Nina Dobrushina (Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, CNRS, Lyon), Chiara Naccarato (HSE University) and Samira Verhees (independent researcher) Discourse in contact: an areal study of wish formulas in Daghestan

Research in the domain of language contact and areal studies so far has focussed on the diffusion of lexical, phonological and grammatical elements, and to a smaller extent - lexical semantics (Koptjevskaja-Tamm et al. 2022). Much less is known about the spread of discourse forms, although the mechanisms through which discourse units spread are presumably different from that characterizing the lexicon, phonology and grammar. In this talk, we will look at the diffusion of three discourse formulas across the East Caucasus (46 languages from four families), using elicitation, grammars and dictionaries as source: commemorative formulas, farewell wishes and morning greetings. We look at instances of pattern and matter copying across the languages of the East Caucasus, and analyze their areal distribution. The case studies show that the formulas are diverse (there is great variation across the area), and that both matter and pattern copying are abundant. Some formulas cover very large areas and cross genetic boundaries. In all cases the same spread zones influenced by large lingua francas - Avar (in Central Daghestan) and Azerbaijani (in South Daghestan) - were attested. The distribution of discourse formulas thus shows a very strong areal signal; we cannot come up with any phonological or grammatical phenomena which are spread in the East Caucasus to the same extent. However, there is also evidence of inheritance, especially for those languages that are spoken outside their genealogical area.