Differential double-marking of objects: Uralic and beyond
Peter Arkadiev (University of Freiburg)
13.05.2024, 14:15–15:45
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 (Hauptgebäude), F 007
Some of the Uralic languages (all of Samoyedic, Ugric and Mordvinic) exhibit verbal agreement with definite or topical direct objects, the phenomenon falling under the typological concept of differential object indexing. In most of these languages, direct objects can also assume overt case-marking (flagging), which in some languages (e.g. Tundra Nenets) applies to all direct objects, while in others (e.g. Mordvinic) only to definite direct objects, giving rise to a variety of patterns of differential double-marking of objects. Taking this phenomenon as a starting point, I shall discuss differential double-marking of objects from a typological perspective on the basis of a large sample of languages. In particular, I shall point out the non-trivial and somewhat overlooked fact that object indexing (resp. double-marking) in Uralic is strictly confined to patients of monotransitive verbs and themes of ditransitive verbs (i.e. direct objects) to the exclusion of recipients of ditransitive verbs (i.e. indirect objects), which appear to favour double-marking cross-linguistically.