The best-known differential-coding scale is the well-known “extended animacy hierarchy” in (1)
(1) 1st/2nd > 3rd > human > animate > inanimate
This scale can be taken as a basis for two well-known generalizations about semantic-role coding, about differential (or split) object marking (DOM, e.g. Bossong 1991; Aissen 2003) and split (or differential) ergative marking (e.g. Dixon 1994). Informally and in a simplified way, they can be stated as in (2) and (3). Continue reading