Differential object marking in Uyghur: against specificity, towards prominence

Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Uyghur is commonly analyzed as encoding specificity through syntactic position, with recent phase-based accounts deriving interpretive variation from clause-internal movement. However, evidence from rightward displacement reveals a robust asymmetry: while leftward-displaced DOM objects allow both specific and non-specific interpretations, postverbal DOM objects are systematically restricted to specific readings. This asymmetry cannot be straightforwardly derived under position-based or phase-based approaches without additional stipulations, and thus poses a non-trivial challenge for accounts that derive interpretation from structural configuration alone. Building on this observation, the paper argues that specificity in Uyghur DOM is not directly encoded by case marking or syntactic position. Instead, I propose that DOM encodes prominence-based accessibility: a relational property that regulates the relative accessibility of referents in discourse. On this view, DOM-marked objects enter a system of prominence-based competition that enables syntactic mobility and supports a range of information-structural interpretations, while bare objects remain discourse-inert. Specificity effects arise as a secondary consequence of how referents are anchored and maintained within this system. Comparative evidence from Uyghur and Turkish supports this analysis and suggests that DOM reflects a more general interface principle governing the mapping between morphology, syntax, and discourse structure.