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Differential Object Marking in Romance: Towards microvariation
Edited by Monica Alexandrina Irimia and Alexandru Mardale
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 280] 2023
► pp. 160–191

Corsican DOM

Towards a unified local explanation

| Université de Poitiers, MSHS, FoReLLIS

After focusing in a previous work (Giancarli, 2014) on the global factors involved in the emergence of DOM in Corsican, we would like here, based on a corpus almost twice as large, to concentrate on the local factors. We identify two: the DOM-ed object is either the marker of a scanning operation or a designator. Being able to cover most of the uses in Corsican and even integrate some marginal uses, these two factors branch into four (the scanning operation can be performed with or without totalization, and designators can be rigid or flaccid) while they can at the same time be reduced to an invariant: a DOM-ed object is an argument set out of contrast.

Keywords: Corsican, designator, scanning operation, pinpointing operation, Culioli’s Theory of Enunciative Operations, dislocation, definite article, determiners, fused relative pronouns.
Article outline
  • 1.Range of use of the Corsican DOM-marker
    • 1.1Dates
    • 1.2Proper nouns
    • 1.3Some kinship terms used without a determiner
    • 1.4Strong personal pronouns
    • 1.5The demonstrative pronouns questu/quistu, quessu/quissu and quellu/quiddu
    • 1.6Some “indefinite” pronouns
  • 2.Inadequacy of a number of local factors
    • 2.1Humaness, animacy (cf. Marcellesi, 1986, p. 133 or Giancarli, 2014, pp. 199–200)
    • 2.2Definiteness
    • 2.3Various hierarchies
  • 3.What the absence of determiner tells us about Corsican DOM
  • 4.Corsican DOM: An argument outside any kind of contrast
    • 4.1Designators
      • 4.1.1Rigid designators: Proper nouns
      • 4.1.2Flaccid designators
        • 4.1.2.1Some kinship terms
        • 4.1.2.2Dates
        • 4.1.2.3Strong personal pronouns, and demonstrative pronouns questu/quistu, quessu/quissu, quellu/quiddu
        • 4.1.2.4The pronouns unu/qualchidunu/qualchissia (someone) in a peripheral use
    • 4.2Scanning operation
      • 4.2.1Scan without totalization
        • 4.2.1.1The pronouns unu/qualchidunu/qualchissia (someone) in their major and minor uses
        • 4.2.1.2The interrogative pronoun quali (who?)
      • 4.2.2Scan with totalization
        • 4.2.2.1The antecedent pronouns in non-restrictive relative clauses + the fused relative pronoun
        • 4.2.2.2The quantifying pronouns tutti (all, everyone) + nimu / nisunu (no one)
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Corpora and abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 27 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.280.07gia
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