Publications

The volume is devoted to the typology of the category of number in the world's languages.

The chapter provides a detailed description of the expression of number in West Circassian.

Following Stilo’s (2018) study of small-inventory classifier systems in a number of Indo-European, Turkic, Kartvelian and Semitic languages of the Araxes-Iran Linguistic Area, the paper presents an account of numeral classifiers in Udi, a Nakh-Daghestanian (Lezgic) language spoken in northern Azerbaijan. Being a pripheral member of the linguistic area in question, Udi possesses an even more reduced version of a small-classifier system, comprising one optional classifier dänä (Iranian borrowing, most likely via Azerbaijani) used with both human and inanimate nouns. A dedicated classifier for humans is lacking, although there is a word tan (also of Iranian origin) only used after numerals or quantifiers, but predominantly as a noun phrase head. The behaviour of dänä and tan is scrutinized, according to a set of parameters, in both spoken and written textual corpora of the Nizh dialect of Udi. Drawing in the data from the related Nakh-Daghestanian languages, the paper shows that among the languages of the family Udi may be unique in possessing classifiers (albeit as a result of contact), Khinalug possibly being the only other exception.

Udi (East Caucasian) possesses several means of expressing the meaning ‘other’, namely (i) the combination of a (usually distal) demonstrative with a numeral (usually ‘one’), arguably calqued from Azerbaijani, (ii) the expression originating from a combination of a demonstrative with the noun ‘arm, side’ and (iii) borrowed adjectives. It is shown that the morphological properties of some of these expressions suggest a kind of grammaticalization. The semantic differences between the expressions mostly fit into the contrast between the types of ‘other’ expressions proposed by Cinque (2015), but also display additional remarkable contrasts.

The paper describes expressions with the meaning ‘other’ in East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) languages. It is shown that four main strategies can be distinguished: i) the ‘one’-based strategy: ‘other’ includes the numeral ‘one’; ii) the demonstrative-based strategy: ‘other’ includes a demonstrative pronoun; iii) the mixed demonstrative-based + ‘one’-based strategy: ‘other’ includes both a demonstrative and the numeral ‘one’; and iv) the lexical strategy: ‘other’ is a dedicated adjective (pronoun), not necessarily derived from any other clearly discernable source.

This paper develops the claim that head properties arise (at least) due to one of the three factors: (i) the higher position of an element in a compositional structure, (ii) the informational prominence, and (iii) the development of a construction from an appositive(-like) structure. These factors are logically independent and may lead to the assignment of head properties to different elements of a construction. As a result, it is more accurate to speak not of the heads but rather of head effects, which may – but need not – concentrate around a single component of a construction.

Here we use computational Bayesian phylogenetic methods to generate a phylogeny of Tungusic languages and estimate the time-depth of the family. Our analysis is based on a dataset of 254 basic vocabulary items collected for 21 Tungusic doculects. Our results are consistent with two previously proposed basic classifications: variants of the Manchu-Tungusic and the North-South classification. We infer a time-depth between the 8th century BC and the 12th century AD. The application of Bayesian phylogenetic methods to Tungusic languages is unprecedented and provides a reliable quantitative basis for previous estimates based on classical historical linguistic and lexicostatistic approaches.

In this paper we propose a contrastive analysis of Italian and Russian idioms related to the domain of death. Death is a taboo concept which is very likely to be expressed through euphemisms and metaphors. The present analysis focuses on idioms implying the widespread DEATH IS A JOURNEY metaphor, which is based on the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema. The analysis reveals cross-linguistic similarities in the conceptualisation of death as a JOURNEY between Italian and Russian, where this metaphor is widely attested. In addition, we identify language-specific features regarding the ability of each language to focus on the source and/or goal of the metaphorical journey.

This paper discusses novel facts regarding adpositional agreement in Avar in light of recent theories of feature valuation. I show that the traditional notion of downward Agree/upward valuation is sufficient to account for the observed facts, rendering the competing mechanism of upward Agree/downward valuation superfluous. 

P(reposition)-stranding is typologically rare. Nevertheless, many languages exhibit phenomena that look like P-stranding (Campos 1991; Poplack, Zentz, and Dion 2012) or involve P-stranding under common theorizing (see Philippova 2014 and references therein). These studies argue that these are not instances of P-complement movement and provide alternative analyses. This squib addresses Russian prepositions that can be postposed to and apparently stranded by their dependents. They are proposed to be PPs rather than P-heads, with dative dependents adjoined similarly to external possessors. The analysis captures all idiosyncrasies of their nominal dependents and alleviates the need to posit exceptional P-stranding in Russian.

