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This paper examines co-occurrence restrictions involving oblique dom in (standard and leísta) Spanish and Romanian. Even a limited set of data reveals at least six puzzles, some of which are novel, ranging from differences in the syntactic be- havior of oblique dom on clitics as opposed to full DPs to unsystematicity of repair strategies. It is shown that the narrow local domain where the relevant ([person]) features are licensed plays a role in these patterns, beyond the split Agree/Case.

Differential object marking (DOM) interacts with nominal structure in complex ways across Romance languages. For example, in Spanish, it has been claimed to ban bare nominals. For Romanian, in turn, two main restrictions have been discussed: (i) ban on overt definiteness on unmodified nominals; and (ii) ban on bare nominals, if the structure contains an overt modification. This paper has two main goals. First, it examines some contexts where these types of restrictions can be lifted for some speakers; such contexts allow us to grasp a better understanding of the limits of variation permitted by DOM in its interaction with nominal structure and determiner systems. Secondly, it proposes that a theory under which DOM signals a licensing strategy beyond Case can derive the variation patterns observed in the data. Subsequently, various parameters are examined, which encode (i) how specifications responsible for DOM interact with other features in the composition of nominals; and (ii) how the resulting complex containing DOM as well as other features is resolved at PF.

This paper focuses on object experiencer (OE) causatives in Romanian, identifying a less discussed pattern of variation. The results of a pilot study indicate that for a class of speakers such predicates are not grammatical with an indefinite object, if the latter is not differentially marked. A second class of speakers can accept unmarked objects but only if access to direct evidence of the event is available. As these restrictions set aside OE causatives from physical causatives, a non-trivial question refers to the nature of this difference. An analysis is proposed that revolves around a pragmatic distinction between OE verbs and physical causatives. More precisely, insights put forward by pragmatic investigations of OE verbs have consolidated the observation, which we follow here, that these types of predicates presuppose a perception event in which the object of the asserted event is a perceiver. We further propose that the perception presupposition can be established in the context either by differential object marking (DOM), which has an independently motivated sentience feature, or by direct evidence. Subsequently, we also show that an analysis along these lines gives better results when addressing these types of splits against more general interactions between causatives, inanimate subjects and DOM; under previous accounts, the facts under discussion are either unpredicted or not straightforward to derive., Tema su ovoga rada kauzativni glagoli s objektnim iskustvenikom u rumunjskom jeziku, kod čega se identificira jedan varijacijski obrazac koji je dosada bio manje pretresan. Rezultati pilot-istraživanja upućuju na to da su za jednu skupinu govornika ovakvi predikati s neodređenim objektom agramatični ako on nije diferencijalno obilježen. Druga pak skupina govornika može prihvatiti neobilježene objekte, ali samo ako je dostupna izravna bjelodanost događaja. Kako ova ograničenja razdvajaju kauzativne glagole s objektnim iskustvenikom od fizičkih kauzativa, netrivijalno pitanje se odnosi na narav te razlike. Predlažemo analizu koje je stožer pragmatička razlika među glagolom s objektnim iskustvenikom i fizičkim kauzativima. Preciznije, uvidi dobiveni pragmatičkim ispitivanjem glagolā s objektnim iskustvenikom utvrđuju opažaj, koji ovdje slijedimo, da ova vrsta predikata pretpostavlja perceptivni događaj u kojem je perceptor objekt događaja za koji se veli da se je dogodio. Nadalje, predlažemo da se pretpostavka percepcije može ustanoviti u kontekstu bilo s pomoću diferencijalnoga obilježivanja objekta (DOM), koji ima nezavisno motivirano obilježje ćutivosti ili izravnu bjelodanost. Zatim također pokazujemo da analiza u tom pravcu daje bolje rezultate kada se tematiziraju rascijepi ovoga tipa nasuprot općenitijim interakcijama među kauzativima, neživim subjektima i DOM-om; po prijašnjim tumačenjima činjenice koje se ovdje pretresaju ili su nepredvidive ili se ne mogu izravno izvesti.

International audience; The focus of this paper is a generally ignored counterexample to animacy/person scales (Hale 1972, Silverstein 1976, Aissen 2003, a.o.), which are often assumed to be universal (Kiparsky 2008, a.o.). Drawing from Old Romance differential object marking (DOM) data, we analyse various scale reversals in Old Catalan and Old Romanian. We notice that, contrary to what the scales would predict, i) 3 rd person pronouns surface with DOM to the exclusion of 1 st and 2 nd persons, and ii) proper names take DOM to the exclusion of pronouns. We propose to derive these unexpected patterns by evaluating i) micro-parameters in the composition of Romance DPs and pronouns, and ii) the presence of more than one licensing strategy for arguments. Scale reversals result from the introduction of a novel argumentlicensing strategy based on animacy in languages where an older strategy for 1 st /2 nd persons was still active.

The focus of this paper is a generally ignored counterexample to animacy/person scales (Hale 1972, Silverstein 1976, Aissen 2003, a.o.), which are often assumed to be universal (Kiparsky 2008, a.o.). Drawing from Old Romance differential object marking data, we analyze a scale reversal setting in Old Catalan and Old Romanian. The puzzle is that 3rd person pronouns surface with differential object marking to the exclusion of 1st and 2nd persons, contrary to what the scales would predict. We propose to derive these patterns by examining i) micro-parameters in the composition of Romance DPs and pronouns; ii) the presence of more than one licensing strategy for arguments. The scale reversal results from the introduction of a novel argument licensing strategy based on animacy in languages where an older strategy for 1st/ 2nd persons was still active., Journal of Historical Syntax, Vol 5 No 1-13 (2021): Proceedings of the 20th Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) Conference

Tables and Figures

The 94 binary nominal parameters used for the experiments presented in the paper, set in the 59 languages of Table S1.

This work presents newly-discovered data involving differential marking in the Bantu language Kinande (JD42), which affects three classes: (i) goals and sources; (ii) predicative possession; (iii) external possession. These patterns reveal important insights into the nature of differential marking in Bantu. First, typical differential marking features like animacy, definiteness, and person can involve a morphological difference on a \textit{dependent

Our study endeavors to further our understanding of the ways the speaker's perspective is expressed in natural language. We analyze a rarely discussed construction, namely epistemic comparatives and their interaction with inferential indirect evidentials and epistemic modals. We show that epistemic comparatives are incompatible with inferential indirect evidentials, but are well-formed with epistemic modals. We base our discussion on data from Bulgarian and we also show that similar facts hold in Romanian, thus strengthening the empirical coverage. On the theoretical side, we claim that inferential indirect evidentials are structurally distinguished from epistemic modals. This accounts for their different behavior with epistemic comparatives, thus providing further support to accounts which take indirect evidentials and epistemic modals to be separate categories.