptic grammar can be found in Reintges C.H., Coptic Egyptian (Sahidic dialect): a learner's grammar, Köln: Köppe, 2004. I’m currently working on a comprehensive article on transitivity in Coptic, to be published in the Proceedings of the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome and I can send you a copy soon.  

      Best regards,

      Ewa Zakrzewska

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      Van: Discussion List for ALT [LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org] namens Sergey Lyosov [sergelyosov at inbox.ru]
      Verzonden: vrijdag 24 mei 2013 19:35
      To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
      Onderwerp: accusative + analytical DO markers

      Dear colleagues, 
      Do we know of languages that have both the accusative case and analytical direct object markers (pre- or postpositions)?

      Lots of thanks, 
      Sergey

      Dr. Sergey Loesov
      Oriental Institute
      Russian State University for the Humanities
      6 Miusskaya pl. Moscow 125267, Russia.

-- 

Eitan Grossman 
Lecturer, Department of Linguistics/School of Language Sciences

Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972 2 588 1885
Fax: +972 2 588 0265
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