The Animacy Hierarchy was introduced as a cross-grammatical factor which governs, in different languages, widespread splits of nominal categories, including case or number marking. Among other phenomena, the Animacy Hierarchy has been invoked to describe the lexical distribution of associative plurals. In this paper I argue that associative plurals as an interpretation of nominal plurality is not licensed by the high position the respective noun holds on the Animacy Hierarchy but is a combined effect of coercion by the unique reference inherent to proper names and associative links easily recoverable for human referents. Interpretation of associative plurals relies upon activation of set relations its referent holds to other entities in the speech act situation. Associative plural is argued to be an indexical rather than a functional semantic category.

This paper introduces the future Atlas of Multilingualism in Daghestan, a project based on extensive field study of the language repertoires of the residents of rural highland Daghestan. The Atlas will provide quantitative data on multilingualism across a relatively compact linguistic area, which is, culturally and socially, both homogeneous and diverse. It will represent a wide range of ethnic contact situations in a qualitatively and quantitatively comparable way. The data are collected by the method of retrospective family interviews, which is designed to obtain data about bilingualism in the past. The paper gives a brief sociolinguistic overview of Daghestan, describes the method and its restrictions, explains the design of the future Atlas, and provides two sample chapters. One of the chapters describes three villages in northeast Daghestan, and the other describes two villages in southern Daghestan.

Bachet’s game is a variant of the game of Nim. There are 𝑛 objects in one pile. Two players take turns to remove any positive number of objects not exceeding some fixed number 𝑚. The player who takes the last object loses. We consider a variant of Bachet’s game in which each move is a lottery over set {1, 2, . . . ,𝑚}. The outcome of a lottery is the number of objects that player takes from the pile. We show that under some nondegenericity assumptions on the set of available lotteries the probability that the first player wins in subgame perfect Nash equilibrium converges to 1/2 as 𝑛 tends to infinity.

In this paper, we analyse case marking in Russian eventive nominalisations recently discussed in Pereltsvaig et al. (2018) with regards to two competing theories of case: the Inherent Case Theory (Woolford 2006; Woolford 2009) and the Dependent Case Theory (Marantz 1991). We contest the view that Russian eventive nominalisations display ergative alignment (Koptjevskaja-Tamm 1993) and argue that Russian is a nominative-accusative language across the board. We propose an analysis for the syntax of Russian eventive nominalisations and show that, contrary to Pereltsvaig et al. (2018), they are in principle incapable of disproving the DCT. The resulting analysis is trivially compatible with the DCT.

This paper presents a description of evidentiality marking in the Rikvani dialect of Andi. As a language spoken in the Caucasus, Andi is situated in the centre of a large area within Eurasia where evidentiality is frequently expressed with a perfect or resultative form of the verb (general indirective), and special particles marking hearsay (and sometimes also inference). Both are attested in Andi and form independent evidential paradigms. I will explore the way these forms are used in natural texts and elicitation and how they interact with each other. An important issue is to what extent evidentiality can be considered grammaticalized as part of the verbal paradigm in Andi. I will compare my observations on Andi to the systems found in other East Caucasian languages.

The chapter presents an overview of grammaticalization processes in the Lezgic languages, which constitute a group of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) family.

Head/dependent marking is a typological parameter based on whether syntactic relations, or dependencies, are marked on the head of the relation, on the non-head, on both, on neither, or elsewhere in the constituent.  It has been visible in description and comparison for some thirty years, during which time advances in analysis of phrase structure and descriptions of previously unnoticed patterns have revealed some imprecisions and gaps in the typology.  That approach has figured in descriptive and theoretical work of various kinds and has proven quite useful as far as it goes, but the expansion of descriptive and theoretical work on morphosyntax in the subsequent decades has revealed some gaps and inconsistencies in the original formulation.  These can be removed by allowing markers to be assigned not to words but to entire phrases, a move that also allows detached and neutral marking to be more comfortably accommodated in locus theory.

Head/dependent marking is a typological parameter based on whether syntactic relations, or dependencies, are marked on the head of the relation, on the non-head, on both, on neither, or elsewhere in the constituent.  It has been visible in description and comparison for some thirty years, during which time advances in analysis of phrase structure and descriptions of previously unnoticed patterns have revealed some imprecisions and gaps in the typology.  That approach has figured in descriptive and theoretical work of various kinds and has proven quite useful as far as it goes, but the expansion of descriptive and theoretical work on morphosyntax in the subsequent decades has revealed some gaps and inconsistencies in the original formulation.  These can be removed by allowing markers to be assigned not to words but to entire phrases, a move that also allows detached and neutral marking to be more comfortably accommodated in locus theory.