Differential Object Marking - Other Languages

Other Languages

Other examples of languages with differential object marking are Persian, Turkish, Copala Triqui, Khasi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kham, and Amharic. In Turkish, the direct object can either have accusative case or have no (visible) case at all; when it has accusative case, it is interpreted as specific (e.g. one specific person), and otherwise it is interpreted as nonspecific (e.g. some person).

This is different from what happens in non-DOM languages, where all direct objects are uniformly marked in the same way; for instance, a language could mark all direct objects with an accusative ending (as in Latin); other language could leave all direct objects without overt marker (as in English).

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