accusative + analytical DO markers

[Giorgio Iemmolo]

Dear Sergey,

you do actually find sporadic instances of la- or l- in both Ge'ez and Classical Arabic together with the accusative ending. As I said before, this co-occurrence seems to be very uncommon and fluid. You can find some examples in Tropper's grammar "Altäthiopisch: Grammatik des Geʻez mit Übungstexten und Glossar" and in Brockelmann's "Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen". 
Best regards,

Giorgio

Il giorno 28-mag-2013, alle ore 18:38, Sergey Lyosov ha scritto:

> Dear Giorgio,
> no, I believe the mention of Ge'ez is misplaced in your post. Ge'ez does show the preposition "la-" as a differential object marker (like numerous Aramaic and Arabic varieties), but in Ge'ez it is incompatible with the  
> accusative ending -a (the only overt case ending in the singular). This is because "la-" is still felt to be a preposition, and prepositions are not compatible with the accusative in those Semitic languages that have case endings.
>   With all best wishes,
>   Sergey 
> 
> 
> Вторник, 28 мая 2013, 12:29 +02:00 от Giorgio Iemmolo <giorgio.iemmolo at UZH.CH>:
> Dear all,
> 
> as far as I know, the co-occurrence of two accusative markers seems to be extremely rare cross-linguistically. If we exclude cases in which an accusative marker, like "a" is Romance, occurs in conjunction with accusative pronominal forms, the only cases I am aware of are the following ones:
> 
> 1. Huangshui Chinese, where the older differential object marker pa (cognate with the well-known Mandarin Chinese ba) is being gradually supplanted by another marker "xa", which most of the time seems to co-occur with pa. Interestingly, xa is the general topic marker in Huangshui Chinese (Dede 2007).
> 
> 2. Classical Armenian, where the differential object marker z- occurs with accusative plural marking (even though the situation seems to be rather fluid, see Meillet 1903: 90-91);
> 
> 3. Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopian), which shows both the preposition "la-" as a differential object marker, plus an accusative ending -a which survives from the old Semitic system. 
> 
> If you're looking for cases where the two markers do not have to co-occur, then it is probably easier to find more examples like Biloxi (cf. Matthew Dryer's Daniel Hieber's emails), which might indeed be a case of DOM where a topic marker was reanalysed as a differential object marker with direct objects, a fact that doesn't seem to be as uncommon as one might think. 
> 
> As for the co-occurrence of accusative case-marking with indexation, such as clitic doubling in Romance. I would be very cautious to compare the two and consider them alike: when historical data is available, we often see that the two constructions, albeit closely related in terms of governing parameters, do not develop at the same time. Also from a pure synchronic perspective, the overlap between the two is not complete even in languages which are usually taken as chief examples of such a co-occurrence, e.g. different Spanish varieties. 
> All the very best,
> 
> Giorgio
> 
> Il giorno 27-mag-2013, alle ore 19:23, Daniel W. Hieber ha scritto:
> 
> > Sergej, Matthew,
> > 
> > I just wanted to pass along this note from David Kaufmann, PhD candidate at the University of Kansas, regarding the postpositions in Biloxi, a language he's done some work with. Something to consider when looking at the Biloxi data.
> > 
> > best,
> > 
> > Danny
> > 
> > Omnis habet sua dona dies. ~ Martial
> > 
> > Begin forwarded message:
> > 
> >> From: David Kaufman <dvkanth2010 at gmail.com>
> >> Date: May 27, 2013, 1:05:35 PM EDT
> >> To: "Daniel W. Hieber" <dwhieb at gmail.com>
> >> Subject: Re: accusative + analytical DO markers
> >> 
> >> Thanks, Danny! Here is my response:
> >> 
> >> Dear Sergej and Matthew:
> >> 
> >> I'm not convinced that yaNka(N) is a postposition in Biloxi. It may simply be the -yaN topic marker (definite article) + kaN switch reference (different subject/topic) marker. Einaudi hadn't done a great job figuring out all of the supposed suffixes in Biloxi. The only sure way I know of marking "accusative" or direct object "case" in Biloxi is via the -kaN or -k suffix. But even this is seldom used in Biloxi texts, so I'm always hesitant to call it a "case," since it appears to be subject to speaker preference (perhaps stylistic) and not required as are cases in, for instance, Russian or Latin.
> >> 
> >> David Kaufman
> >> University of Kansas
> >> dvkanth2010 at gmail.com
> 
> 
> --
> Giorgio Iemmolo
> Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
> Universität Zürich
> Plattenstrasse 54
> CH-8032 Zürich, Switzerland
> Tel: +41 44 63 40228
> e-mail: giorgio.iemmolo at uzh.ch
> Homepage: http://www.spw.uzh.ch/iemmolo_en.html
> 


--
Giorgio Iemmolo
Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Zürich
Plattenstrasse 54
CH-8032 Zürich, Switzerland
Tel: +41 44 63 40228
e-mail: giorgio.iemmolo at uzh.ch
Homepage: http://www.spw.uzh.ch/iemmolo_en.html