Search Results (4)

Spanish Differential Object Marking (DOM) is conditioned by well-known local properties of the direct object, but also by clause- and discourse-level factors. In this study, we examine whether these factors are also available as potential learning cues in child-directed speech (CDS). We analyzed longitudinal naturalistic CDS from two monolingual and three bilingual (heritage) Spanish-learning children, manually extracting transitive clauses and coding DOM presence alongside discourse specificity, verb class, coreferential pronoun (clitic doubling), relative animacy, and DO placement, plus two local cues for comparison. Regression analyses revealed that a wider range of local and global factors conditioned DOM in monolingual than in bilingual CDS. The potential informativeness of these factors as learning cues was quantified using Competition Model measures of availability, reliability, and validity. In monolingual CDS, local cues (+human, pronominal/proper name DOs) were highly reliable, and two global cues (clitic doubling and relative animacy) showed moderate reliability. Whereas discourse specificity and verb class were highly available, they were comparatively unreliable. Validity values were uniformly low; although several global cues matched or exceeded local cues in validity, this pattern largely reflected their greater availability rather than higher reliability. In bilingual CDS, reliability and validity were reduced across nearly all cues, with little differentiation among cues. These findings suggest that Spanish-learning children encounter potentially usable utterance- and discourse-level evidence for DOM in CDS, but that the robustness of this evidence is markedly weaker in bilingual input. Full article

This paper revisits the diachronic changes to Romanian DOM by focusing on the emergence of the DOM particle pe: the prenominal preposition pe is shown to undergo loss of analyzability when (i) the adjacent noun phrase is the direct object of the verb; and (ii) pe-DP falls under a certain pragmatic treatment. In other contexts, pe continues as a preposition. Loss of analyzability entails modification of the feature bundle associated with pe, as well as chunking and sensitivity of pe-noun phrases to discourse related priming factors. Briefly, the chunk consisting of two segments (i.e., prepositional phrase and nominal phrase: PP > DP) is gradually reduced to one segment (i.e., DP). This transition is context dependent; that is, it intensifies when the DPs receive a reading that involves discourse salience and animacy. The loss of analyzability regarding the properties of pe and the structural consequences it implied provide the basis for assessing the advent of animacy and definiteness/specificity as priming factors for DOM in Modern Romanian. Full article

This article analyses underground memory and the critique of capitalism in the newspaper A Folha (1972–1981), which was associated with the diocese of Nova Iguaçu under the leadership of Dom Adriano Hypólito. In the midst of the authoritarian context of the military dictatorship and the social vulnerability of the Baixada Fluminense, the newspaper went beyond its liturgical function and took on a counter-hegemonic role by articulating a religious discourse that criticised the prevailing social and economic structures. By analysing selected sources from the journal and Michael Pollak’s theory of social memory, we examine how the newspaper constructed a counter-memory that challenged hegemonic narratives by mobilising critiques of capitalism. We also seek to understand how the diocese, guided by the principles of Liberation Christianity as articulated by Michael Löwy—as a movement emerging through grassroots pastoral practise—adopted a political stance aimed at overcoming inequality and defending human dignity. Full article

Differential Object Marking (DOM) is a cross-linguistic phenomenon in which the overt marking of direct objects of certain transitive verbs exhibits distinct morpho-syntactic properties. In Turkish, DOM is realized by the accusative suffix -(y)I and is considered to be determined by parameters such as referentiality/specificity, affectedness, and topicality. In addition, Enç argues that discourse-linking, which is a backward-looking discourse function, is another relevant parameter. In this paper, we investigate whether DOM also serves a forward-looking discourse function, which has remained underexplored. Using corpus studies and offline experiments, we investigate the forward discourse function of DOM in Turkish by analyzing the frequency of anaphoric expressions referring to the direct object with vs. without DOM. Corpus data show that non-modified human indefinite direct objects with DOM are taken up significantly more often in the subsequent discourse than those without DOM. However, forced-choice and paragraph continuation tasks do not support these observations. We evaluate various parameters that might contribute to the discourse prominence of direct objects with DOM and those that might mask such effects. We conclude that there is some corpus evidence that DOM contributes to a forward-looking discourse function, though our experimental methods may be inadequate to capture it. Full article