Differential object marking in French

Abstract

This study is dedicated to the question whether French possesses (optional) DOM, i.e. direct object marking, which it answers in a negative way. French is traditionally considered to lack a differential marker for the direct object (cf. e.g. Körner, 1987). However, Fagard and Mardale (2014) claim in their large corpus study (12–13 billion tokens) that differential object marking (DOM) is an optional phenomenon in some non-standard varieties of French. Our data, stemming from an acceptability study plus a corpus analysis, do not confirm these findings, as native speakers show a wide range of negative responses in the acceptability tests. As for potential non-standard French varieties more prone to DOM, our data hint to a (very) weak regional effect (South-Western France).