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Variation in focus constructions in Nakh-Daghestanian
P. 363–424.
Dedicated focus constructions have been identified as an important means of managing information structure in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. In a typical focus construction, a focalizing element, which is often a grammatical marker with another basic function, is placed immediately after the focused constituent. Being present in many languages of the family, focus constructions are subject to intragenetic variation and are often cleft-like, with a predicate obligatorily taking the participial form. In the present paper I present an overview of the types of focus constructions in Nakh-Daghestanian, paying attention to the following major parameters of variation: (a) What can be the “mobile” focalizing elements that are used in focus constructions? (b) What are the restrictions on the form of the predicate in constituent focus constructions? The overview presents data from all the major Nakh-Daghestanian branches, including Nakh, Avar-Andic, Tsezic, Lak, Dargwic and Lezgic.
In book
СПб.: Институт лингвистических исследований РАН, 2023.
Poliakova E., RHEMA. РЕМА 2024 № 1 С. 28–60
Equasimilative constructions belong to the semantic field of comparison,
but have been studied to a much less extent than comparative constructions.
There are practically no areal-typological studies in this area. This paper focuses on equasimilative constructions in Khwarshi proper (Nakh-Dagestanian).
Additionally, it provides an overview of equasimilative constructions
in the languages of the Caucasus to determine the parameters that ...
Added: November 16, 2025
Filatov K., Томский журнал лингвистических и антропологических исследований 2025 № 4(50) С. 75–86
The article is dedicated to the typology of temporal mobility, that is the ability of verbal forms to have temporal opposition. Based on several Andic languages (< Avar-Andic-Tsezic < Nakh-Dagestanian), two formal subtypes of temporal mobility are introduced. The first subtype, — symmetric mobility, assumes that the basic and the past forms are equally marked, ...
Added: August 21, 2025
Меленченко Максим, Конча Кирилл, Добрушина Нина., В кн.: Songs and Trees: Papers in Memory of Sasha Vydrina.: СПб.: Институт лингвистических исследований РАН, 2023. С. 451–484.
— ...
Added: September 27, 2023
Maisak T., Родной язык: лингвистический журнал 2022 № 1 С. 50–72
The present article examines the marker guža (гужа) in Andi, a language of the Avar-Andic branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian family. This marker often co-occurs with finite verb forms, so one may think of analysing it as a verbal suffix that derives converbs from finite verbs. However, as I show with examples taken from Andi texts, ...
Added: October 31, 2022
Lander Y., Linguistics 2022 Vol. 60 No. 3 P. 809–828
This paper focuses on the noun phrase in Tanti Dargwa (East Caucasian) and presents evidence for the distinction between modifiers proper (adjectival phrases, participial relative clauses and non-genitive adnominal NPs) and determiner-like elements (demonstratives, indefinite pronouns, numerals and most quantity expressions) in this language. Crucially, this dichotomy, which presumably reflects the distinction between the determinative ...
Added: February 20, 2022
Ganenkov D., Maisak T., , in: The Oxford Handbook of Languages of the Caucasus.: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Ch. 3 P. 87–145.
This chapter provides an overview of the basic properties of the languages of the Nakh-Dagestanian (East Caucasian) family. Given the size of the family, we cannot cover even the most typical features in full here, let alone describe details of the variation that exists. Likewise, we cannot do full justice to all individual languages or even branches within the ...
Added: October 27, 2020
Maisak T., / NRU HSE. Series WP BRP "Linguistics". 2020. No. 95.
The paper presents the first description of the verb paradigm in Kina Rutul, a single-village variety of the Rutul language (Lezgic, Nakh-Daghestanian) spoken in southern Daghestan. First, I make a distinction between the stative verbs with a reduced paradigm and morphologically canonical verbs with a fuller paradigm. I present the inventory and the paradigm of ...
Added: October 27, 2020
Maisak T., Journal of Language Contact 2021 Vol. 14 P. 331–368
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 ...
Added: August 31, 2020
Maisak T., Folia Linguistica 2021 Vol. 55 No. 1 P. 1–34
The paper provides evidence for the existence of endoclitics in Andi, a Nakh-Daghestanian language of the Avar-Andic branch spoken in the Republic of Daghestan, Russia. In Andi, the additive marker (‘also’) and the intensifying marker (‘even, at all’) behave as enclitics on various types of hosts and as endoclitics when they occur on negative verb ...
Added: August 31, 2020
Lander Y., Maisak T., Iran and the Caucasus 2022 Vol. 26 No. 3 P. 272–288
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 ...
Added: June 13, 2020
Lander Yu., Maisak T., Iran and the Caucasus 2021 Vol. 25 No. 3 P. 272–283
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 ...
Added: June 13, 2020
Dobrushina N., , in: The Mehweb language: Essays on phonology, morphology and syntax.: Berlin: Language Science Press, 2019. Ch. 5 P. 118–165.
The paper is a description of moods in Mehweb, a lect of the Dargwa branch of East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) languages, Republic of Daghestan. The data were collected in the course of several field trips to the village of Mehweb. The forms of non-indicative moods and common constructions where these forms occur are described. Mehweb has ...
