1 May 23 th -24th CASTL Spring Conference on Differential Object Marking The Meaning of DOM in Spanish María del Mar Bassa Vanrell (University of Texas at Austin) and Juan Romeu (ILLA-CSIC) Goal: To show that DOM constructions have a special underlying structure, which explains: - the presence of a in Spanish - the properties of the elements that participate in these constructions. Main ideas: a. DOM in Spanish is due to the presence of a modifier that has to be lexicalized by a: (0) DP Mod D’ a Juan b. a-marked objects occupy a different position in the structure than non a-marked objects. The structures in which they appear are different: (1) non-DOM: DOM: …procP …procP proc NP proc PredP DO N’ Pred’ N Pred DO