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Elisabeth Mayer: PhD thesis project

Syntactic variation in object arguments in Limeño contact varieties

Differential object marking (DOM) is a widely attested strategy that many genetically unrelated languages apply to optionally mark a certain range of direct objects, depending on their intrinsic properties. What actually triggers DOM is language-specific and may vary over time. Objects are ranked for their prominency on a two-dimensional scale based on the interaction of animacy and definiteness. Some languages change this scale to animacy and specificity, e.g., Turkish, Hindi-Urdu, Persian, River Plate Spanish, and Limeño Spanish.

In my thesis I explore the multiple effects of DOM(1, 2) in fieldwork data from non-standardized Limeño Spanish contact varieties spoken in Lima, Peru, where a strong migration of Quechua speakers from the Andes sets the scene for a highly dynamic process.

My analysis is cast within the formal framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar allowing for the following factors to be accounted for: inherent diachronic and synchronic variation, the syncretic casemarker a, contact and grammaticalization. The variation found can be explained by extending the analysis from purely semantic marking strategies to include the correlation of DOM with patterns of information packaging with respect to secondary topic (3) and transitivity marking (4–7).

For further reading on the topic please refer to my conference proceedings papers LFG06 (http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/LFG/11/lfg06mayer.pdf) and LFG08 (to be published at http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/LFG soon), and also to my MA Ling thesis (2003).

References