Differential Object Marking and Language Contact: An Introduction to this Special Issue

This special issue includes a selection of papers that were presented at the in­ ternational workshop themed Differential Object Marking and Language Contact that was organised by Anton Antonov (INaLCO, crlao) and Alexandru Mardale (INaLCO, SeDyL) in Paris on 5 and 6 December 2014 as part of the Unity and Diversity in Differential Object Marking research project under the spon­ sorship of the Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques of the cnrs. The project sets out to propose a typology of differential object marking (henceforth dom) by bringing together specialists working on the phenome­ non from different angles and on different languages, especially languages that have been less used by typologists to date, with the aim of advancing our un­ derstanding of this widespread linguistic phenomenon. One key objective in this connection is to examine the role language contact plays in determining the properties of dom in particular dom languages, in triggering the emer­ gence of dom in previously dom­less languages, and in bringing about the loss of dom in previously dom languages. This issue addresses this objective. a subset of using an affix, an adposition or while the remaining direct ob­