Agreement beyond the Verb: Unusual Targets, Unexpected Domains 019289756X, 9780192897565

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright right
Contents
Preface
List of tables
List of abbreviations
The contributors
1 Unusual agreement targets in unexpected domains
Oliver Bond, Marina Chumakina, and Steven Kaye
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Non-verbal agreement targets
1.2.1 Complementizers and other conjunctions
1.2.2 Adpositions
1.2.3 Nouns
1.2.4 Pronouns
1.2.5 Adverbs
1.2.6 Particles and discourse markers
1.2.7 Converbs
1.2.8 Coordinators
1.3 Syntactic constraints on non-verbal agreement targets
1.3.1 Phrase-level agreement
1.3.2 Clause-level agreement
1.3.3 Clause-level concord
1.3.4 Clause-external agreement
1.3.5 Clause-level agreement alternations
1.4 Summary
1.5 Outline of the volume
2 Agreement between arguments in Andi
Steven Kaye
2.1 Agreement between arguments as a disputed notion
2.2 An introduction to Andi
2.2.1 Fundamentals of the language
2.2.2 Agreement and case marking
2.2.3 The affective case and the affective construction
2.3 Experiencer predicates in cross-linguistic perspective
2.4 Subjecthood and the Andi affective construction
2.4.1 The syntax of imperative clauses
2.4.2 The simple reflexive construction
2.4.3 Interactions with syntactic control
2.4.4 Coreference with aorist converbs
2.5 Taking stock: some drawbacks of alternative interpretations
2.6 Conclusions
3 Agreement of essive adverbials in Tanti Dargwa
Nina Sumbatova
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Grammatical information on Tanti Dargwa
3.2.1 Typological profile of Tanti Dargwa
3.2.2 Gender agreement and two classes of agreement targets
3.3 Clause structure
3.3.1 Basic model
3.3.2 Arguments in favour of the backward control hypothesis
3.4 The agreement of essive adverbials
3.4.1 Morphology of locative adverbials
3.4.2 Gender agreement on essive adverbials: basic facts
3.5 Gender agreement of essive adverbials in different clause types
3.5.1 Independent finite clauses without a copula (B)
3.5.2 'Unmarked' independent clauses (C)
3.5.3 Non-finite dependent clauses (D)
3.5.4 Dependent clauses headed by non-finite forms of the copula (E)
3.5.5 Conditional and concessive clauses (F)
3.5.6 Generalizations concerning clause types
3.6 Additional agreement options
3.6.1 Long-distance agreement
3.6.2 Agreement of deverbal locatives
3.7 Conclusions
4 Agreeing adverbs in Enets
Marina Chumakina
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Morphosyntactic profile of Enets
4.2.1 Morphosyntactic features of nouns
4.2.2 Morphosyntactic features of verbs
4.3 Adverbial agreement in Enets
4.3.1 Agreeing adverbs in existing grammatical descriptions
4.3.2 Adverbial agreement: lexicon and diachronic sources
4.3.3 Adverbial agreement: morphology
4.3.4 Adverbial agreement: syntax
4.3.5 Deviations in the agreement behaviour of adverbs
4.4 Agreeing adverbs in Tundra Nenets
4.5 Agreeing adverbs in Nganasan and Selkup
4.6 Conclusions
5 Unusual agreement targets in Ripano
Tania Paciaroni
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Data and methodology
5.3 Feature specifications and exponence
5.3.1 Inflectional and agreement features
5.3.2 Agreement potential: agreeing vs non-agreeing unusual targets
5.3.3 Exponents of agreement
5.3.4 The inventory of final vowels
5.4 Familiar agreement domains and targets
5.4.1 Agreement in the noun phrase
5.4.2 Agreement in the clause
5.5 Unusual agreement targets
5.5.1 Numerals
5.5.2 Prepositions
5.5.3 Non-finite verb forms
5.5.4 Adverbs
5.5.5 Wh-words
5.5.6 Complementizers
5.5.7 Nouns
5.6 Conclusions
6 External agreement in Khwarshi
Marina Chumakina and Ekaterina Lyutikova
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Khwarshi: general information
6.3 Unusual target agreement in Khwarshi and other Tsezic languages
6.3.1 Prefixally agreeing adverbs
6.3.2 Infixally agreeing adverbs
6.3.3 Suffixally agreeing adverbs
6.4 Syntactic properties of adverbial agreement: choice of controller
6.4.1 Controller of adverbial agreement
6.4.2 External agreement in biabsolutive constructions
6.4.3 LDA of adverbials
6.4.4 Coding of information structure
6.5 Conclusions
7 Agreeing postpositions and unexpected agreement in Coastal Marind
Bruno Olsson
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Structural overview of Coastal Marind
7.3 Overview of gender agreement
7.4 Unexpected agreement on adjuncts headed by lek `from'
7.4.1 Distinguishing secondary predicates from adverbials in Coastal Marind
7.4.2 The status of adjuncts headed by lek `from'
7.4.3 Agreement on locative adjuncts across languages
7.4.4 Variable agreement in `because'-expressions
7.5 Unexpected agreement on other targets
7.5.1 Agreement on en `where?'
7.5.2 Agreement on targets embedded under lek `from'
7.5.3 Agreement on anep mayay `therefore'
7.6 Conclusions
8 Case-shift on Megrelian adverbs
Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The Megrelian language
8.3 Case-shift in Megrelian
8.3.1 The case system
8.3.2 Verbs
8.3.3 TAM-related case-shift
8.4 Adverbs
8.4.1 Invariable adverbs
8.4.2 Adverbs marked for spatial case
8.4.3 Adverbs sensitive to case-shift
8.5 Investigating adverbial case-shift
8.5.1 Existing treatments
8.5.2 Towards an account of adverbial case-shift
8.5.3 Case study
8.6 Structural and typological comparisons
8.6.1 Laz and Georgian
8.6.2 Warlpiri
8.7 Conclusions
References
Author Index
Language Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

