As far as DOM in Turkish is concerned, the discussions in the literature focus on two main questions: (1) the syntactic status of marked versus unmarked direct objects; and (2) the difference in the semantics and pragmatics of marked and unmarked direct objects. In the following sections I briefly outline the main points of the analyses aimed at answering these two questions.
3.1 Syntactic Status of Marked Versus Unmarked Direct Objects
The main discussion regarding the difference in the syntactic status of marked and unmarked direct objects in Turkish revolves around the concept of object incorporation; more precisely, the syntactic and the partial semantic incorporation types. This section presents Orgun and Inkelas’s (
2004) arguments against the incorporation analysis for Turkish unmarked direct objects; these counter-arguments are also extended to Kazakh.
Incorporation is the compounding of a word (usually a verb or a preposition) with another element (usually a noun, pronoun or an adverb) in such a way that the resulting compound “serves the combined syntactic function of both elements” (Gerdts,
1998: 84). In object incorporation specifically, the verb forms a compound with the direct object, while preserving its syntactic function; the direct object appears inside the verb phrase, as opposed to forming an independent constituent.
It is posited that in Turkish, unmarked direct objects are incorporated, and positioned within the head of the VP; while marked, non-incorporated direct objects are V-external and take up the spec position within the VP. The incorporation claims are mainly based on the lack of accusative case marking, and on the observation that these unmarked objects are confined to the IPV position, as the examples in the preceding section demonstrated. Erguvanlı (
1984), Mithun (
1984), Kuribayashi (
1989), Gerdts (
1998), Kornfilt (
2003) and Aydemir (
2004), amongst others, maintain that unmarked direct objects in Turkish are incorporated, while Kornfilt (
1984) and Orgun and Inkelas (
2004), amongst others, are against this view.
The difference between the non-incorporated and incorporated direct objects is traditionally represented as shown in (16) and (17) respectively, simplified after Baker (
1988: 80).
(16) | Non-incorporated direct object |
| |
(17) | Incorporated direct object |
| |
As (16) and (17) show, the assumption is that unmarked, incorporated direct objects are structurally much closer to the verb than marked, non-incorporated direct objects, which form an independent syntactic phrase. In (17), where the direct object is assumed to be incorporated, the moved noun root leaves a trace (
ti) which heads a direct object phrase that receives a theta role from the verb thus satisfying the verb’s subcategorisation requirements. Kornfilt (
2003) develops this analysis by assuming that DPs are in fact embedded within Case Phrases (KPs), where the K-head is phonologically filled with an overt case-marker, the N-head is unable to move into the V, whereas if the K-head position is empty, the N can move into that position and then further into the V. The DS analysis presented in Sect.
4 does away with the need to introduce a new arbitrary phrasal category, unobservable movement, or assumed phonological processes.
As mentioned earlier, there is no consensus on the incorporation analysis, and Orgun and Inkelas (
2004) present phonological, lexical, and syntactic evidence against this view. Following Gerdts (
1998), the authors state that although theoretical approaches to incorporation might differ in many ways, one central assumption is the same—the structure resulting from noun incorporation is a (compound) word.
4
From a phonological point of view, the first member of a compound is typically stressed, like in the examples in (18), where stress is indicated by acute accent.
(18) | a) | babá-anne – literal meaning: ‘father-mother’, compound meaning: ‘paternal grandmother’ | |
| b) | kará-tahta – literal meaning: ‘black-board’, compound meaning: ‘blackboard’ | |
| | | (Orgun & Inkelas, 2004: 266) |
At first blush, the unmarked direct object-verb sequences seem to have the same stress pattern as the lexical compounds above, which differs from the stress pattern with case-marked direct objects, as in (19) and (20), where the stress is indicated by an accent mark.
(19) | Zeynep | kitab-ı | oku-dú. | |
| Zeynep | book-ACC | read-PST(3) | |
| ‘Zeynep read the book.’ | |
(20) | Zeynep | kitáp | oku-du. | |
| Zeynep | book | read-PST(3) | |
| ‘Zeynep engaged in book-reading.’ | |
| | | | (Orgun & Inkelas, 2004: 266) |
Orgun and Inkelas demonstrate, however, that the stress patterns shown in (19) and (20) can change under the influence of information-structural effects, as shown in (21) and (22).
