Overt and Covert Subjects in Uyghur: Not the same thing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3765/82ev6f42Keywords:
covert subject, overt subject, anaphor, indexical shifting, UyghurAbstract
Overt nominative-marked indexicals in Uyghur attitude reports are known to undergo obligatory shifting and trigger matching agreements. This paper challenges the prevailing view that the covert subject is parallel to its overt nominative counterpart. We evaluate several hypotheses that consider covert subjects to be true indexicals, but we find that none of them can fully explain all the observed readings. Drawing inspiration from previous studies on null subject licensing in Partial Null Subject languages, we suggest that the covert subject in Uyghur functions as an anaphor, while the overt subject is an indexical. The recognition of their differences opens up the possibility of associating Uyghur covert subjects with other non-indexical elements, thereby contributing to our understanding of indexical shift.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Xiang Li, Paul Portner
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Published by the LSA with permission of the author(s) under a CC BY 4.0 license.