Subject properties and differential object marking in modern Iron Ossetic
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30842/30346800.2026.2.2.4Keywords:
differential object marking, subject animacy, OsseticAbstract
This paper is devoted to differential object marking in Iron Ossetic. In this language, a direct object can either take the genitive case marker -ə or occur in the nominative. The choice of the marker is determined by a number of factors, the most important ones being the object’s referential type and animacy.
Abaev [1959] states that nominative is used with indefinite and/or inanimate direct objects, while genitive marks definite human participants. Genitive may be used with non-human animates and non-animates to emphasize their definiteness. Serdobolskaya [2020], using data obtained through elicitation methods, demonstrates that in the modern Ossetic language, inanimate direct objects cannot appear in the genitive case. However, during the field study conducted in 2024 in Vladikavkaz, Republic of North Ossetia Alania, I elicited examples from nine native speakers (9 women, Mean age = 35.5, SD = 12.69, from 21 to 53), with some of them providing examples where inanimate nouns were marked for the genitive. Using these data, I discovered the influence of a factor that had not been discussed previously in the relevant literature, namely the role of the subject’s animacy in the differential object marking. If the subject and the object are inanimate or both denote animals, the object is more likely to take the genitive marker, even if it usually appears in the nominative in similar contexts with animate subjects. I assume that the use of genitive marking removes potential ambiguity between the nominative-marked subject and the genitive-marked object. However, the situation seems to be different with younger speakers (at least, for those born in the 1990s), whose choice of marking does not depend on the subject’s animacy/inanimacy, since they only allow nominative forms for inanimate direct objects. When choosing a marker for an animate direct object, they take into account other properties of the direct object as, e.g. its referential type and the proto-role.
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