DOM and Two Types of DSM in Turkish

Abstract

Turkish has a number of interacting systems of Differential (or Differentiated) Subject Marking (DSM). This paper attempts a characterization of the main types, while also looking at Differential Object Marking (DOM). I use the terms DSM and DOM in a descriptive way here, to refer to the fact that some subjects and objects are morphologically marked for Genitive and Accusative, respectively, while some other subjects and objects are not marked in this way. However, this is not how these terms have come to be used in most of the literature that appeals to these terms. As we shall see in section 2 of the text, there is a good deal of work (some of which represented in this volume), where the term ‘differential’ has a related, but distinct use within a particular functionalistic approach, based on views of archetypical subjects versus archetypical objects, viewing particular tokens of subjects and objects as ‘differentially’ marked with respect to such archetypes. I argue in this paper that Turkish facts of overt (structural) case marking, taken in some of the relevant literature as illustrative of this relativistic, functional view, actually should not be characterized in this way, but rather in an ‘absolute’ fashion, with formal conditions accounting for the presence versus absence of overt structural case markers.