Nominative Object in Modern North Russian Dialects

Abstract

The main way to mark the direct object in Russian dialects is the accusative case, but in some constructions the NP in direct object position is marked by the nominative case. This paper considers this similar to the Differential Object Marking (DOM) phenomenon, where an NP in the direct object position in certain conditions can be in the nominative case, but in normal conditions it is in the accusative. The study describes this phenomenon in North Russian dialects. Different syntactic constructions with nominative objects considered from the point of the DOM features: animacy, definiteness, word order, information structure, and the modality of predicates.