Morphological effects on indexical shift in Uyghur

Abstract

Novel fieldwork on Uyghur shows indexical shift to be sensitive to morphological form. Isolated reduced indexicals always optionally shift (despite various manipulations to structural position). This is surprising for an operator-based theory, and calls for indexical-by indexical specifications of shifting ` a la pronoun-based theories. However, this optionality disappears when full and reduced indexicals co-occur, suggesting that shiftability is determined by morphological makeup instead. Current theories of indexical shift are not form-sensitive and thus inadequate. I propose that a hierarchy of pronominal forms differentiating reduced from full indexicals, and stipulate that reduced indexicals can be uninterpretable (and thus invisible to an operator), but full ones cannot.