Differential Object Marking in ditransitive constructions in Basque

Abstract

Many dialects of Western Basque, though not all, exhibit a dative marking of direct objects in transitive constructions which shows typical constraints of Differential Object Marking (DOM). Given that this marking is unknown in Eastern Basque dialects spoken in France, and given that Spanish is a DOM language, it is generally supposed that DOM is due to language contact. It is argued that the borrowing of DOM from Spanish to Basque is additionally facilitated by the phenomenon of (animate) leísmo in the Spanish dialects surrounding the Basque dialects under investigation. In this contribution, we discuss the constraints for DOM in Basque and compare them to Spanish. After highlighting some differences between DOM in Basque and Spanish, we present a questionnaire study with speakers of the dialect of Soraluze (Deba Valley, Gipuzkoa) where we investigated the use of DOM in intransitive and ditransitive clauses. The results can be summarized as follows: (i) There is a group of speakers in this dialect that accept dative marking of the direct object in Basque just as they do absolutive marking, i.e. they accept DOM; (ii) DOM is facilitated by a higher level of knowledge of Spanish, while a high literacy in Standard Basque blocks DOM; (iii) DOM is triggered by both human definite and indefinite noun phrases; (iv) in ditransitive constructions, we cannot detect any blocking effect of the dative-marked indirect object on the dative case marker for DOM; (v) there is no difference between DOM with agreement in finite clauses and DOM without agreement in nonfinite clauses; (vi) in contrast to Spanish, we could not detect any effect of the verb class on DOM in the Basque dialect. These original results provide additional empirical evidence for the discussion of DOM in Basque dialects and for DOM blocking in ditransitive constructions.