Agreement beyond the Verb

Agreement beyond the Verb Unusual Targets, Unexpected Domains Edited by

M A R I N A C H UM A K I N A O L I V ER B O N D AND ST E V EN K AY E

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © editorial matter and organization Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye 2023 © the chapters their several contributors 2023 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2023937654 ISBN 9780192897565 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Contents Preface List of tables List of abbreviations The contributors

1. Unusual agreement targets in unexpected domains Oliver Bond, Marina Chumakina, and Steven Kaye 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Non-verbal agreement targets 1.2.1 1.2.2 1.2.3 1.2.4 1.2.5 1.2.6 1.2.7 1.2.8

ix x xii xix

1 1 5

Complementizers and other conjunctions Adpositions Nouns Pronouns Adverbs Particles and discourse markers Converbs Coordinators

6 8 10 14 15 18 19 20

1.3 Syntactic constraints on non-verbal agreement targets

21

1.3.1 1.3.2 1.3.3 1.3.4 1.3.5

Phrase-level agreement Clause-level agreement Clause-level concord Clause-external agreement Clause-level agreement alternations

1.4 Summary 1.5 Outline of the volume

2. Agreement between arguments in Andi Steven Kaye 2.1 Agreement between arguments as a disputed notion 2.2 An introduction to Andi 2.2.1 Fundamentals of the language 2.2.2 Agreement and case marking 2.2.3 The affective case and the affective construction

2.3 Experiencer predicates in cross-linguistic perspective 2.4 Subjecthood and the Andi affective construction 2.4.1 2.4.2 2.4.3 2.4.4

The syntax of imperative clauses The simple reflexive construction Interactions with syntactic control Coreference with aorist converbs

2.5 Taking stock: some drawbacks of alternative interpretations 2.6 Conclusions

23 26 30 34 34

41 44

48 48 53 53 55 59

62 68 69 72 76 80

84 89

vi

CONTENTS

3. Agreement of essive adverbials in Tanti Dargwa Nina Sumbatova 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Grammatical information on Tanti Dargwa 3.2.1 Typological profile of Tanti Dargwa 3.2.2 Gender agreement and two classes of agreement targets

3.3 Clause structure 3.3.1 Basic model 3.3.2 Arguments in favour of the backward control hypothesis

3.4 The agreement of essive adverbials 3.4.1 Morphology of locative adverbials 3.4.2 Gender agreement on essive adverbials: basic facts

3.5 Gender agreement of essive adverbials in different clause types 3.5.1 3.5.2 3.5.3 3.5.4

Independent finite clauses without a copula (B) ‘Unmarked’ independent clauses (C) Non-finite dependent clauses (D) Dependent clauses headed by non-finite forms of the copula (E) 3.5.5 Conditional and concessive clauses (F) 3.5.6 Generalizations concerning clause types

