Search

This paper deals with the influence that nominal and verbal parameters have on DOM in the diachrony of Spanish. Comparing selected corpus studies, I will focus first on the different nominal parameters that build up the animacy and referentiality scales, in particular on animacy and definiteness. In order to clarify how far DOM has diachronically evolved, special attention will be paid to inanimate objects, which can be viewed as the alleged endpoint in the development of DOM in Spanish. Secondly, I will provide a systematic overview of the relevant verbal parameters, which include aspect, affectedness and agentivity. The study will show a complex interaction of nominal and verbal parameters, revealing some unexpected correlations: Obligatory object marking is not only found with human and strongly affected objects involved in a telic event, but also with inanimate, non-affected and agentive objects embedded in a stative event. In other words, in Spanish DOM patterns with both extremely high and extremely low transitivity. These findings sharply contrast with traditional accounts concerning the development as well as the explanation of DOM.

This paper deals with the influence that nominal and verbal parameters have on DOM in the diachrony of Spanish. Comparing selected corpus studies, I will focus first on the different nominal parameters that build up the animacy and referentiality scales, in particular on animacy and definiteness. In order to clarify how far DOM has diachronically evolved, special attention will be paid to inanimate objects, which can be viewed as the alleged endpoint in the development of DOM in Spanish. Secondly, I will provide a systematic overview of the relevant verbal parameters, which include aspect, affectedness and agentivity. The study will show a complex interaction of nominal and verbal parameters, revealing some unexpected correlations: Obligatory object marking is not only found with human and strongly affected objects involved in a telic event, but also with inanimate, non-affected and agentive objects embedded in a stative event. In other words, in Spanish DOM patterns with both extremely high and extremely low transitivity. These findings sharply contrast with traditional accounts concerning the development as well as the explanation of DOM.

This volume is an important contribution to the diachrony of non-canonical subjects in a typological perspective. The questions addressed concern the internal mechanisms and triggers for various changes that non-canonical subjects undergo, ranging from semantic motivations to purely structural explanations. The discussion encompasses the whole life-cycle of non-canonical subjects: from their emergence out of non-subject arguments to their expansion, demise or canonicization, focusing primarily on syntactic changes and changes in case-marking. The volume offers a number of different case studies comprising such languages as Italian, Spanish, Old Norse and Russian as well as languages less studied in this context, such as Latin, Classical Armenian, Baltic languages and some East Caucasian languages. Typological generalizations in the form of recurrent developmental paths are offered on the basis of data presented in this volume and in the literature.