Ivan Olkhov (HSE University) Gender agreement slots in East Caucasian verbs: An areal-typological study and a case study of Andic

In this talk I will discuss the findings of two studies of gender agreement on verbs in East Caucasian languages. In most languages within this language family, gender agreement on verbs is sporadic, meaning that some verb lexemes have an agreement slot in the root while others do not. The first part of my talk will focus on a typological investigation of sporadic agreement on verbs across the East Caucasian family, which was done for a chapter of the Typological Atlas of the Languages of Daghestan. I will provide information on the number of agreeing lexemes for those languages where such data are available. These numbers vary significantly, with some languages like Rutul and Tsakhur having agreement on all verbs, while others like Agul and Lezgian have none. Additionally, I will explore the possible positions of non-root agreement slots. The second part of my presentation will delve into a case study of the Andic branch. I will examine verbs with the same meanings in languages within the sample; for each meaning I check in how many languages it is expressed by agreeing verbs and in how many languages these verbs are cognate. By analyzing this data, we can draw conclusions about how the verb agreement slots in Andic are preserved.