Case Assignment on Bare Direct Objects in Turkish
Date
2020-11-19
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Abstract
Bare direct objects (BDOs) in Turkish have attracted the interest of many researchers (Aydemir, 2004; Enç, 1991; Kamali, 2015; Kornfilt, 1994, 2003; Öztürk, 2005, 2009; Travis, 2010; among others). Studies so far mostly agree that BDOs in Turkish get into a relationship with the verb, however, the hypotheses for the type of the relationship and the data provided are inconsistent. Kornfilt (1994) suggests that head of the BDO incorporates into the verb and creates a new verb head, following Baker’s (1988) proposal. Aydemir (2004) proposes that BDOs in Turkish are not syntactic arguments and that they do not occupy object position, while Öztürk (2005) proposes that BDOs pseudo-incorporate with the verb, following Massam’s (2001) proposal. Kamali (2015) disagrees with some Turkish data provided by Öztürk (2005), but still agrees with her pseudo-incorporation proposal for Turkish. Kamali (2015) concludes that lack of overt case in BDOs is due to a weak accusative feature, which leads to either pseudo-incorporation or an indefinite reading of the BDO. This paper suggests that the evidence put forward to support both incorporation and pseudo-incorporation analyses could be explained by adopting Karimi’s (2005) Two Object Position Hypothesis (TOPH) to Turkish.
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Linguistics, syntax, bare objects, case, Turkish