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This working paper discusses differential object marking (= flagging) (DOM) and differential object indexing (DOI) from a broad cross-linguistic perspective and from the perspective of two languages of Nepal, Nepali and Chintang, and it finds that "contrary to what has been assumed in the literature, DOM and DOI systems do not primarily arise from the need to distinguish between the two arguments of a transitive clause or to indicate a high degree of animacy or affectedness of the P referent per se. Rather, they reflect the special status of certain Ps in discourse.", {"references":["https://www.comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch/schikowski/publications/2015-dom-vs-doi.pdf"]}

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I examine the frequent cross-linguistic connection between Differential Object Marking (henceforth, DOM) and dislocated position, as well as the co-occurrence of DOM and Differential Object Indexation (henceforth, DOI) on the verb. Second, I discuss some severe problems these data pose for the fundamental assumption, shared by linguists of different theoretical persuasions, that i) verbal arguments can be expressed only once within the clause, and ii) that dislocated constituents have to be clause-external.

This paper examines two different strategies found in direct object encoding on the basis of a sample of 159 languages. In particular, this paper deals with the differences between symmetric (i.e. the alternation between two or more overt markers) and asymmetric (i.e. the alternation between a zero and one of more overt markers) alternations. The investigation is aimed at determining whether there are any evident cross-linguistic regularities with respect to the factors involved in these two kinds of alternation. It will be argued that the difference in the formal realization of direct object encoding is related to the distinct functions that these two structures perform cross-linguistically.While asymmetric alternations are regulated by referential properties of the direct object referent, symmetric alternations are governed by parameters related to verbal semantics, such as affectedness and boundedness, polarity, and quantification.

The present paper investigates the relationship between dislocation and differential object marking in some Romance languages. As in many languages that have a DOM system, it is usually also assumed that in Romance languages the phenomenon is regulated by the semantic features of the referents, such as animacy, definiteness, and specificity. In the languages under investigation, though, these features cannot explain the distribution and the emergence of DOM. After discussing the main theoretical approaches to the phenomenon, I will analyse DOM in four Romance languages. I will argue that DOM emerges in pragmatically and semantically marked contexts, namely with personal pronouns in dislocations. I will then show that in these languages the use of the DOM system is mainly motivated by the need to signal the markedness of these direct objects as a consequence of being used in (mainly left) dislocation as topics (cf. English “As for him, we didn’t see him”). Finally, the examination of comparative data from Persian and Amazonian languages lends further support to the advocated approach in terms of information structure