We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní.
- Authors
Shain, Cory; Tonhauser, Judith
- Abstract
This paper explores the synchrony and diachrony of differential object marking in Paraguayan Guaraní on the basis of a quantitative study of a corpus of naturally occurring data of the modern language and an investigation of object marking in a 17th-century catechism. We show that both animacy and topicality, but not definiteness, affect whether a direct object is marked in modern Guaraní, a finding that has implications for cross-linguistic theories of differential object marking, not all of which recognize topicality as a factor. We also find no categorical constraints on differential object marking in Guaraní, contrary to Bossong (1985b). Our study of the 17th-century catechism provides further support for Bossong's (1985b, 2009) claim that Guaraní did not have differential object marking when it came into contact with Spanish. The paper concludes with a discussion of the hypothesis that differential object marking in Guaraní resulted from contact with Spanish.
- Subjects
PARAGUAY; DIRECT object (Grammar); MODERN languages; GUARANI languages; QUANTITATIVE research; CONSTRAINTS (Linguistics); VARIATION in language
- Publication
Language Variation & Change, 2010, Vol 22, Issue 3, p321
- ISSN
0954-3945
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0954394510000153