A Corpus-based Study of Differential Object Marking in Mâzandarâni

If a language makes use of a case marker to indicate the role of the object in a sentence, that marker is called “object case marker”. In some languages, only a subset of objects is marked with a case marker, which is called “differential object marking” (DOM). Definiteness and animacy of the object are among the factors for an object to be accompanied with a case marker. This article studies the effect of definiteness and animacy on the use of the object marker in Mâzandarâni, a modern North-Western Iranian language of the Southern Caspian subgroup. Studying DOM in a Mâzandarâni corpus, 148 noun-phrases as direct object of the verb were recognized, and animacy and definiteness were the influential factors on the use of object marker with an object in this corpus.