Resumen de Differential subject marking in Azhee

Matthias Gerner

• Azhee (of the Tibeto-Burman family, spoken in China) uses differential subject marking (DSM) conditioned by animacy and the potential ambiguity of subject and object. It is shown that the Azhee differential subject marker is a highly syncretic case marker, which derived from a source case, and developed into a contrastive focus marker. DSM is presented as the diachronic source of focus, rather than the other way around. In a range of publications, topic and focus have been identified to be associate functions of case markers. Furthermore, the position of Azhee is described in a typology of differential case marking motivated by the principles of markedness, faithfulness and economy.