Sicilian DOM in a Romance perspective

The main goal of this study is an examination of differential object marking (DOM) in the Sicilian dialect of Ragusa, focusing on data from Guardiano (1999, 2000, 2010, 2022), as well as novel data. The contribution is two-fold; on the empirical side, this research is interested in mapping the Ragusa DOM contexts, given that this is a rather uncharted territory and given the wide variation with DOM in the dialects of Sicily.1A comparison with better studied Romance languages such as Spanish or Romanian will serve as a guideline, revealing the presence of various DOM contexts previously unexplored in the Ragusa dialect. On the theoretical side, the Ragusa dialect raises important questions which have been at the center of debate in the domain of DOM: is Ragusa DOM a syntactic or a purely morphological mechanism, and more generally, what type of analysis is best suited? This paper will focus on various syntactic effects induced by DOM, illustrating differences between clitic doubled DOM and DOM with no clitic doubling. This indicates that Ragusa DOM has a syntactic nature.