DOM beyond Case: some notes from Uzbek

This paper addresses discusses various aspects of the syntax of objects in Uzbek, a Turkic language. The main proposal is that differential object marking in the language is best analysed as signalling an additional licensing operation beyond [uC]. This hypothesis immediately explains the similarities between certain types of unmarked nominals, namely those that do not undergo incorporation with V at the head level, and the differentially marked ones. For example, both classes give evidence of the presence of an [uC] feature which is active for case competition at the sentential level, and adjacency to V is not required in either case. Analyses that link differential marking to an obligatory [uC] licensing operation, with unmarked nominals staying unlicensed as they lack [uC], are problematic for the Uzbek data.