Towards an account of differential object marking in romanian

Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of Differential Object Marking in present-day Romanian along the lines of the DRT framework put forth by Kamp and Reyle (1993) and developed by Farkas and de Swart (2001), Farkas (2002), and Farkas and Heusinger (2003). We provide an answer to the question as to what exactly (i.e. what semantic parameter) is responsible for Differential Object Marking in Romanian. A relevant answer seems to be the notion of “determined reference” which points to the stability of value given to a variable across verifying assignment functions – the narrower the allowed variation, the more stable the expression is. It seems, however, that other factors such as “animacy” or “the intention of the speaker” also need to be taken into account.

Keywords

• differential object marking
• determined reference
• stability of reference
• animacy