The development of person agreement and the cliticization of personal pronouns in Batsbi
-
Yasuhiro Kojima
Abstract
Most Nakh-Daghestanian languages have gender (or noun class) agreement in the verb, but do not have person agreement. This is the case with Chechen and Ingush, which are genetically the closest to Batsbi. Batsbi, by contrast, has developed person agreement with the subject in the verb along with gender agreement. This is assumed to be due to the strong influence of Georgian, which has long been the second language of Batsbi speakers. In Georgian, the verb shows person agreement with the subject as well as with the direct or indirect object. Present-day Batsbi, presumably inspired by the polypersonal agreement of Georgian, further develops the cliticization of non-subject personal pronouns. To put it simply, it seems as though Batsbi attempts to express what a Georgian verb may encode in a single, finite form by means of a verb and a personal pronoun that is cliticized to it.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and advice. An earlier version of the present paper was read at the workshop “Morphological variation and change in languages of the Caucasus” held in the framework of 13th International Morphology Meeting in Vienna in 2008. Special thanks are also extended to the workshop participants for their feedback.
Abbreviations
- 1, 2, 3
first, second, third person
- abs
absolutive case
- adv
adverbial case
- all
allative case
- aor
aorist
- comp
complementizer
- con
contact case
- dat
dative case
- erg
ergative case
- excl
exclusive
- fut
future
- gen
genitive case
- imp
imperative
- incl
inclusive
- inf
infinitive
- intr
intransitive
- io
indirect object
- loc
locative case
- m
male
- neg
negation
- nom
nominative case
- o
object
- obl
oblique
- pass
passive
- pl
plural
- prs
present
- prv
preradical vowel
- pst
past
- ptcp
participle
- pv
preverb
- s
subject
- sg
singular
- ts
thematic suffix
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© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Languages of the Caucasus and contact-induced language change
- The loss of case system in Ardeshen Laz and its morphosyntactic consequences
- The impact of language contact on Hinuq
- Complement clauses in Caucasian Urum
- The development of person agreement and the cliticization of personal pronouns in Batsbi
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Languages of the Caucasus and contact-induced language change
- The loss of case system in Ardeshen Laz and its morphosyntactic consequences
- The impact of language contact on Hinuq
- Complement clauses in Caucasian Urum
- The development of person agreement and the cliticization of personal pronouns in Batsbi
