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Complement clauses in Caucasian Urum

  • Johanna Lorenz EMAIL logo
Published/Copyright: May 29, 2019

Abstract

This study examines the different patterns used to code complement clauses in Caucasian Urum, an endangered variety of Anatolian Turkish spoken in Georgia that exhibits considerable influence from Russian. Urum shows some substantial deviations from Turkish in its morphosyntax of complementation. The data indicate that primarily left-branching and synthetic Turkic patterns are replaced in favor of right-branching and analytic constructions. Furthermore, different classes of complement-taking predicates and their selectional restrictions on complement choice are analyzed and compared to the patterns in Turkish and Russian. The findings reveal that the Urum complementation system resembles the Russian pattern.

Acknowledgments

This article is part of the project “The impact of current transformational processes on language and ethnic identity: Urum and Pontic Greeks in Georgia” at the Bielefeld University – funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Abbreviations

1, 2, 3

first, second, third person

acc

accusative

anom

action nominal

comp

complementizer

cop

copula

dat

dative

fnom

factive nominal

gen

genitive

hesit

hesitation

inf

infinitive

ipfv

imperfective

loc

locative

m

masculine

n

neuter

opt

optative

pass

passive

pf

perfect

pl

plural

poss

possessive

pst

past

sg

singular

sub

subordinator

subj

subjunctive

.

separates items in multi-item glosses

/

separates alternative glosses

:

separates lexical and grammatical glosses

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Published Online: 2019-05-29
Published in Print: 2019-05-27

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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