Budugh, a critically endangered one-village language of Azerbaijan, retains the most distinctive ... more Budugh, a critically endangered one-village language of Azerbaijan, retains the most distinctive feature of Daghestanian languages within the East Caucasian linguistic family: a rich agglutinative and layered case system. However, synchronically this is no longer a typical system of spatial cases. The expression of localizations has been taken over by adverbs and complex postpositions, along with some preverbs. One of the historically spatial cases has become a general locative case, with additional functions, while the others have drifted towards abstract, argument-marking functions. In parallel, some new directional cases have emerged, and postpositions themselves are still evolving. This paper, following a functionto-form approach, endeavours to explain this paradoxical situation by looking at the formation of each case and postposition from a comparative perspective, and thus to identify and distinguish the various layers making up what is synchronically a complex and heterogeneous system.
'The brother's son' 'The brother's daughter' 'The brother's house' Other nouns take a genitive ma... more 'The brother's son' 'The brother's daughter' 'The brother's house' Other nouns take a genitive marker -ƛa: jacːu-ƛa waha / jaha / awal 'the sister's son / daughter / house'. Both constructions denote all types of possession: bocːula-ƛa kʷana 'moonlight', hãƛa uškul 'village school'. Other grammatical cases are the dative (-ɬa) and the affective (-ba). For argument marking use of these cases, see Section 4 below on clause structure and verbal valencies. Apparently, the infinitive ending on verbs is related to the dative case, but distinguished in the orthography, as in (2). (2) du-ɬa gʷeː-ɬʲa ejaː hik'ʲi di-b. 2SG.OBL-DAT give-INF thing NEG.COP 1SG.OBL-N 'I have nothing to give you.' Tindi seven spatial cases are based on locative morphemes of which most go back to Proto-Daghestanian (cf. Alekseev 1999). The seven locational series are multiplied by three directional series, as in Table . The essive and lative series are not distinguished segmentally, but essive suffixes are stressed, while the same suffixes with lative meaning are unstressed. Table 3. Tindi locative cases essive/lative elative approximate value SUPER -la -loː 'on' APUD -qa -qoː 'at, 'behind' INTER -ƛi -ƛoː 'in, among' SUB -ƛ'i -ƛ'oː 'under' CONT -č'i -č'oː 'against' AD -χa -χoː 'near' LOC -(r)i -(r)oː
Budugh, a critically endangered one-village language of Azerbaijan, makes up with the Kryz dialec... more Budugh, a critically endangered one-village language of Azerbaijan, makes up with the Kryz dialects the Southern Lezgic branch of East Caucasian. It has generalized bipartite verb stems, characterized by the fact that verbal inflection (negation and ergative gender-number agreement with S/P) is inserted as prefixes between a preverb and the (usually monoconsonantal) root. Other, mostly post-radical modifications mark aspect, giving rise to two paradigms, perfective and imperfective, for each verb. Some verbs have a second preverb, and a handful of verbs have optional forms where the negation marker takes the place of the preverb. This article examines the origin of the different preverbs found, and the generalization of a default preverb on verbs whose cognates bear no preverb in related languages. Comparison with less innovative languages, especially Kryz but also Rutul and Tsakhur (Western Lezgic), sheds light on how Budugh renewed the verbal morphological template in a way rare in East Caucasian but well attested elsewhere, for instance in NorthWest Caucasian and some language families of North America.
In Budugh, a disappearing East Caucasian language of Azerbaijan, all verb forms are based on one ... more In Budugh, a disappearing East Caucasian language of Azerbaijan, all verb forms are based on one of two aspectual stems: the perfective and the imperfective. This paper describes the formation of imperfective stems, their finite use as debitive forms, and further derived moods and tenses. Imperfective stems converted to participles and used with a copula yield a prospective tense; stems inflected for the most common local case have become a deontic mood and, with the copula, a progressive form. A nonpast form covers other imperfective tense values. The same suffix is used to shift basic moods and tenses to past time reference or to form a counterfactual conditional mood.
Budugh, a highly endangered language of Azerbaijan, has causal-noncausal verb pairs, which can be... more Budugh, a highly endangered language of Azerbaijan, has causal-noncausal verb pairs, which can be analytic and equipollent, or synthetic and directed (causative or anticausative). We present here the synthetic anticausative derivation, available only in the imperfective aspect, and the corresponding labile perfective forms, their formation and usage, as well as semantic shifts associated with this valence change. Semantically regular alternating verbs are verbs of transformation or of controlled movement. More irregular are those belonging to derivational networks employing different spatial preverbs, and the possibility of anticausative derivation appears clearly linked to the overall meaning of the verb rather than to its root. Trends are identified that shed light on the history of the verbal lexicon diachronically, through internal or external comparison.
Thanks to the discovery in Mount Sinai Monastery of the Albanian palimpsest, which contains fragm... more Thanks to the discovery in Mount Sinai Monastery of the Albanian palimpsest, which contains fragments of the Bible in an ancient form of Udi, this language has become the earliest attested member of the East Caucasian family. However, due to its long evolution in contact with unrelated languages, both old and modern Udi show many characteristics unknown to their closest relatives, including Differential Object Marking. Combined with ergative case marking, this feature results in a rare 'tripartite alignment'. After describing the case marking of arguments in Lezgian, modern dialects of Udi and the three non-East Caucasian languages of the area (Tat, Azeri and Armenian) showing Differential Object Marking, we examine the available Old Udi / Caucasian Albanian data, compare them with data from Old Armenian, Old Turkic and Middle Iranian, and try to assess the best candidate for the source of the Udi phenomenon in the light of what is known about its history in terms of contact and sociolinguistic dominance.
