Dr Cathryn DONOHUE, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies

On the productivity of differential object marking in Nubri. Re-examining peripheral structures: theoretical and empirical perspectives on linguistic ‘(un)productivity’. The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 18 November 2022.

Abstract
Differential object marking (DOM) is the phenomenon whereby a subset of ‘prominent’ object arguments is morphologically distinguished based on (typically) inherent properties such as definiteness, specificity, animacy, or information structural considerations such as topicality or focus. There are two types of DOM: The first, and most commonly reported, involves inherent properties of the object argument determining the case marking outcome (e.g. de Swart 2007; de Hoop & Malchukov 2008; Malchukov & de Swart 2009). However, there are a few languages in which it is the simultaneous evaluation of properties of both subject and object arguments that determines the case marking outcome, a phenomenon that has been referred to as ‘global’ distinguishability or relative scenario splits (Haspelmath 2018). This paper reports on differential object marking in Nubri, a little-studied Himalayan language (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal), which has this latter kind of DOM in which object marking is determined only through simultaneous evaluation of properties of animacy of the clausemate arguments.

In this talk I present data from DOM in Nubri and its dialects and discuss the potential for this system being productive.