The parallel data discussed in this article suggest that in Guaraní languages differential objects seem far from being exclusively highlighted in morphology. Instead, the Guaraní dom systems exhibit a differential treatment of certain direct objects within narrow syntax. Focusing on [+animate] direct objects, I supply evidence that [+dom] direct objects scramble out of their base position into a higher, vP-internal, projection, namely αP (following López 2012). This short DO scrambling is derived including data from simple transitive, ditransitive, and applicative constructions as well as from object conjunction. The short scrambling within vP is followed by further direct object dislocation into a higher functional domain, an operation described in literature as triggered by φ-feature under T° and targeting a specifier in an expanded functional domain (Freitas 2011b). DOs that move out of their base position may be marked with the overt case marker, homophonous with dat case. The homophony between dat and dom is conceived as morphological opacity in the Guaraní case. Syntactically, however, [+dom] DOs pattern together with their zero-marked acc counterparts, rather than with indirect objects.
Recent accounts have argued, for a variety of unrelated languages, that more than one case assigner or more than one syntactic licensing operation is needed for certain types of nominals (Brattico 2011, Matushansky 2012, Vainikka and Brattico 2014, Forbes 2020, Oxford 2019, Irimia in press, a.o.). Here we discuss structural aspects of differential objects in a set of genetically unrelated languages from Romance, Indo-Aryan, Tupí-Guaraní, and southwestern Basque, examining their interaction with other object licensing strategies. We propose that the licensing of certain types of differential objects, including those signalled with oblique morphology (oblique DOM), involve the presence of an additional functional projection beyond the regular Case assigner valuing [uCase]. This additional licenser acts in conjunction with the initial Case assigner/licenser on nominals which contain an additional discourse-linking ([person]) feature (related to grammaticalized animacy and specificity), beyond [uCase]. One consequence is that in some of the languages discussed here the initial [uCase] strategy, which might result in object agreement, can surface concomitantly with oblique DOM.
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