3.6 Additional agreement options 3.6.1 Long-distance agreement 3.6.2 Agreement of deverbal locatives

3.7 Conclusions

4. Agreeing adverbs in Enets Marina Chumakina 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Morphosyntactic profile of Enets 4.2.1 Morphosyntactic features of nouns 4.2.2 Morphosyntactic features of verbs

4.3 Adverbial agreement in Enets 4.3.1 4.3.2 4.3.3 4.3.4 4.3.5

Agreeing adverbs in existing grammatical descriptions Adverbial agreement: lexicon and diachronic sources Adverbial agreement: morphology Adverbial agreement: syntax Deviations in the agreement behaviour of adverbs

4.4 Agreeing adverbs in Tundra Nenets 4.5 Agreeing adverbs in Nganasan and Selkup 4.6 Conclusions

5. Unusual agreement targets in Ripano Tania Paciaroni 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Data and methodology

91 91 93 93 95

99 100 104

107 107 110

114 115 116 118 119 121 121

122 123 124

125

132 132 134 135 137

139 140 142 143 144 148

150 153 154

156 156 157

CONTENTS 5.3 Feature specifications and exponence 5.3.1 Inflectional and agreement features 5.3.2 Agreement potential: agreeing vs non-agreeing unusual targets 5.3.3 Exponents of agreement 5.3.4 The inventory of final vowels

5.4 Familiar agreement domains and targets 5.4.1 Agreement in the noun phrase 5.4.2 Agreement in the clause

5.5 Unusual agreement targets 5.5.1 5.5.2 5.5.3 5.5.4 5.5.5 5.5.6 5.5.7

Numerals Prepositions Non-finite verb forms Adverbs Wh-words Complementizers Nouns

5.6 Conclusions

6. External agreement in Khwarshi Marina Chumakina and Ekaterina Lyutikova 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Khwarshi: general information 6.3 Unusual target agreement in Khwarshi and other Tsezic languages 6.3.1 Prefixally agreeing adverbs 6.3.2 Infixally agreeing adverbs 6.3.3 Suffixally agreeing adverbs

6.4 Syntactic properties of adverbial agreement: choice of controller 6.4.1 6.4.2 6.4.3 6.4.4

Controller of adverbial agreement External agreement in biabsolutive constructions LDA of adverbials Coding of information structure

6.5 Conclusions

7. Agreeing postpositions and unexpected agreement in Coastal Marind Bruno Olsson 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Structural overview of Coastal Marind 7.3 Overview of gender agreement 7.4 Unexpected agreement on adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ 7.4.1 Distinguishing secondary predicates from adverbials in Coastal Marind 7.4.2 The status of adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ 7.4.3 Agreement on locative adjuncts across languages 7.4.4 Variable agreement in ‘because’-expressions

vii 159 159 161 163 168

169 169 170

178 179 179 181 182 187 188 188

195

198 198 199 202 203 208 211

212 212 217 231 239

241

243 243 245 246 249 250 253 255 258

viii

CONTENTS 7.5 Unexpected agreement on other targets 7.5.1 Agreement on en ‘where?’ 7.5.2 Agreement on targets embedded under lek ‘from’ 7.5.3 Agreement on anep mayay ‘therefore’

7.6 Conclusions

8. Case-shift on Megrelian adverbs Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel 8.1 Introduction 8.2 The Megrelian language 8.3 Case-shift in Megrelian 8.3.1 The case system 8.3.2 Verbs 8.3.3 TAM-related case-shift

8.4 Adverbs 8.4.1 Invariable adverbs 8.4.2 Adverbs marked for spatial case 8.4.3 Adverbs sensitive to case-shift

8.5 Investigating adverbial case-shift 8.5.1 Existing treatments 8.5.2 Towards an account of adverbial case-shift 8.5.3 Case study

8.6 Structural and typological comparisons 8.6.1 Laz and Georgian 8.6.2 Warlpiri

8.7 Conclusions

References Author Index Language Index Subject Index

259 260 261 262

263

264 264 266 268 268 270 274

278 279 279 280

282 282 287 292

296 297 301

303

306 324 328 330

Preface This book grew out of the research project ‘External Agreement’ funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/R005540/1), and more specifically out of a workshop organized by the project members at the 52nd Annual Meeting of Societas Linguistica Europaea, held in Leipzig on 21 August 2019. The project focused on the properties of unusual agreement targets such as agreeing adverbs, agreeing adpositions, and agreeing nouns, with particular emphasis on the Nakh-Daghestanian family, where such targets are represented abundantly. The papers presented at the workshop demonstrated that unusual agreement targets of this kind are a much more widespread phenomenon than previously thought. The workshop participants presented instances of unusual agreement targets from several other language families across Eurasia. Every chapter in the volume analyses data collected via fieldwork, and we are very grateful to all the language consultants who have worked with us to help us better understand the complexities of their agreement systems; more detailed acknowledgements can be found in each chapter. Finally, we wish to thank Vicki Sunter and the team at Oxford University Press for their professional expertise in bringing the book to publication.

