GRAMMATICALIZATION IN THE NORTH CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES (original) (raw)

Kumakhov, M.A. & K. Vamling: Complementation in the Northwest Caucasian Languages

Complementation in the Northwest and South Caucasian Languages. Caucasus Studies 5, 2018

The paper addresses the topic of complementation in the Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe) languages in the North Caucasus. The study of complementation focuses on various relations between a main clause and main predicate with a clause-like complement, as well as types of main predicates and complements in these complex constructions.

Aspects of the Grammar of Eastern Khanty

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the people of the Vasyugan, Yugan and Alexandrovo Khanty communities, the co-authors of this work, who welcomed me in their homes, and shared their knowledge and stories. There are less then 1000 speakers remaining of these dialects combined and my hope is that this ancient, sophisticated and beautiful language and culture further persists in modern time and into the future.

A note on the category of orientation in several East Caucasian languages

The category expressing movement of a Trajector with respect to a Landmark – referred to as orientation in the East Caucasian grammatical tradition – is most naturally viewed in these languages as a morphological slot in the inflection of nouns and spatial adverbs. Below, I will show that at least in some of the languages of the family this slot is not a prototypical inflection in the sense that its presence is conditioned by the morphosyntactic context of the form. Specifically, it only marks the last wordform in a spatial adverbial phrase.

Eurasian Linguistic Foundations, Part II of II Parts (Update 02.10.2022)

Special Note: Out of 54 pages of the 560 page "Eurasian Linguistic Foundations" document, I have extracted data that is reaching 40 pages! I thought there might be pattern(s) that would clarify the movement of Indo-Europeans and their interaction with other linguistic groups. While the data all look like chaos, it is surprising how much of an affect the extinct Akkadian language (last spoken ~3,000 years ago!) has had in our European and Asian linguistic foundations. Hittite, a dead language since 1150 B.C., also plays a big part in the formation of our modern European and Asian languages. Akkadian is one of the oldest Semitic languages and Hittite is considered to be the oldest Indo-European language. It is clear that the patterns shown on Akkadain and Hittite will continue to dominate our search. Hoping to see patterns involving Georgian, Basque and Armenian, I broke them into separate linguistic "correspondences." As will be seen in Part I, "Eurasian Linguistic Foundations," Basque is highly influenced by Latin and corresponds with Slavic, English, et. al. Armenian is not as associated with Greek as linguists would have us believe and Georgian corresponds with Eurasian languages more than expected. However: This discussion, Part II of "Eurasian Linguistic Foundations," attempts to make sense out of the data base of linguistic patterns in Part I. Part II is a work in progress and will be updated and is expected to exceed 200 pages. Part I of this document consists of a data base showing correspondences among Indo-European, Akkadian, Basque, Georgian, Finnish-Uralic, Altaic, and Traditional Chinese, languages. We also include extinct languages, such as Etruscan, Lycian, Milyan (Mylian), Luvian, Tocharian and Hittite. The corresponding words in Part I did not emerge as I expected, and there are many anomalies that need to be addressed which will be presented in Part II of this work. The greatest anomaly involves Akkadian, an extinct and the oldest Semetic language. It is named after Akkad, a major center of the Mesopotamian civilization(s). It was spoken from the 3 rd millennium B.C. until its replacement by Old Aramic by the 8 th century B.C. The language was the lingua Franca of much of the Ancient Near East until the Bronze Age Collapse ~1180-1150 B.C., when major capitals were destroyed, such as Troy, and the Hittite capital, Hatussa. By the Hellenic period the Akkadian language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known cuneiform text in Akkadian dates from the 1 st century B.C. (See Wikipedia.org). Because of its central position, such as during the Assyrian Empire (2025-1522 B.C.), traders were no doubt coming from afar to exchange goods with the civilizations of the Near East. Some of the curious affiliations that need to be explained include the Basques (who are located in Iberia (Spain) and southwestern France). They were known as the Vascones by Rome. While the Basque language generally corresponds with Latin-based languages, that we color "red" in Part I, there are many peculiar correspondences with Akkadian. Another language, Finnish-Uralic, displays similar anomalous features relating to Akkadian. Any connection that these or other languages may have to Akkadian would have to be well before the 8 th century B.C. I recommend that an informative application of this data base Eurasian Linguistic Foundations-Discussion on anomalous patterns of cultural exchange.

Applicative Constructions in the Northwest Caucasian languages

Fernando Zúñiga & Denis Creissels (eds.), Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages. (Comparative Handbooks in Linguistics 7.) Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2024, pp. 869–912.

This chapter describes applicative constructions in the polysynthetic Northwest Caucasian languages, which are typologically unusual in several respects. First, these languages possess an extraordinary rich system of applicatives whose semantic functions range from benefactive, comitative and malefactive to fairly specialised spatial meanings. Second, the Northwest Caucasian applicatives invariably introduce indirect objects thus almost never affecting the ergative-absolutive alignment of core arguments and serving as important and often only means of integrating peripheral participants into clausal structure. We describe morphology, syntax and semantics of applicatives, as well as a range of nontrivial phenomena such as the semantically empoverished and morphosyntactically special "dative" applicative and the uses of applicatives in agent demotion and clause-combining.

Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios

2017

The origin of comitative adverbs in Japhug Guillaume Jacques 3 Copulas originating from the imperative of 'see/look' verbs in Mande languages Denis Creissels 4 Multiple argument marking in Bantoid: From syntheticity to analyticity Larry M. Hyman 5 Grammaticalization of participles and gerunds in Indo-Aryan: Preterite, future, infinitive Annie Montaut 6 On the grammaticalization of demonstratives in Hoocąk and other Siouan languages Johannes Helmbrecht 7 Grammaticalization of tense/aspect/mood marking in Yucatec Maya Christian Lehmann 8 Diachrony and typology of Slavic aspect: What does morphology tell us?