(21) | Zeynep | kitabí | oku-du. | |
| 'Zeynep | read the BOOK (not something else).' | |
| ‘Zeynep read the book.’ | |
(22) | Zeynep | kitap | oku-dú. | |
| 'Zeynep | DID | engage in book-reading.’ | |
| | | | (Orgun & Inkelas, 2004: 267) |
The change of stress placement in (21) and (22), as compared to their pragmatically neutral counterparts in (19) and (20) respectively, indicates contrastive focus on the direct object in (21), and verum focus in (22), as reflected in the English interpretations. Orgun and Inkelas observe that such pragmatically determined change in the stress pattern is not characteristic of lexically-determined word stress, which points to the phrasal rather than incorporated and compounded nature of unmarked direct object-verb combinations.
Lexical integrity is another criterion of word-hood considered by Orgun and Inkelas in relation to the direct object incorporation analysis. By lexical integrity they mean the impossibility of another syntactic element intruding within the word, or of syntactic permutation of word-internal elements (for example, pre- or post-posing one morpheme). The authors show that a wide range of syntactic elements can intervene between an unmarked direct object and a verb. Amongst such elements are: the question particle
mI, the particle
DA ‘too’, particles like
bile ‘even’, certain clitics, and reduplicated stems, as shown in (23).
5(23) | Gül | bugün | kitap | mı | oku-du? | |
| Gül | today | book | Q | read-PST(3) | |
| ‘Is it a book/books that Gül read today?’ | |
| | (Orgun & Inkelas, 2004: 269) |
The final piece of evidence against the incorporation analysis relates to the possible syntactic complexity of unmarked direct objects. Orgun and Inkelas observe that according to the incorporation hypothesis, the direct object should be a stem or a word, but not a syntactic phrase. However, this is not the case since non-case-marked direct objects can be syntactically complex, contain determiners, quantifiers, adjectives, relative clauses, or a combination of these elements. The example below, in which the unmarked direct object is modified by the quantifier
üç ‘three’, illustrates this point.
(24) | Ali | üç | şiir | yaz-dı. | |
| Ali | three | poem | write-PST(3) | |
| ‘Ali wrote three poems.’ | |
| | | | | (Orgun & Inkelas, 2004: 271) |
It is noteworthy that Orgun and Inkelas also argue against the semantic incorporation analysis for Turkish unmarked direct object-verb sequences, which, according to van Geenhoven (
1998), can happen independently from syntactic incorporation. In semantic incorporation, the verb and the incorporated argument create a unit that identifies an activity. The examples such as that in (25) below fit this description of semantic incorporation.
(25) | Ahmet | hergün | pipo | iç-iyor. | |
| Ahmet | every.day | pipe | smoke-PROG | |
| ‘Ahmet smokes a pipe (engages in pipe-smoking) every day.’ | |
| | | | | |
Orgun and Inkelas underline that although examples such as (25) might manifest semantic incorporation, not all sequences of an unmarked direct object and verb display semantic incorporation. The authors illustrate this point with the examples in (26) below.
(26) | a) | bir | doktor | ar-ıyor-um | |
| | one | doctor | seek-PROG-1SG | |
| | ‘I am looking for a doctor.’ | |
| b) | üç | doktor | tan-ıyor-um | |
| | three | doctor | know-PROG-1SG | |
| | ‘I know three doctors.’ | |
| c) | birçok doktor | tan-ıyor-um | | |
| | many | doctor | know-PROG-1SG | |
| | ‘I know many doctors.’ | |
| | | (Orgun & Inkelas, 2004: 272) |
The objects in these examples are referential since the sentences do not describe situations where the subject engages in the activities of ‘doctor-knowing’, but rather introduces previously unspecified doctors as discourse participants. This also conforms with the canonical information-structural pattern of Turkish (and Kazakh), where the immediately preverbal position is strongly associated with focus, which essentially is the introduction of non-presupposed information. Additionally, since semantic incorporation analysis means activity naming, pluralising an unmarked direct object—which is possible and grammatical—would imply a contrast in the meaning of activity types depending on the quantity of the direct object’s referent (Orgun & Inkelas,
2004).
