The paper describes the form and behavior of placeholders in Udi and Agul, two languages belonging to the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian family. The placeholders found in these languages show clear similarity despite the fact that they developed independently. In both languages, nominal placeholders originate from interrogative pronouns, which in combination with the verb 'do' serve as a source for verbal placeholders. In Udi, placeholders further gave rise to a similative construction describing a set of individuals or events on the basis of their similarity to a specific referent or situation. Finally, we suggest hypotheses concerning the development of placeholders and the correlations between their form and the overall typological profile of a language. 1 This paper is based on our talk given at the Conference on the Languages of the Caucasus in 2007 (Leipzig, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). We are grateful to the audience of the conference as well as to Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, Margaret Maclagan, and Vera Podlesskaya for discussions. All errors are ours. This material is based upon work supported in part by the RGNF grant No. 09-04-00332a. 2 Our Udi corpus was recorded in 2004-2006 in the village of Nizh, Azerbaijan, and represents the Nizh dialect of Udi; a sample of Udi spontaneous speech was published in Ganenkov et al. (2008). The Agul corpus used here was recorded in 2004-2005 by Dmitry Ganenkov, Timur Maisak and Solmaz Merdanova in the village of Huppuq', Daghestan, and represents the Huppuq' dialect of Agul.
The current chapter elaborates on an approach which aims at the cross-linguistic comparison of lexical domains or (sub)systems. This approach is based on distinguishing among semantic domains which can be said to occur across languages and which are useful and relevant from a typological perspective. We illustrate this approach by exploring the conceptualization of motion / being in liquid medium (aquamotion), within which four general domains (swimming, sailing, drifting, and floating) are recognized. Using this distinction, we propose a typology of aquamotion systems that distinguishes between ‘rich’, ‘poor’, and ‘middle’ systems of aquamotion expressions depending on the lexical contrasts that the language displays.
The paper considers morphology, morphosyntax and semantics of causative formation in Agul, a Lezgic language of Southern Daghestan (Russia). In Agul, the two most frequent causative patterns, periphrastic and compound causatives, apparently share one source of grammaticalization. The former are combinations of 'do' with the infinitive of the lexical verb, while the latter put them together as two bound stems. However, semantically 'do'-compounds belong with non-productive causatives (labile verbs and lexical causatives) and are opposed to fully productive periphrastic causatives. All non-productive causativesonly available for intransitive verbs-have parallel periphrastic 'do'-causatives, the distinction between the parallel forms conveys the semantic contrast of direct vs. indirect causation. The paper makes an attempt at decomposing these typological categories into simpler components (intentionality, physical interaction, event structure), and provides a detailed semantic analysis of labile verbs and semantically irregular causatives. Periphrastic causatives are peculiar in their own way: they may introduce locative or ergative Causee, the choice depending on the degree of the Causee's control over the caused situation. Basing on this morphosyntactic variability, we argue that periphrastic causatives are intermediate between bi-and monoclausal constructions. * This article is based on two papers read in Kazan at LENCA II conference in June, 2004 and in Moscow at the Workshop on verbal derivation (the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences) in May, 2005. A shorter Russian version has been published as (Daniel, Maisak & Merdanova 2008). We are grateful to Ekaterina Lyutikova and Alexander Letuchiy for a discussion of the manuscript; and to the editors of this volume for their important comments. ** The author's work was supported by the Program for Fundamental Studies (Higher School of Economics). 1. Solmaz Merdanova lived in Huppuq' as a child and is trilingual in Agul, Lezgian and Russian. She is the source of all elicited examples. Examples that are not marked as elicited are natural utterances coming from the Agul Electronic Corpus of spontaneous narratives and dialogues collected in 2004-2008 in Huppuq' and Makhachkala by Dmitry Ganenkov, Timur Maisak and Solmaz Merdanova. 'When children are teasing him, doing all sorts of things to him, he throws his stick, makes them run away. ' (2) Intransitive (two arguments), elicited malla nesredin.a pːačːah gada.ji-q Mullah Nasreddin(erg) king boy-post quχ.a-s q'.u-ne believe.ipf-inf do.pf-pft 'Mullah Nasreddin made so that the king believed the boy. ' (e.g. confirmed the boy's words) (3) Intransitive (experiencer verbs), elicited baw.a-s ag w .a-s q'.u-ne-wa wun jarħun? mother-dat see.ipf-inf do.pf-pft-q you.sg(erg) wound 'Why, you let your mother see your wound?!' (the addressee was not supposed to let his/her mother see the wound in order not to make her upset) (4) Transitive …uč.i alčat.u-na sara-tː.i-w self(erg) set.on.pf-cvb other-nmlz-apud ...
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