Differential Source Marking in the languages of Europe

The article deals with encoding Source arguments of the predicate ‘take’ in the languages of Europe and identifies factors involved in Differential Source Marking. Animacy turns out to play the crucial role in this respect: while the encoding of animate Sources is rather homogeneous, inanimate Sources are encoded in different ways depending on the localization. The encoding of animate source can coincide with that of one of the two (or both) basic localizations: IN or ON or be different from it. Differential Marking of animate Sources is attested in Central Europe and implies recipient-like vs. ablative-like alternation where the encoding depends on whether something is taken for good or not and whether some extra force is applied or not. Differential Marking of inanimate Sources occurs in quite a number of European languages with different localizations; it is not always symmetrical to Differential Translocation Marking and can depend on the topicality on the argument or its semantic type.


Introduction
The paper is devoted to different means of encoding Source in European languages. As in the case with different ways of encoding Goal (Zaika 2016), this phenomenon can be accounted for both in terms of argument alternation and with reference to Differential Argument Marking (DAM) 1 . Different types of DAM can depend on both grammatical and lexical factors and be sensitive to the relevant properties both of the argument (agentivity, referentiality, animacy, semantic type) and of the predicate (aspect and aspect-like categories). For instance, Differential Goal (Translocation) Marking involves such factors as voice, information structure, the semantic type of the argument, and a number of others (Zaika 2016).
While Differential Object Marking is well studied, the other, especially locative types of DAM are less known. While there exist a number of works on Differential Goal Marking (Differential R/Goal Marking, Differential Marking of Spatial Relations, Differential Translocation Marking), sometimes described in terms of argument alternation or variation (cf. Kittilä 2008;Kittilä, Ylikoski 2011;Kittilä, Luraghi 2009;Nikitina 2010;Zaika 2016, among others), Differential Source Marking, to my knowledge, has hardly ever been analysed. This may be attributed to the fact that cross-linguistically Goal is more salient than Source (cf. Ikegami 1987;Papafragou 2010;Kabata 2013, among others). A description of Differential Source Marking in Ancient Greek (Luraghi 2011) is one of the few works on this phenomenon. Differential Place marking is analysed in (Haspelmath 2019), though his article deals with the opposition of formally marked and unmarked cases, as well as with shorter and longer forms, explained in terms of frequency asymmetries and predictability, 2 while in my analysis both members of the opposition can be equally formally marked (as is also the case with Differential R [Recipient/Goal] Marking (Kittilä 2008)). Like Differential Translocation Marking, and unlike Differential Subject Marking or Differential Object Marking, Differential Source Marking is not restricted to the core arguments and most often involves two explicitly marked cases or adpositions rather than a zero marked case.
In the present study, I will only analyse the Source (both animate and inanimate) arguments of the predicate 'take'. While the locative vs. allative alternation can appear with quite a number of sematic groups of predicates ('put', 'get stuck into', 'write down', 'lock up', 'gather') in several languages of Europe, I could not find other groups of verbs with Sources allowing for argument alternation 3 .
The rest of the article is organized as follows. Section 2 looks into animacy effects on Differential Source Marking. Sections 3 and 4 deal with Differential Marking of animate and inanimate Sources, respectively. Finally, Section 5 presents my conclusions.

Animacy
As demonstrated in (Kittilä 2008(Kittilä , 2014, animacy can play a crucial role in Goal Marking. It turns out that it can be relevant for Source marking as well. It can be debated whether animate and inanimate Sources (cf. Peter took a book from Mary vs. Peter took a book from the table) can(not) have the same semantic role. As to the opposite semantic role, Recipient (which is usually animate) is sometimes seen as one of the types of Goal in the broad sense (Kittilä 2008, 2 4 ;Kittilä, Ylikoski 2011, 32), while in other works the same phenomenon can be described as direction-recipient polysemy (Kittilä, Luraghi 2009). As animate and inanimate Sources with the predicate 'take' normally occur in complementary distribution, they will be regarded here as the same semantic role.
While the encoding of animate Source in languages of Europe is rather homogeneous, the encoding of inanimate Source depends on the exact spatial configuration involving such localizations as IN, ON, AT, UNDER, ABOVE, IN FRONT OF, BEHIND.
As shown in my previous work (Zaika 2019), animate (possessive) Source encoding tends to coincide either with recipient encoding or with some kind of inanimate Source ("ablative marking") encoding. In fact, in all languages with ablative encoding of animate Source, it is encoded as one of the two (or both) basic localizations: IN or ON.
With this in mind, language experts were asked to translate three sentences: Peter took a book from Mary with an animate Source, Peter took a book from the table and Peter took a beer from the fridge with inanimate Sources and different localizations. After that, the formal marking of the Sources in the translations was compared. Corpora and grammatical descriptions were used to check other means of encoding the Sources and sometimes to analyse the possible alternation with other localizations in inanimate Sources.
Sometimes Source pragmatically coincides with Possessor, so it can be translated as Possessor. Thus, the sentence Peter took a book from Mary can be translated into Spanish as (1a), where the preposition de encodes internal possession. In order to distinguish between the encoding of Possessor and that of animate Source, the speakers were asked to translate a sentence including both a Possessor and an animate Source (1b). Technically, the three types of Sources can be encoded in five different ways and, interestingly, all the possible five types of syncretism are present in European languages. They are represented schematically in Figure 1 and the examples are provided below. It is interesting that in the abovementioned Slavic languages (Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian), the preposition encoding inelative (IN) and superelative inanimate (ON) localizations (z/ze, z/zo 6 and z/zi respectively) originates from etymologically different prepositions *jьzъ and *sъn (Zhovtobrjuх et al. 1980, 244), having two different cognates in some other Slavic languages, cf. iz and s in Russian, z/ze and s/se in Czech, iz and s/sa in Serbian.
It should also be mentioned that in Basque, the ablative case, as well as in other locative cases, regularly encoding Source with other verbs has different forms for animate and inanimate noun phrases: etxe-tik jaso (house[sg]-abl get) 'to get from home' vs. emazte-a-gan-dik jaso (wife-sg-anim-abl get) 'to get from his wife' (Differential Marking of Goal and Source in Basque was analysed in (Creissels,  This case can be labeled "ablative vs. recipient alternation". 8 By recipient encoding I mean encoding coinciding with that of the Recipient of 'give' (it is expressed by the dative in the four above-mentioned languages). By ablative encoding I mean that of the argument of motion verbs such as 'go (away)', 'run (away)', 'return', etc. Thus, in Slovak, an animate Source of the verb 'take' can be encoded either in the same way as an argument of 'return' (cf. (7a) and (8)) or as an argument of 'give' (cf. (7b) and (8) In Czech and Slovak, recipient (dative) marking is used when something is taken without permission ( (Janda 1993, 58) for Czech, Viktoria Kniazkova, p.c. for Slovak). Still, the distribution of the markers is not similar in these closely related languages: while in Czech the dative is preferred to the prepositional construction od + GEN, in Slovak the prepositional construction is by far more frequent. 9 In Serbo-Croatian, the ablative preposition od + GEN with the verb uzeti 'take' is used when something is borrowed rather than taken for good; in Polish, the proposition od + GEN is used with the verb wziąć 'take', while dative (recipient) marking is possible with the verb zabrać 'take away' (Janda 1998, 257-258). Geographically, languages allowing for ablative vs. recipient alternation correspond to a contiguous area in Central Europe which represents an intersection of the recipient-like Sources typical of Western Europe and ablative-like Sources, typical of Eastern Europe except for East Slavic languages where the locative marking of the animate Source is more common 10 .

