Differential object marking

One form of the more general phenomenon of differential argument marking, DOM is present in more than 300 languages.

[10] Furthermore, Tippets and Schwenter find that a factor known as relative animacy (the animacy of the direct object relative to that of the subject) is quite important in the implementation of DOM in varieties of Spanish such as Buenos Aires and Madrid Spanish.

[11] In languages like Turkish, Kazakh and Sakha, more "prominent" objects take an overt accusative marker while nonspecific ones do not.

Other examples of languages with differential object marking are Persian, Turkish, Copala Triqui, Khasi, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Kham, Hebrew and Amharic.

[14] Most modern Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi and Marathi also exhibit something similar, where direct objects must be explicitly marked as accusative in the case of definite or often animate participants.

Romanian also has DOM through the marker pe, these two and Spanish being the only Romance languages with this linguistic feature.