Spanish, like many other languages (e.g. Hindi), exhibits differential object marking (DOM). It is well-known that DOM seems to be sensitive to the animacy and/or specificity of the direct object (Bossong 1985, Aissen 2003). It is argued here that the Spanish prepositional accusative, or a-marking, is a realization of the features [+accusative] and [+animate] within a nominal projection containing a determiner (D). Nominal projections lacking D are property-denoting and are not a-marked. I show that there is a direct map between the presence or absence of a-marking and the semantic type of the (animate) direct object nominal.
2012. Deleting the object marker renders the sentence ungrammatical: Comment on Casado, Martín-Loeches, Muñoz, and Fernández-Frías (2005). Language and Cognitive Processes 27:5 ► pp. 682 ff.
ESPINAL, M. TERESA & LOUISE McNALLY
2011. Bare nominals and incorporating verbs in Spanish and Catalan. Journal of Linguistics 47:1 ► pp. 87 ff.
Klein, Udo & Peter de Swart
2011. Case and referential properties. Lingua 121:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen
2009. Existential bare plurals: From properties back to entities. Lingua 119:2 ► pp. 296 ff.
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