Animacy hierarchy and Basque influence in Spanish Syntax

Eva Mendieta-Lombardo & Isabel Molina Martos

Sat. 9:00-10:40 B

There is a historical tendency attested in many different languages towards the omission of direct objects when a particular set of semantic properties is met.

In this paper, we have focused on the omission of the clitic in clitic-doubled constructions in Basque Spanish, particularly in cases when the direct object has been left-dislocated. One of the semantic properties of object referents that has proven to be a determining factor in object omissibility is the degree of animacy of the referent. The animacy hierarchy in Basque Spanish differs from the one that characterizes non-Basque Spanish Peninsular Spanish and is explained by the influence that Basque syntax exercises on the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country.

Finally, we prove that the degree of occurrence of sentences with the typical Basque omission -that is, that of the clitic when the object is [+definite]- has a sociolinguistic function that could be labeled as an "ethnic identity marker."