Differential Marking of inanimate Sources
Argument alternation of inanimate Sources is attested in East Slavic (Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian), Baltic (occasional examples in Latvian), and some other languages of our sample (English, French, Occitan, and Albanian). Unlike Differential Source Marking of animate noun phrases, this kind of alternation does not represent a contiguous area. I label this case "ablative vs. locative alternation", as one type of the encoding coincides with that of stative location (the argument of the verbs 'be', 'stay', etc.). Languages allowing for this type of alternation can differ in both the type of localization and the factors triggering the alternation. In most languages of the sample, ablative encoding is preferred to locative encoding.
The most typical localizations allowing for this alternation are IN (10a-b) and ON (11a-b), though BEHIND (12a-b) and UNDER (13a-b) are possible as well, cf. Russian: In Ukrainian and Belarusian, the alternation is possible with the localizations ON and IN; cf. Ukrainian: vzja-l-a z kamin-a take-pst-f.sg prep mantel-gen.sg 'she took from the mantel' vs. vzjav na lutсi take-pst.m.sg prep windowsill-loc.sg 'took from the windowsill'; uzja-ty z sakvojazh-a take-inf prep suitcase-gen.sg 'take from the suitcase' vs. vіz'm-esh u svoj-emu sejf-і take-fut.2sg prep refl-loc.sg.m safe-loc.sg 'you will take it from your safe' (RNC).
As Differential Source Marking in every language would require a separate extensive study, I will mention only some factors known so far.
One of the factors that seem to influence the alternation under consideration in Russian is information structure. The same factor can also account for the locative vs. allative alternation with some Russian verbs (Nikitina 2010, 283). With some nouns, locative marking of the predicate 'take' tends to correspond to the focus position, while ablative encoding marking is normally used in the topic position: As shown in this section, Differential Marking of inanimate Sources depends on whether they are encoded in the same way as static location. The two types of encoding correspond to two of the five possible types of syncretism between Location, Source, and Goal (Location ≠ Goal ≠ Source and Location = Source ≠ Goal) mentioned in (Pantcheva 2010), the former being quite common and the latter, rare. Unsurprisingly, locative encoding of the Source in European languages is much rarer than ablative encoding.

Conclusions
The most important factor accounting for Differential Source Marking in European languages is animacy, the opposition of animate and inanimate Source encoding being attested in more than a half of the languages of the sample (Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Romanian, Breton, Welsh, Basque, Polish, Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian, Russian, Serbian, Belarusian, Danish, Icelandic, Albanian, Hungarian, Lezgian, Georgian). Still, in some languages of Europe (English, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, Latvian, Lithuanian, Italian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Greek, Estonian, Finnish, Armenian, Ossetic Turkish) animate Source is encoded as either inelative or superelative inanimate Source. As can be seen from the lists of the languages, the distribution of the languages involves the genetic factor, most of the Romance and Slavic languages, unlike most of the Germanic languages, tending to encode animate and inanimate Source differently. Geographical distribution of the animacy factor is harder to observe, still it can be seen that Differential Marking of animate vs. inanimate Sources is more typical of Western and Central Europe.
In animate Sources, only Differential Source Marking can depend on whether something is taken by force or not and whether something is taken forever or not and is found in Czech, Slovak, Serbian, and Albanian. In inanimate Sources, Differential Marking can be accounted for by other factors such as the location type, information structure, or the type of the container. 14 Geographically, the languages with this type of Differential Source Marking are scattered throughout Europe, including Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Latvian, English, French, Occitan, and Albanian, East Slavic languages allowing for Differential Marking with a variety of localizations.