“Book” wants to be picked up: Bare objects in Uzbek and their anaphoric accessibility

Elyesa Seidel1, Zarina Levy-Forsythe2
1University of Cologne, 2Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Abstract. This paper presents the first experimental study of the anaphoric potential of bare objects in Uzbek. The results of the acceptability judgment study indicate that Uzbek bare nouns in the direct object position, analyzed as pseudo-incorporated, are accessible to discourse anaphora. The paper has three aims: (i) to address growing empirical disagreement in the literature with regards to the anaphoric accessibility of bare objects; (ii) to formulate an analysis of the data and to refine the analysis of pseudo-incorporation in Uzbek; (iii) to contribute to the research of noun incorporation by investigating a Turkic language that is understudied in the generative framework.

Keywords: discourse anaphora, bare object, pseudo-incorporation, acceptability judgment study, Uzbek, Turkic languages

For citation: Seidel Е., Levy-Forsythe Z. “Book” wants to be picked up: Bare objects in Uzbek and their anaphoric accessibility. Typology of Morphosyntactic Parameters. 2020. Vol. 3, iss. 2. Pp. 105–126.