List of tables 2.1. The consonantal gender–number agreement affixes of Andi

55

2.2. The core inflectional paradigm of Andi nouns

58

3.1. Gender system and gender markers

96

3.2. Forms of the verbs b-uc- (PFV) / b-urc- (IPFV) ‘catch’ and asː- (PFV) / isː(IPFV) ‘buy’, neuter gender singular

97

3.3. Three clitic slots

100

3.4. Flexible agreement in different clause types

122

3.5. Distribution of essive adverbials in the oral texts

127

3.6. Control of essive adverbials and copulas in transitive independent clauses

128

4.1. Nominal paradigm of mɛʔ ‘house’

135

4.2. Possessive suffixes (based on Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 803)

137

4.3. Basic series of agreement affixes (based on Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 820)

139

4.4. Case inflection of the adverbs ekon ‘here’ and tonɨn ‘there’ (based on Sorokina 2010: 361–3)

140

4.5. Case inflection of the adverb eznuju/ezɨ ‘above’ (based on Sorokina 2010: 361–5)

140

4.6. Possessive suffixes used in adverbs (based on their distribution in texts)

143

5.1. Speakers recorded

158

5.2. Inflectional features and possible values

159

5.3. Gender system in Ripano

160

5.4. Morphosyntactic features and values (based on Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018b: 86)

161

5.5. Lexical items with agreement potential, based on DAI spontaneous data

162

5.6. Phonological constraint on inflection

163

5.7a. Urban Ripano, full inflection

166

5.7b. Urban Ripano, reduced inflection

166

5.8a. Rural Ripano, full inflection

166

5.8b. Rural Ripano, reduced inflection

166

5.9a. Urban Ripano, adjective ˈgrwosːu ‘big’, full inflection (IC I)

166

5.9b. Urban Ripano, adjective ˈgrwosːə ‘big’, reduced inflection (IC I)

166

5.10. Urban Ripano, noun bːəˈswoɲːu ‘need’ (M)

167

5.11. Urban Ripano, noun ˈfaːme ‘hunger’ (F)

167

LIST OF TABLES

xi

5.12. Urban Ripano, preposition ˈvɛrsu ‘towards’, full inflection

168

5.13. Final vowels from Latin to Ripano, compared with StIt and other IR varieties

168

5.14. Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection (variant 1)

170

5.15. Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection (variant 2)

170

5.16. Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection (variant 3)

171

5.17. Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, reduced inflection (variant 1)

171

5.18. Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, reduced inflection (variant 2)

171

5.19. Rural Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection

172

5.20. Rural Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, reduced inflection

172

5.21. Ratio of full and reduced agreement of adjectives in different syntactic environments

175

5.22. Summary of nouns as agreement targets in DAI

195

6.1. Agreement markers

199

6.2. Khwarshi grammatical cases (Khalilova & Testelets, n.d.)

200

6.3. Khwarshi spatial cases (Khalilova & Testelets, n.d.)

201

6.4. Prefixally agreeing adverbs in the Tsezic languages

208

6.5. Properties of biabsolutive constructions in Lak, Khwarshi, and Tsez

223

7.1. Exponents of gender agreement on the Distal demonstrative epe and the adjective akak

247

7.2. Some Coastal Marind postpositions

248

8.1. The three-way relationship between grammatical relations (e.g. SBJ), case marking (e.g. NOM), and type of indexation on the verb (e.g. S)

