Publications

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Northwest Caucasian languages display a high degree of polysynthesis (manifested in complex words which bear much information on arguments and the characteristics of a situation), prefixes and suffixes, with some morphemes being capable to appear both as prefixes and suffixes, ergative-based cross-reference of core arguments and indirect objects introduced by applicatives, highly developed means of expressing locational semantics within the predicate, and intricate tense-modality-aspect systems. Although classical noun-to-verb incorporation does not occur, there are constructions akin to incorporation, especially in the nominal domain. Nouns constitute a subclass of a broad class of predicates (both morphologically and syntactically) and form word-like nominal complexes with their attributes. Morphemes demonstrate features which are not typical of morphemes in Standard Average European languages, including much autonomy reflected in affix order variation and ability to attach to complex syntactic constituents.

This article presents a survey of the morphology of highly polysynthetic Northwest Caucasian languages.

This note presents two challenges for the analysis of promise-type verbs within the Movement Theory of Control. We show that the objects of these verbs in Russian are not prepositional and are incorrectly predicted to be legitimate controllers. We also argue against analysing oblique control as movement.

The category of person is a linguistic expression of reference to a role in a speech act, including the speaker, the addressee, or a combination thereof. The values of the person category commonly, if not universally, include the opposition of first person (reference to the speaker) versus second person (reference to the addressee). Reference to neither the speaker nor the addressee is commonly—though not always—considered to be the third value of the category, third person. This article is an overview of person indexation on the verb and in possessive constructions, interaction of the category of person with other categories such as number and moods, the issue of person hierarchies as reflected in the categories of clusivity and direct-inverse systems, and some topics in the pragmatics of person. The discussion includes some topics disregarded or less touched upon in other surveys of the category of person, such as a discussion of the person relationship to commands (imperative paradigms) or logophoricity. The main focus is on the morphology of person, and other aspects of personal reference are discussed with respect to how they are expressed or differentiated by morphological material. On the other hand, personal reference in grammar and lexicon show strong affinity, making it both difficult and unnecessary to separate independent personal pronouns from person affixes in a typological perspective. In this sense, person-related lexicon and inflectional morphology are treated together.

This paper gives an account of participial clauses in Agul (Lezgic, Nakh-Daghestanian), based on a sample of 858 headed noun-modifying clauses taken from two text corpora, one spoken and one written. Noun-modifying clauses in Agul do not show syntactic restrictions on what can be relativized, and hence they instantiate the type known as GNMCCs, or general noun-modifying clause constructions. As the text counts show, intransitive verbs are more frequent than transitives and experiencer verbs in participial clauses, and among intransitive verbs, locative statives with the roots ‘be’ and ‘stay, remain’ account for half of all the uses. The asymmetry between the different relativization targets is also significant. Among the core arguments, the intransitive subject (S) is the most frequent target, patient (P) occupies second place, and agent (A) is comparatively rare. The preference of S and, in general, of S and P over A also holds true for most other Nakh-Daghestanian languages for which comparable counts are available. At the same time, Agul stands apart from the other languages by its high ratio of non-core relativization which accounts for 42% of all participial clauses. Addressee, arguments and adjuncts encoded with a locative case, as well as more general PLACE and TIME relativizations show especially high frequency, outnumbering such arguments as experiencers, recipients, and predicative and adnominal possessors. Possible reasons for the high ratio of non-argument relativization are discussed in the paper.

Mainstream approaches to the typology of reported discourse have

been based on the notion of a direct-indirect continuum: reported speech constructions

are traditionally analyzed as conforming to or deviating from the

“ideals” of European direct and indirect speech. This study argues that continuum-

based approaches fail to distinguish between two dimensions of variation

that are systematically discriminated in a number of African languages and

should therefore be treated separately. First, different constructions can be

recruited for speech reporting, ranging from paratactic to subordinate structures.

Second, languages differ in the way pronouns in speech reports are interpreted.

In European languages two different deictic strategies are associated with different

syntactic types of speech report (‘indirect’ and ‘direct’ deixis is correlated

with subordination and parataxis, respectively). In Kakabe, we argue, the choice

of pronominal values is independent of the construction’s syntax. Dissociating

the construction’s structural properties from the behavior of indexicals allows us

to describe the Kakabe strategies of speech reporting as well as account for the

seemingly puzzling behavior of reported commands. Our data shows that speech

reporting strategies of Kakabe should be treated as a type in its own right: a type

characterized by loose syntax and flexible pronominal indexicality.

This paper discusses two analyses of the Anaphor Agreement Effect (AAE, Rizzi 1990) in the light of novel data from Avar. By demonstrating that Avar anaphors trigger full, non-trivial agreement on the φ-probe, I argue that the Avar data instantiate a genuine exception to the AAE. I then compare two competing analyses of binding and the AAE: an account whereby anaphoric dependencies arise via the syntactic operation Agree (Murugesan 2018), and a theory deriving the inability of the anaphors’ φ-features to trigger full agreement from the presence of additional structural layers inside the anaphors that render the features inaccessible (Preminger 2019). I claim that the absence of the AAE in Avar supports the encapsulation analysis.

This chapter presents an overview of the Northwest Caucasian (West Caucasian, Abkhaz-Adyghe) family.

This paper describes some aspects of the West Circassian Corpus, an electronic resource containing annotated texts in West Circassian (Adyghe). We focus on some ways in which the corpus can serve as an important instrument for teaching West Circassian. In particular, it is shown that the West Circassian Corpus can be used for compiling the exercises, for checking the actual use of the language as well as for organizing small-scale research projects devoted to the functioning of West Circassian. The paper contains some examples of the use of the West Circassian Corpus for teaching purposes.