Article
Double causatives, lability and elusive agent in Mehweb
In this paper, I consider double causatives in Mehweb, a one village language spoken in Daghestan, Russia, and belonging to the Dargwa branch of East Caucasian. The capability of stacking two causative suffixes seems to be lexically restricted, and mapping onto verbal meanings that are typically P-labile in the languages of the family. Interestingly, the verbs allowing double causatives are not morphosyntactically labile in Mehweb, which is generally poor in labile verbs as compared to sister languages. I conclude that the ability to form double causatives is not a consequence of the morphosyntactic property of being labile; rather, both morphosyntactic properties follow from the same component of the lexical semantics of these verbs and ultimately from the properties of the situational concepts they convey. As a tentative functional explanation I suggest that the relevant property is the weakened status of the agentive participant.
Based on selected presentations given at the conference “Morphosyntax of Caucasian Languages” held in December 2006 at the Collège de France (Paris).
This paper contains the findings from the areal and typological research of the systems of cardinal numeral in the languages of the Caucasus. It is based on the structural analysis (which isn’t a phonetic or etymological comparison) of the numeral systems in the languages of the three autochthonic language families of the Caucasus (Kartvelian, East Caucasian and West Caucasian) and in some non-autochthonic languages of the area (Armenian, Azerbaijani, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, Ossetic, Russian, Talysh, Tat) with the focus on markers of addition.There are four types of addition markers systems in the Caucasus. This typology has been compared with the same research into cardinal numeral in the languages of the World, where five types of addition markers systems are presented. The results of the research are the two distributions of the different types of addition markers systems and some probable explanations of the difference between these distributions.
The book is a yearly almanach on Daghestanian linguistics and philology.
Mehweb Dargwa features a particle gwa, a peculiar element which is basically used for emphasizing the assertion. The paper explores some grammatical characteristics of this particle. It is shown that, in both verbal and non-verbal clauses, gwa serves as a predicative marker forming a complete predication and is an equivalent of a copula (even though, unlike the neutral copula in Mehweb, it lacks inflection). Similarly to typical East Caucasian predicative markers, gwa may occur in different positions, though its place is syntactically constrained (e.g., it cannot be embedded within syntactic islands). Still, Mehweb speakers allow gwa not to be adjoined to either the predicate or the focus. This makes the distribution of the particle surprising as compared with similar predicative markers in well-described East Caucasian languages, where they may either occur on the predicate or immediately follow the focused element.
Aims and hypothesis:
The aim of this article is to introduce a case of syntactic borrowing. I test the hypothesis that the uses of volitional forms (optative, imperative, hortative and jussive) in complement clauses of the verbs of wish and in purpose clauses in East Caucasian languages evolve under the influence of Azerbaijanian.
Design/methodology/approach and data and analysis:
The data of 13 languages are considered in the paper. To prove that shared features are contact-induced, two control languages are included in the sample. Archi belongs to the same genetic group as the languages that use volitionals in subordinate clauses, but is exposed to Azerbaijanian to a lesser extent. Axaxdərə Akhvakh belongs to another group, but has strong contacts with Azerbaijanian due to recent migration.
Findings/conclusions:
A survey shows that volitionals are used in subordinate clauses most extensively in those languages whose speakers exhibit a high level of bilingualism in Azerbaijanian, and where the contact has been longer. I assume that there is a hierarchy of borrowability of subordinate constructions involving volitionals.
Originality:
Although the influence of Turkic languages on the languages of the Caucasus in the domain of syntax has been previously discussed, the usage of volitionals in subordinate clauses has not.
Significance/implications:
It is acknowledged that social factors play an important role in shaping the linguistic consequences of contact. However, evidence of the correspondence between social factors and structural outcomes of language contact is still very scarce. The relevance of two social factors is shown in this paper: the ratio of bilingual speakers and the duration of contact.
Limitations:
I advance the hypothesis that connects the borrowability of particular constructions to their typological frequency, but the typology of subordinate uses of volitionals is not well enough investigated to make final conclusions.
The book describes the Dargwa variety spoken in the village of Tanti (Central Daghestan) and consists of a grammatical sketch and a few chapters devoted to specific aspects of grammar. The variety discussed in the vook shows complex systems of nominal and verbal inflection as well as a number of other non-trivial features. The book includes detailed discussion of the structure of the nominal phrase, the clause structure, agreement and various other phenomena and also a small corpus of glossed texts as well as lexical information.
The article deals with the phenomenon of lability (ambitransitivity), in other words, the ability of a verb to be either transitive or intransitive. I analyze the historical development of verbs which are currently labile in modern Russian. The main group of Russian labile verbs contains verbs of motion. On the basis of corpus and dictionary data, I conclude that the behaviour of the lexemes under analysis is far from being uniform. However, interestingly, for most of them, e.g., lit' 'flow', gonjat' 'urge, drive', and kružit' 'roll', the proportion of the intransitive use grows throughout the period under analysis, though for the verb kapat'/kapnut' 'drip', in contrast, the transitive use becomes more and more frequent.
In the cases when the intransitive use becomes more frequent, the semantic change matches the statistical one. In the beginning, verbs of this subtype were only used intransitively in a restricted type of contexts (e.g., for gonjat', hunting contexts represent this restricted class), where the intransitive use might be a result of object omission. Later on, the semantic range of the intransitive use became wider and the lability was no longer semantically related to object omission. I conclude that the semantic change of the uses of labile verbs often go together with semantic changes. Importantly, the borderline between A- and P-lability is not as strict as it is put sometimes: P-lability (the causative/non-causative alternation) can in some cases be traced back to A-lability (object omission).
In Standard Average European (SAE), addressees of speech verbs are marked with dative or, in languages lacking cases, with dative-like prepositions. This merger is commonly explained through a metaphor: the information transferred in a speech act is said to be construed as the object being transferred, or Theme, and the addressee as its Recipient. This status of the addressee as a derived concept, a metaphor of the Recipient, and its dative marking in many languages rather than in SAE alone, is the reason why the addressee is usually not considered to be a separate semantic role. Based on data from East Caucasian languages that use different marking for Recipients and addressees of speech, I argue that speech addressees constitute a separate semantic role, also an animate Goal, but not a metaphor of the Recipient. Focusing on case marking assigned by the main speech verb, speech acts are shown to be construed in East Caucasian as spatial configurations: the crucial component is their directedness towards the addressee. In the conclusion, I come back to SAE and question the status of the dative addressees. Taking into account that the dative often develops from lative markers, it is suggested that, in the languages with dative addressees, one should also consider an alternative to the conventional explanation: merging the Recipient and the addressee in one marking may result not from a metaphorical extension but from formal under-specification of two different animate Goals.
The paper is focused on the study of reaction of italian literature critics on the publication of the Boris Pasternak's novel "Doctor Jivago". The analysys of the book ""Doctor Jivago", Pasternak, 1958, Italy" (published in Russian language in "Reka vremen", 2012, in Moscow) is given. The papers of italian writers, critics and historians of literature, who reacted immediately upon the publication of the novel (A. Moravia, I. Calvino, F.Fortini, C. Cassola, C. Salinari ecc.) are studied and analised.
In the article the patterns of the realization of emotional utterances in dialogic and monologic speech are described. The author pays special attention to the characteristic features of the speech of a speaker feeling psychic tension and to the compositional-pragmatic peculiarities of dialogic and monologic text.