Volume 72, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Contact-induced language change in the languages of the Caucasus Issue Editor: Nino Amiridze

Pazar (Atina) and Ardeshen are the two western dialects of Laz spoken in Turkey. Pazar exhibits alternating case patterns for arguments depending on their semantic denotation, while Ardeshen has lost its morphological case system. Yet, both dialects make use of a rich verbal agreement system. This paper aims to investigate the impact of the absence of case morphology on Ardeshen with specific emphasis on subjecthood. We will argue that Pazar Laz, retaining differentiated case marking for the subjects, typologically constitutes a clear example of Initiation-language. Ardeshen, on the other hand, has lost some of the Initiation-language properties available in Pazar, which we will argue to be correlated with the loss of its morphological case system.

This paper investigates the impact of language contact on the Nakh-Daghestanian language Hinuq. Hinuq is a rather small language that has been in contact with larger languages for several centuries; among them the traces of Avar and Russian are particularly visible. The paper provides an overview about all observable influences on the phonology, morphology and syntax of Hinuq as well as on the lexicon. Avar is the main source for borrowed morphology and loan words. The influence of Russian on the Hinuq lexicon is growing, especially among the young speakers, but it is still smaller compared to Avar. With respect to the syntax no Avar impact can be detected since the languages belong to the same language family and large parts of the syntactic features and rules bear strong resemblances in the two languages. By contrast, Russian, which is genetically unrelated and typologically different from Hinuq, has some influence on the Hinuq constituent order.

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.

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.