Differential Object Marking and Labeling in Spanish
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Very interesting article!
A general comment is that the article assumes a high level of proficiency in the theories the author(s) use(s) throughout the article. If the intention of the author(s) is to address a small and very well trained audience , it should stay that way and the author(s) should state that from the very beginning. If the author(s) intention is to address a bigger audience, it should be careful and have a few more theoretical sections where all the concepts are addressed. E.g. phi-features.
For the non-specialist in generative grammar or for the beginner student in linguistics, this is an article very difficult to read and follow.
Very Good selection of examples between lines 54 to 74. Regarding these examples , you pointed out in a footnote that this is Spanish from Lima. But some of the examples marked as ungrammatical , like thee example “…abrazo a la columna” are grammatical in my Spanish variety.
Later, in line 258 “Odiar *a un vecino” is also grammatical. Are all your examples taken from Spanish from Lima. Perhaps clarify that. Also, in that sense, it will strength the validity of your analysis if you point out from the beginning that your analysis is valid for this specific variety of Spanish, and may apply to other varieties
Lines 134 to 137. To support the reader, it will be appropriate to give an example after each possibility is explained. “measure out but do not delimit event (example) ; measure and delimit the event (example)
After reading the article, I have decided not to make any comments line by line. My comments can be summarized as follows:
- Clarify to whom the authors are writing this for? The audience, should be stated, is graduate students with a focus on Generative Grammar.
- The examples: it should be stated not only from what variety of Spanish these examples belong to, but also that the analysis presented is valid for the examples gathered. Some of the non-grammatical examples here are grammatical in other varieties of Spanish.
- It should also be explained in a small paragraph what criteria were followed to select the examples used on the article. It was selected following the author´s interest. Is there a method the author followed to select those sentences?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a great paper that shows an innovative mechanism to account for DOM in Spanish, skillfully using the labeling algorithm in interaction with feature structures of the heads. I do think it needs some revisions, mostly to clarify the argumentation. I also think that sections 6 and 7 should be part of a different paper (perhaps some brief remarks on the issues could stay).
I offer the following comments, which I hope will help the author.
1. With respect to parametric values, the author seems to be taking the position than parameters are lexical. It should be stated.
2. fn. 1 "there are no substantial differences between dialects in relation to the A-marker" This is actually not completely correct, as the author himself shows with respect to Argentinian Spanish. There are also some claims of differences with respect to inanimate objects, all over the literature.
3. In (1a), A is not just possible (as the paper says, line 53), but mandatory
4. For (2b), it is said that these are verbs that always govern the preposition A, but:
El soldado obedeció la orden absurda
Los planetas obedecen la ley de la gravedad
5. I believe this sentence is not well written "In Tenny (1987, 1992), there is no dependence of measure out on delimitation; may have measure out without delimitation." (the second one lacks subject)
6. All the discussion on Tenny is very confusing. For instance, it is said "Tenny (1992) distinguishes between measure out (which does not include delimitation) and affectedness (which includes measure out and delimitation)" but also "I assume Tenny (1987, 1992) for the DOM analysis of Spanish. An affected object can delimit the event, but it is not necessary to have delimitation to be affected". This seems a contradiction. Clarify.
7. Why is the case that "it is necessary to have a feature that encodes the absence of [spec]". Is it not enough with the absence of [spec]
8. Regarding (18), I understand the examples are from Fassi Fehri. It should be noted. In addition, why not to give Spanish examples? It gives the impression that Spanish does not fit this picture.
9. Is [Øatom] the same than [-atom]?
10. I don't think this works in Spanish: "an apple can be divided, and this part can also be called an apple". I cannot say "una manzana" to refer to a slice of an apple, I could call it "manzana", though, as in "Dame manzana", but "Dame una manzana" requieres the all apple.
11. (19) does not follow the logic of Hale & Ritter: there should not be [Øatom] or [Øsing], just their presence/absence
12. (21) with "solo" is fine: "(De aquel grupo) Juan solo vio una chica"; in addition, with different predicates, it's fine even with "solo": "(De aquel grupo) Juan contrató una chica"
13. Line 409: How does "see" affects its object? How is the object modified by seeing it? (obviously in quantum physics it is claimed that measuring (observing) an object changes its momentum (transforming it, then), but is that something that is on the grammar too? Unclear. Now, that does not change the fact that "see" presuppose the existence of the object. But that is not the same than affectedness.
14. Line 428: But this does not mean that any object whose existence is presupposed will be affected.
15. It is unclear what (24) shows. You can have A-marker with "tener": "Tengo a un hermano enfermo", but you cannot put "a medias" there either: "*Tengo a medias a un hermano enfermo"
16. I would recommend to drop fn. 19, since to make sense of it, it would require the proper examples, which of course will be too much for one paper. Maybe the author should write a full different paper from fn. 19
17. Line 635 (and following ones): Why the geometry of the sentences? Feature geometries characterize heads.
18. Section 5 is the most confusing to me. I think it should be rewritten to reflect the proper sequence of arguments. It assumes that the reader not only is familiar with the framework, but also that agrees with it. Even if the theoretical concepts have been presented in previous sections, section 5 is supposed to show how it works in Spanish DOM. So it is the core of the paper. It SHOULD be exceptioanally clear, but it is the opposite of that. Le me put a couple of examples, one minor, and other more serious.
The minor one first. The paper says "v* is merged with the same ONs as D" (727). For a moment I thought that v* merges with its own ONs, but it actually means that it has the same ONs than a particular D. There are plenty of small cases like this, specially in this section.
The serious one: the trees in section 5 are ill-drawn. I don't mean they are wrong, I mean they are confusing. It is not obvious what node is the head and which one is just a feature in a hierarchy. That is specially important because some trees have labels like "phi(aff-class)" for full phrases, and branching nodes inside a head. The author is trying to put too much on the trees, which are expressing both the syntactic dependencies and the internal feature structure of the heads. Nevertheless, the trees do not show something that it is crucial: where is the A-marker. For that reason, the trees do not actually help to understand the reasoning. There should be a way to draw them in a better way, perhaps spliting the syntactic relations and showing the feature structures in different trees, and poiting out to the A-marker.
19. I don't understand the analysis for (43c). How come a proper noun, a personal pronoun, and definite description could have the SAME feature structure than an indefinite pronoun (alguien) in the relevant parts? To beging with, one can say "Hay alguien en la casa" but not "*Hay ella / María / el jardinero en la casa". Furthermore, "alguien" can be without DOM in other sentences: "Tengo alguien para esa tarea" but not "María": "*Tengo María para esa tarea"
20. Line 878: what does "buscar" mean when it has affectedness? The analysis for (47) only shows that the difference is the presupposition of existence (in line with Fabregas 2013, as mentioned), but it does not show affectedness. The same with (54a,b)
21. All the discussion about Persian, Turkish and Kannada should be a separate subsection.
22. What happens if we apply the tests in (61) to (47) and (54)?
23. At the end od section 5, there must be some sort of summary.
24. I think section 6 and 7 are too much to be in the same paper than the rest of the sections. I suggest they will be taken out---and of course, they can be papers on its own. This will allow the space to better explain the details in section 5.
25. Furthermore, section 6.1 is out of place: what is it doing inside the section on inanimate objects? It should be part of the introduction.
26. With respect to section 6. Why "calificar" would be unaccusative if it accepts accusative clitcs: "Este adjetivo califica a este sustantivo, y este otro adjetivo lo califica también"
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
