Clitics on the Move: From Dependent Marking to Split Marking

Abstract

This paper examines differential object marking (DOM) in non-standard Limeño Spanish contact varieties (LSCV). It explores the multiple effects of DOM (Aissen 2003) in LSCV, more specifically its correlation with pat-terns of information packaging with respect to secondary topic (Dalrymple and Nikolaeva 2007) and transitivity marking (Alsina 1996, 2001, Andrews 2007). Starting with the fact that Spanish already shows mixed marking, it ar-gues that in non-standard varieties grammaticized non-agreeing object clitics promote split marking even further suggesting a typological new develop-ment through a new accusative case marker (Bossong 1991, 2003, Company 2001). 1