Scale-based object marking in Spanish and Portuguese: Leísmo, null objects and DOM

• Niklas Wiskandt ^[1]
  1. [1] Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

     Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

     Kreisfreie Stadt Düsseldorf, Alemania

     
• Localización: Differential Object Marking in Romance: the third wave / coord. por Johannes Kabatek, Philipp Obrist, Albert Wall, 2021, ISBN 978-3-11-064656-6, págs. 213-241
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The prepositional marking of direct objects in Spanish is a well-known instance of Differential Object Marking (DOM), driven mainly by animacy and specificity. But it is not the only domain where Ibero-Romance object marking varies due to semantic factors: Spanish and Portuguese feature several patterns of heterogeneous object marking. This paper provides a comparative overview of prepositional DOM, also known as a-marking, leísmo and null objects. All three phenomena are found in both languages, but with considerable differences among their varieties in Europe and Latin America. It is argued that where they are present in a certain variety, they are always based on the same scale that ranks all potential direct objects with respect to specificity, animacy, (pro-)nominality and gender. This Ibero-Romance object marking scale is their most central common denominator, which is why I propose “scale-based object marking” as an umbrella term