In some languages with DOM, the exponents of DOM and dative are homophonous, e.g. in Spanish and Hindi. I argue that this pattern is not due to DOM objects and indirect objects being represented identically in syntax, but due to syncretism between accusative and dative case in these languages. This is indicated by a number of syntactic tests which group DOM objects with morphologically zero-coded direct objects, rather than with indirect objects, including nominalisation, relativisation, controlling secondary predicates, and passivisation. I suggest that languages with a ditransitive alternation between direct/indirect and primary/secondary objects provide further support for the syntactic difference of DOM and dative objects.

It is generally assumed that properties of the phrasal head determine the properties of a syntactic phrase as a whole. This chapter shows that some possessive constructions present a challenge to these assumptions, since in such constructions internal possessors, standardly analysed as dependents of possessed head nouns, exhibit a number of head-like properties. These properties determine the behaviour of the whole phrase in the larger syntactic domain. Such possessors are referred to as ‘prominent internal possessors’ (PIPs). The chapter provides a typological overview of PIPs based on a survey of approximately sixty languages from different parts of the world. It discusses the role of PIPs in two syntactic processes, namely, indexing on the verb via grammatical agreement or pronominal incorporation and switch-reference, as well as accompanying functional effects. It also addresses the question of how the phenomenon of PIPs can be accounted for in theoretical terms.

This monograph discusses the interaction of person features, case-marking, and agreement across languages, and models the variation using parameters and parameter hierarchies. In both inverse agreement and global case splits, the subject and the object determine the form of the verb or case-marking on its arguments together. After proposing a detailed, novel analysis of differential object marking in Hungarian, it is shown that similar agreement alternations and case splits in other languages can be analysed in a uniform way since they both rely on person. Languages differ in the way they grammaticalize person, however, explaining why in some languages definiteness determines agreement and case-marking, while in others animacy does. In this book, both types are analysed as interactions of hierarchically organized person features and the verb. The approach to person features adopted here captures effects of so-called person or animacy hierarchies in syntax by treating different persons as sets of features with different cardinalities, ordered by subset/superset relations. The author relates this analysis to the interaction of Case and agreement, implements existing generalizations about the alignment of case and agreement and discusses a new one: the analysis predicts exactly the attested types of case and agreement alignment in ditransitive constructions, and rules out an unattested one. The book presents data from eight different language families.