workshop 1

Object marking has long been central to debates about the nature of agreement and clitic doubling. While traditionally treated as distinct phenomena, a growing body of work has shown that the empirical picture is more complex and that the distinction is often difficult to maintain (Jaeggli 1982; Borer 1984; Sportiche 1996; Roberts 2010; Kramer 2012; Zeller 2015; Dierks, Ranero & Paster 2014, Kallulli 2019).

African languages, and Bantu in particular, provide especially rich evidence in this domain. Object markers are typically realized as part of the verbal complex, yet their syntactic and interpretive properties often go beyond what is expected of canonical agreement. They can correlate with discourse-related factors such as topicality, givenness, or focus, and may display properties associated with pronominal elements or doubling structures (Kallulli 2000; Den Dikken 2006; Zeller 2008; Coppock & Wechsler 2012; Kramer 2014; Baker & Kramer 2018; Mursell 2018; Angelopoulos 2019). At the same time, recent work shows that morphologically similar object markers may correspond to different underlying structures across closely related languages, and may exhibit both agreement-like and clitic-like properties (Kramer 2014; Yuan 2021).

These patterns challenge a strict dichotomy between agreement and clitic doubling. In some systems, object markers have been analyzed as genuine agreement, in others as instances of clitic doubling, and in still others as reflecting a combination of both. Cross-linguistic comparison further sharpens these issues. For example, Hungarian object agreement is sensitive to definiteness without behaving like a pronominal element (Coppock & Wechsler 2012), while Inuit languages show that identical morphology can correspond to distinct underlying structures (Yuan 2021).

This workshop takes African languages as its empirical starting point and asks what they contribute to general theories of agreement and cliticization. Rather than assuming a fixed distinction, we aim to explore how object marking systems emerge from the interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and how African data can help refine existing theoretical models.

We invite contributions from formal perspectives in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, including theoretical analyses, empirical case studies, and experimental investigations.Relevant topics include (but are not limited to): the agreement vs. clitic doubling distinction, the role of discourse in object marking, cross-linguistic variation in object marking systems, the morphological-syntactic structure of object markers, a.o.

While the primary focus is on African languages, we also welcome contributions on other language families (e.g. Indo-European or Ugric) where they speak to the same issues and enable a broader cross-linguistic discussion.

By bringing together researchers working on African languages and on related phenomena across languages, the workshop aims to foster a focused and productive discussion on how object marking systems inform our understanding of the architecture of grammar.

Baker, M. & R. Kramer 2018. Doubling Clitics are pronouns: reduce and interpret. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 36: 1035–1088.

Borer, H. 1984. Parametric Syntax: Case Studies in Semitic and Romance Languages. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110808506

Coppock, E. & S. Wechsler 2012. The Objective Conjugation in Hungarian: Agreement Without Phi-Features. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 30: 699–740. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-012-9165-5

Den Dikken, M. 2006. When Hungarians Agree (to Disagree). Manuscript, CUNY Graduate Center, New York.

Diercks, M., R. Ranero & M. Paster 2014. Evidence for a Clitic Analysis of Object Markers in Kuria. In: R. Kramer, E. C. Zsiga & O. T. Boyer (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 52–70. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Jaeggli, O. 1982. Topics in Romance Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.

Kallulli, D. 2000. Direct Object Clitic Doubling in Albanian and Greek. In: F. Beukema & M. den Dikken (eds.), Clitic Phenomena in European Languages. Benjamins, 209–248. doi: https://doi.org/10.1075/la.30.09kal

Kallulli, D.. 2019. On a true universal: From clitic doubling in Albanian to object agreement in Bantu. In J. Essegbey, D.na Kallulli & A. Bodomo (eds.) The Grammar of Verbs and their Arguments: A Cross-linguistic Perspective 171-187. [Grammatical Analyses of African Languages 59] Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Kramer, R. 2012. Differentiating Agreement and Doubled Clitics: Object Markers in Amharic. In: B. Connell & N. Rolle (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 60–70. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. url: http://www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/41/paper2737.pdf

Kramer, R. 2014. Clitic doubling or object agreement: The view from Amharic. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32(2): 593–634.

Mursell, J. 2018. Object marking in Swahili is topic agreement. Jezikoslovlje, 19(3): 427-455.

Roberts, I. 2010. Agreement and Head Movement: Clitics, Incorporation, and Defective Goals. Vol. 59. Linguistic Inquiry Monographs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014304.001.0001

Sportiche, D. 1996. Clitic Constructions. In: J. Rooryck & L. Zaring (eds.), Phrase Structure and the Lexicon. Dordrecht: Springer, 213–276. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8617-7_9

Yuan, M. 2021. Diagnosing object agreement vs. clitic doubling: An Inuit case study. Linguistic Inquiry 52(1): 153–179.

Zeller, J. 2008. On Clitic Left Dislocation in Zulu. In: S. Ermisch (ed.), Frankfurt African Studies Bulletin 18/2006: Focus and Topic in African Languages. Koeln: Ruediger Koeppe Verlag, 131–156. url: http://hdl.handle.net/10413/8501

Zeller, J. 2015. Argument Prominence and Agreement: Explaining an Unexpected Object Asymmetry in Zulu. Lingua 156: 17–39. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2014.11.009