Archi is a one-village language (1,000 speakers) belonging to the Lezgic branch of East Caucasian... more Archi is a one-village language (1,000 speakers) belonging to the Lezgic branch of East Caucasian. It has a large and productive class of compound verbs combining a light verb and 'coverbs' of nominal, adjectival, verbal or unknown origin. It stands out among its closest relatives in the way it has created, under the impulse of Lak, a large class of compounds using the verb bos 'say'. We consider all coverbs used with bos and its allomorphs to be ideophones and propose a semantic classification of all ideophonic verbal compounds: sound and speech verbs, verbs of non-auditory sensations, ingestion, movement, and effort-demanding activities. All primary data were extracted with partial paradigms and some examples from Chumakina et al.'s Archi online dictionary. Their phonotactic shapes, not substantially different from other parts of speech, are examined, as well as borrowings and specific 'children speech' ideophones. East Caucasian, Archi, compound verbs, ideophones
Rutul dialects belong, along with dialects of the Tsakhur language, to the Western Lezgic branch ... more Rutul dialects belong, along with dialects of the Tsakhur language, to the Western Lezgic branch of the East Caucasian family, and show typical features thereof. Rutul is divided up into two closely related languages, Northern Rutul and Southern Rutul, with hardly any intercomprehension between both. This paper is the first attempt at describing one of the two Southern Rutul dialects, Khnov, in all of its main features, based on admittedly limited material, collected by the author in the Azerbaijanian town of Sheki in 2021. This dialect is close but clearly distinct from the main Southern Rutul dialect also spoken in the same region of Azerbaijan, known as Shin-Borch.
Probably the majority of languages display differen t adnominal possessive constructions, hereaft... more Probably the majority of languages display differen t adnominal possessive constructions, hereafter called “genitive splits” d etermined by parameters such as the type of possessum, the type of the poss essor and the type of the relation between both (see Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2003; Lander 2009). However, such oppositions are only very rarely conv eyed by contrasting different genitive exponents. Rather, these splits usually involve variations in locus, i.e. the participant associated morphosyn tactically with possessive marking are expressed by oppositions between the ge nitive and other constructions. A genitive morpheme or adposition is as ociated with the possessor (dependent-marking), and / or a possessiv e marker is found on the possessum (head-marking). The most common split triggering morphosyntactic di fferences in possessive NPs is between different kinds of posses sors. The use of a genitive marker is restricted to certain classes of n minals (animacy factor), or, more broadl...
This paper deals with the detransitive voice in Kry z, an unwritten language belonging to the Lez... more This paper deals with the detransitive voice in Kry z, an unwritten language belonging to the Lezgic branch of the North-East Ca ucasian family. Nowadays three dialects of Kryz (Kryz proper, Jek, and Alik-Khaput) are spoken as a first language by at most 2000 speakers in fewer than ten localities of north-eastern Azerbaijan. Despite gen eralized bilingualism in Azerbaijani, Kryz preserves typical Proto-Lezgic fe atures. In particular, gender-number agreement with S/P (Single argument o r Patient) nouns is preor infixed to the lexical stems of simple verb s, which form a closed class. Person is expressed by free pronouns. Word o rder is strictly possessor-possessed, adjective-noun, and basically Agent-Patient-Verb; case marking and cross-referencing on the verb is g enerally ergative. Valency increase is expressed periphrastically, usi ng auxiliaries (‘do’ or ‘give’). The Kryz detransitive synthetic voice, to be described in this paper, is an unexpected singularity within Lezgic 3 an...
In Budugh, a small Daghestanian language spoken in Azerbaijan, verb-stems, defined as verb forms ... more In Budugh, a small Daghestanian language spoken in Azerbaijan, verb-stems, defined as verb forms uninflected for tense or mood, can be used either as dependent of nouns (‘participles’) and other predicates (verbal nouns or hereafter ‘masdars’, and ‘sequential converbs’) or as finite non-indicative verb forms, that is with modal use, especially in a variety of injunctive nuances. The main distinction between dependent and independent uses is prosodic: dependent verb forms adopt the prosodic features of nouns, while the same forms, if syntactically independent, share the same prosodic pattern as other indicative or more complex modal forms which are segmentally marked (suffixed) as such.
From adlocative case to debitive mood in Lezgic languages
A finite modal form with debitive meaning is found in both Kryz and Budugh, most often ending in ... more A finite modal form with debitive meaning is found in both Kryz and Budugh, most often ending in -u which seems to be the nominal adlocative case marker. Budugh uses the same form as a nominalized, non finite form, while Kryz does not. This seems to indicate that the grammaticalization process by which a case, when added to a verb stem, may come to express modality, does not necessarily imply a nominalized stage followed by desubordination.
Personal pronouns are among the most stable lexemes in the East Caucasian family, which consists ... more Personal pronouns are among the most stable lexemes in the East Caucasian family, which consists of at least forty different languages distributed over eight well established branches, with nevertheless important variations and paradigmatic reshaping across branches, languages, and even dialects. The 1st and 2nd singular pronouns have been replaced or changed shape at least once in many subparts of the family, and the main 1st person singular innovation was apparently followed by areal spread. Most languages retain two different pronouns for the 1st person plural European pronoun, but the cognates are not always clear, suggesting that although clusivity is an inherited feature of East Caucasian pronominal paradigms, its history is complex, with various types of loss and renewal. This paper attempts to draw a fine-grained and accurate picture of these 1st person plural pronouns and their history within the larger setting of personal pronouns in general. Most individual stories behind variation across branches, languages and dialects provide reasons to see inclusive pronouns as prone to be maintained or renewed over time, whereas exclusive pronouns (1st person singular or plural) are specially targeted by avoidance and replacement processes.
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Papers by Gilles Authier