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Morphological fusion without syntactic fusion: The case of the “verificative” in Agul

  • Timur Maisak EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 21. Juni 2016

Abstract

A crosslinguistically unusual case of morphological fusion, in which two clauses fuse morphologically in the absence of preceding syntactic fusion or clause union, is found in the East Caucasian language Agul. This phenomenon involves a set of “verificative” verbal forms (forms that seek ‘to find out the truth value or the value of an unknown variable’). The verificatives are completely morphologically bound, but manifest clear biclausal properties: in particular, the introduction of a new agentive argument by the verificative (the ergative “verifier”) causes no change in the argument structure of the embedded clause. This article argues that the Agul verificative has grammaticalized from the matrix verb ‘see’ plus an indirect question complement in the conditional form: over time, the two verbal heads have fused into one form. Partial parallels to this development can be found in the related languages Archi and Lezgian, where a semantic shift from ‘see’ to ‘check, find out’ is attested, together with a change in subject encoding from typically experiential (dative) to canonically agentive (ergative). Still, the complete morphologization of the verificative structure in Agul dialects remains exceptional given its comparatively recent origin, the infrequency of the construction, and the general absence of observed cases in which matrix verbs become fused with their complements.

Acknowledgements

I am pleased to thank my long-term collaborators Dmitry Ganenkov and Solmaz Merdanova for their continuing work on the Agul dialects and for fruitful discussions, as well as for providing many of the elicited examples cited in this paper. Most of the textual data from which the examples are drawn were collected as part of the Agul Documentation Project, supported by the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in 2005–2006 and 2008–2009.I am also grateful to Salminat Gasanova for discussing the Tpig dialect data, to Kerim Kerimov and Ayten Babaliyeva for their help with the Lezgian data and for providing the elicited Lezgian examples, and to Misha Daniel, Marina Chumakina, and Bulbul Musayeva for their comments and for providing the Archi examples.The current stage of research resulting in this paper has been supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 14-18-02429.

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Appendix: Abbreviations used in examples

add

additive

adv

adverbializer

aor

aorist

apud

‘near’ localization

cond

conditional

cont

‘in contact’ localization

conv

converb

cop

copula

dat

dative

dem

demonstrative

degr

degree converb

elat

elative

emp

emphatic

erg

ergative

evid

evidential

fut

future

gen

genitive

hort

hortative

imp

imperative

in

‘inside’ localization

inf

infitive

intj

interjection

ipf

imperfective

juss

jussive

lat

lative

m

masculine (in Avar)

mnr

manner converb

neg

negation

pf

perfective

pl

plural

prf

perfect/resultative

prog

progressive

proh

prohibitive

prs

present

pst

past

pt

participle

ptcl

particle

q

question

rdp

reduplication

rep

reportative evidential

s

substantivizer

sub

‘under’ localization

super

‘on, above’ localization

term

terminative converb

tmr

temporal form (of nouns)

verif

verificative

1–4

genders (in Archi)

Aspectual stems of verbs (in Agul) and oblique stems of nouns are separated by dots. Unmarked values are given in round brackets. Bound parts of complex verbs are given in angle brackets.

Published Online: 2016-6-21
Published in Print: 2016-7-1

©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton

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