Added: October 28, 2019
Lander Yu., , in: The Mehweb language: Essays on phonology, morphology and syntax.: Berlin: Language Science Press, 2019. Ch. 12 P. 315–331.
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 ...
Added: October 26, 2019
Lander Yu., Kozhukhar A., , in: The Mehweb language: Essays on phonology, morphology and syntax.: Berlin: Language Science Press, 2019. Ch. 11 P. 295–314.
East Caucasian relative clause constructions (RCCs) are sometimes viewed as constructed mainly on the basis of semantic and pragmatic information. In this paper, we consider RCCs in Mehweb and argue that, despite the fact that the interpretation of some of them may rely exclusively on semantics, syntactic mechanisms may also come into play in their organization. We present evidence ...
Added: October 26, 2019
Moroz G., , in: The Mehweb language: Essays on phonology, morphology and syntax.: Berlin: Language Science Press, 2019. Ch. 3 P. 17–37.
In this paper, I describe the phonetic inventory of Mehweb, consonants and vowels, as well as the main productive alternations. Two separate sections treat the rules of syllable placement and gives a preliminary treatment of pharyngealization. In Mehweb, pharyngealization is a feature which extends the basic vowel inventory [i, e, a, u] to include [oˁ] ...
Added: October 26, 2019
Verhees S., Moroz G., , in: Пятнадцатая Конференция по типологии и грамматике для молодых исследователей. Тезисы докладов (Санкт-Петербург, 22-24 ноября 2018 г.).: СПб.: ИЛИ РАН, 2018. P. 212–214.
Andi, Botlikh and Avar mostly use native ‘time’ nouns to form temporal subordinate clauses. In Andi and Botlikh the cognate nouns rihi and rihu // riw are morphologising towards temporal converb markers, however in Avar, there is no such development. meχ and other nouns in temporal expressions in Avar more frequently appear in ergative, but ...
Added: November 29, 2018
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
The volume includes chapters devoted to various aspects of Caucasian languages. ...
Added: November 17, 2018
Moroz George, Verhees Samira, Iran and the Caucasus 2019 Т. 23 № 3 С. 268–282
This paper evaluates the inter speaker variation in noun class assignment among speakers of the Zilo dialect of Andi (a Nakh-Daghestanian language spoken in the Republic of Daghestan). The nominal lexicon in Andi is divided in three to six classes, depending on the dialect. In dialects with more numerous classes, there are two to three ...
Added: October 23, 2018
Verhees S., Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета. Серия 3: Филология 2018 № 57 С. 110–123
The paper considers the grammatical expression of information source with past tense forms of the verb in the Nakh-Daghestanian languages. These languages are spoken on a relatively compact territory in the North Caucasus and, partly, in the Transcaucasian area. The area is part of a larger area ranging from the Balkan Peninsula to Central Asia, ...
Added: September 19, 2018
Maisak T., , in: The semantics of verbal categories in Nakh-Daghestanian languages: Tense, aspect, evidentiality, mood and modalityVol. 16.: Leiden: Brill, 2018. P. 120–165.
The paper considers the two main synthetic past tenses in Udi and argues that they should be identified as the aorist (‘perfective past’) and the perfect (‘past with present relevance’) respectively. While the former is the main means of foregounding in discourse, the latter has the prototypical ‘current relevance’ meaning, and is also used with ...
Added: September 15, 2018
Leiden: Brill, 2018.
The Caucasus is the place with the greatest linguistic variation in Europe. The present volume explores this variation within the tense, aspect, mood, and evidentiality systems in the languages of the North-East Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) family. The papers of the volume cover the most challenging and typologically interesting features such as aspect and the complicated ...
Added: March 23, 2018
Berlin: Language Science Press, 2019.
This book is an investigation into the grammar of Mehweb (Dargwa, East Caucasian also known as Nakh-Daghestanian) based on several years of team fieldwork. Mehweb is spoken in one village community in Daghestan, Russia, with a population of some 800 people, In many ways, Mehweb is a typical East Caucasian language: it has a rich ...
Added: March 6, 2018
Daniel M., Вопросы языкознания 2018 № 4 С. 114–132
In this article, I consider the inflection of property words in Archi (Lezgic, East Caucasian). While
property words show some similarities with verbs (and are indeed classified as a sybtype of verbs in Kibrik
et al.’s 1977 grammar of Archi), I argue that this similarity is too superficial to categorize them as verbs. I
first consider inflectional morphology ...
Added: November 16, 2017
Ganenkov D., Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Труды института лингвистических исследований 2017 Т. 13 № 1 С. 572–604
The paper discusses patterns of person agreement in Mehweb Dargwa. The focus of the paper is constructions with dative subjects where person agreement can be controlled by neither the dative subject or absolutive direct object. This constitutes a violation of Bobaljik’s conjecture about the role of morphological case in agreement. The paper shows that person ...
Added: October 18, 2017