The interaction between animacy, definiteness and topicality in the historical development of Differential Object Marking in Spanish

Abstract Usage of a as a marker of direct objects in Spanish has been a popular topic of research, but there is no clarity on how different factors interact. The current investigation looks at the historical change in usage of a , focussing on animacy, definiteness, and topicality. We analyzed the extent to which historical texts follow state-of-the-art theories, by combining automatic and manual annotation. The results indicate that the investigated texts to a large extent confirm existing theories, with some aspects worth noting. First of all, inanimate definite objects sometimes carry a , which is impossible according to prescriptive grammars. Second, we found an increase in the usage of a with definite human referents through time, which was predicted by Aissen (2003) , although the limited amount of available data prevents us from drawing definitive conclusions. Furthermore, there is tentative evidence that topicality plays a role.