Replication data for: Animacy and Differential Object Marking in Old Church Slavonic

This article explores the synchronic variation between the nominative-accusative (NA) and genitive-accusative (GA) in the oldest layer of canonical Old Church Slavonic (OCS), using parallel Greek and OCS data with principled information status annotation. Firstly, the data are used to clarify the claims made about the pragmatic properties of the alternation in the previous literature. There is a good case for claiming that OCS GA marking functions as a limited type of definiteness marking, i.e. that GA objects will nearly always be previously mentioned or contextually accessible. Secondly, the data are used to examine whether the GA-NA variation correlates with any other discourse properties known to be important in differential object marking systems. The NA is found to be a marker of referential persistence: a new referent will typically be NA-marked if it is an important participant in the further narrative. Third, the focus is shifted to the relationship between subject and object properties. There are indications that the GA is preferred even with new object referents if the subject has low prominence. Thus, the variation is best understood as a situation of differential object marking conditioned by several discourse properties: definiteness, referential persistence and perhaps subject-object asymmetry.

本文深入探讨在古老的规范古教会斯拉夫语（OCS）层级中，主宾格（NA）与属宾格（GA）之间的共时性变化，通过对比平行希腊语和OCS语料，并结合原则性的信息状态标注。首先，数据被用于阐明先前文献中对该变化语用属性所提出的观点。有充分的理由认为，OCS的GA标记作为一种有限的限定性标记功能，即GA宾语几乎总是指代先前提及或语境可及的实体。其次，数据被用于检验GA-NA变化是否与已知在差异宾语标记系统中具有重要性的其他语篇属性相关联。研究发现，NA是参照持续性的标记：如果一个新参照物是后续叙事中的重要参与者，它通常会被标记为NA。第三，研究焦点转向主语和宾语属性之间的关系。有迹象表明，即使在新的宾语参照物的情况下，如果主语具有较低的重要性，GA也更受欢迎。因此，这种变化最好被理解为受多种语篇属性（限定性、参照持续性和可能的主宾不对称性）条件化的差异宾语标记情形。