To sum up, as far as the syntactic status of unmarked direct objects is concerned, two main positions have been presented: the syntactic incorporation analysis, and the partial semantic incorporation analysis. It has been demonstrated that the syntactic incorporation analysis of the unmarked direct object-verb sequences does not withstand the scrutiny proposed by Orgun and Inkelas (
2004), meaning that the analyses of Turkish DOM based upon the notion of incorporation do not sufficiently explicate this phenomenon.
3.2 Semantics and Pragmatics of Marked versus Unmarked Direct Objects
The notions of definiteness and specificity are central to the discussion of the semantics and pragmatics of marked and unmarked direct objects. Namely, it is posited that unmarked direct objects are indefinite and/or non-specific, while their marked counterparts are definite and/or specific.
While it is sometimes proposed that case-marked direct objects in Turkish are definite (Orgun & Inkelas,
2004, amongst others), von Heusinger and Kornfilt (
2005: 41) convincingly demonstrate that specificity is “the most important semantic property that determines overt objective, i.e. accusative case marking in Turkish”. The authors employ von Heusinger’s (
2002) proposal to view specificity as a referential property of noun phrases, which cuts across the definite-indefinite distinction, and results in a fine-grained distinction which does not treat specific expressions as a subclass of indefinite noun phrases.
The relation between accusative case marking and specificity was briefly illustrated in the previous section, and the examples in (27)–(30) below further support this point.
(27) | Murat | kitap | ok-uyor | | |
| Murat | book | read-PROG | | |
| ‘Murat is book-reading / is reading a book.’ | |
(28) | Murat | bir | kitap | ok-uyor. | |
| Murat | a | book | read-PROG | |
| ‘Murat is reading a book.’ | |
(29) | Murat | kitab-ɨ | ok-uyor. | | |
| Murat | book-ACC | read-PROG | | |
| ‘Murat is reading the book.’ | |
(30) | Murat | bir | kitab-ɨ | ok-uyor. | |
| Murat | a | book-ACC | read-PROG | |
| ‘Murat is reading a certain book.’ | |
| | (von Heusinger & Kornfilt, 2005: 41) |
The English approximations of sentences in (27)–(30) show that the unmarked direct object in (27) can receive the incorporated interpretation, as well as the indefinite and non-specific interpretations; the addition of the indefinite article bir in (28) removes the possibility of the incorporated interpretation, and the direct object in this example can only be understood as indefinite and non-specific. The case-marked direct object in (29) has the definite and specific interpretation, and the case-marked direct object preceded by the indefinite article bir in (30) is interpreted as indefinite, but specific.
While von Heusinger’s (
2002) and von Heusinger and Kornfilt’s (
2005) conclusions regarding possible interpretations of accusatively marked direct objects in the IPV position are convincing and comprehensive, they do not provide an explanation of how the pragmatic interpretation of specificity is achieved. An assumption seems to be made that an accusative case marker contributes the pragmatics of specificity, which, in turn, implies that accusative is not a structural/morphological case.
In the same vein, Orgun and Inkelas explicitly state that since accusative case marking is used only for definite objects, the accusative case “is not in fact purely structural” (
2004: 276). This, of course, is a problematic statement, since the only supporting evidence for it lies in pragmatic interpretations of marked direct objects. Additionally, these approaches to accusative case marking of immediately preverbal direct objects do not explain the ability of the case-marked direct objects to appear anywhere in a sentence, and the inability of unmarked direct objects to do so.
As previously mentioned, all the analyses of Turkish DOM presented here can be applied to Kazakh DOM; the same questions and reservations would subsequently hold too. In what follows, I propose an alternative approach to DOM in general, and to DOM in Kazakh and Turkish in particular. The proposed DS analysis does away with the need to posit certain syntactic characteristics specific to one or another sentential position, or to claim that one of the case markers carries some additional meanings (e.g. specificity or definiteness). All pragmatic effects and syntactic restrictions are explicated via a difference in the parsing of marked and unmarked direct objects.