Animacy and asymmetries in differential case marking

The present paper presents a cross-linguistic overview of animacy effects in (differential) case marking, and provides an explanation for the attested patterns in terms of two competing case marking strategies. It is argued that the complexity of animacy effects in differential case marking is due to the fact that some of these patterns result from the differentiating function of case marking, while some others result from the indexing function. Further, it will be shown that under the indexing strategy animacy effects are epiphenomenal, while under the differentiating strategy they may be obscured by the availability of other disambiguating strategies, such as agreement and word order. Definiteness effects in differential case marking parallel animacy effects and may be provided a similar explanation in terms of the two basic case marking strategies. Finally, examination of animacy effects in ditransitive constructions lends further support to the advocated approach.

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