Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk › Academic
Description
Friulian varieties spoken in Argentina (FriAr) exhibit instances of Differential Object Marking (`DOM’, henceforth. Bossong 1985), contrary to the varieties spoken in Italy which are usually not described as DOM systems. Intuitively, this change might be attributed to transfer from the majority language, Argentinean Spanish, which displays rather extensive DOM (Di Tullio 2013, Saab 2018, a.o.). In this talk, it will be argued that the development of DOM in FriAr is independent of language contact, and it is the result of a three-stages process of grammaticalisation (Traugott 2011 a.o.) – each of which is visible in different varieties of Friulian. These stages all show a subtype of DOM that is synchronically analysed independently, but diachronically included in the grammaticalisation continuum at issue.