277

List of abbreviations Throughout the text we use upper-case Roman numerals to number inflectional classes (e.g. IC I, Series I, verb class I) and small caps Roman numerals to indicate genders (e.g. gender I, gender II). Where an upper-case abbreviation is distinguished from a small caps abbreviation in the list, this is a meaningful contrast. A comma indicates that the same abbreviation is used in different ways across examples. When an author uses an abbreviation in a very specific way that deviates from usage elsewhere in the volume (e.g. OBJ to mean ‘Object Orientation’ not ‘object’), we indicate how this should be interpreted with a reference to the language name in the description of the abbreviation. 1 2 3 4 A A ABL ABL1 ABS ACC ACT AD ADD ADJ Adj ADV Adv ADVR AFF AFFM AGN AGR ALL ANAPH ANIM ANT AOR AP

first person second person third person fourth person A-series agreement marker, actor agent-like argument of canonical transitive clause ablative ablative (type 1) absolutive accusative actualis ad-localization ‘near’ additive adjectivizer adjective adverbial case adverb adverbializer affective case affirmative agent nominalization agreement allative anaphoric constituent animate anterior aorist adjective phrase

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS APPL APUD ART ASSOC ATTR AUG AUX Aux AuxP B CARD CAUS CFUT CL CL1 CL6 CL7 CNCT COH COLL COM COMP Comp COMPL CON COND CONJ CONN CONT CONTESS CONTR COORD COP CopP CP CP CPRF CQ CVB D DAI DAT DEF DEGR DEM

applicative apud-localization ‘at’ article associative plural attributivizer augment auxiliary auxiliary auxiliary phrase B-series agreement marker, gender B cardinal causative compound future noun class (gender) feature class 1 class 6 class 7 connective coherence particle collective comitative complementizer complementizer completive concord conditional conjunction connegative cont-localization ‘in contact with’ contessive contrastive coordinative copula copula phrase conjunctive participle complementizer phrase compound perfect content question converb gender D Database of Agreement in Italo-Romance dative definite degree demonstrative

xiii

xiv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

DEONT DESID Det DIM DIR DIROBJ DIST DO DOWNRIVER DP DU DUR EL EM EMPH ERG ESS EV EVID EXCL Exp EXST EXT EXTD F F FE FIN (fin)V FOC FocP FP FRUS FUT G GEN GEN1 GEN2 GER GN GNT GO HAB HITHER HORT

deontic modal particle desiderative determiner diminutive directive case, Directional Orientation [in Coastal Marind] direct object distal direct object, direct object indexation, DO-indexation [in Megrelian] downriver determiner phrase dual durative, past durative [in Coastal Marind] elative extension marker emphatic ergative essive euphonic vowel evidential exclusive experiencer existential extended extended aspect feminine functional head Forest Enets finalis finite verb focus focus phrase functional head phrase frustrative future Georgian genitive genitive 1 (case used on modifiers of absolutive heads) genitive 2 (case used on modifiers of oblique heads) gerund gender–number general tense going-verb formative habitual hither hortative

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HPL HPSG HYPOT I IC IDEO II III IK IMP IMPF IMPR IN INACT inan. INCH INCL IND INDEF INDOBJ INF INS Instr INTER INTR INTS IO IPA IPFV IQ IR IRR IV JUSS Kp LAT LDA LFG LIM LOC LOG LV M M MD

human plural Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar hypothetical gender I inflection class ideophone gender II gender III Inkhokwari Khwarshi imperative imperfect impersonal in-localization ‘in (a container)’ inactive inanimate inchoative inclusive indicative indefinite indirect object infinitive instrumental instrumental inter-localization ‘inside (a mass)’ intransitive intensifier indirect object, indirect object indexing, IO-indexation [in Megrelian] International Phonetic Alphabet imperfective, non-past imperfective [in Coastal Marind] indirect question Italo-Romance irrealis gender IV jussive Khwarshi proper lative long-distance agreement Lexical Functional Grammar limitative locative, Locational Orientation [in Coastal Marind] logophor light verb masculine Megrelian middle indexation series

xv

xvi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

MED MOD MSD N N NAN NAR NC7 NEG NF (nfin)V NHPL nI nII NMLZ1 NOM NP NPL NPRED NPST NSG NTRL NUM Num O OBJ OBL ON OPT ORD OUT P p.c. PASS PEJ PFV PL PLA PM POSS Poss POST PostP POT PP

medial modal converb masdar neuter, mass neuter [in Ripano] noun non-autonomous neuter narrative noun class 7 (singular) negative non-finite non-finite verb non-human plural non-I gender non-II gender nominalization (type 1) nominative noun phrase non-human plural nominal predicate non-past non-singular Neutral Orientation numeral, number feature numeral object, object indexation object, Object Orientation [in Coastal Marind] oblique on optative ordinal out patient-like argument of canonical transitive clause personal communication passive pejorative perfective plural pluractional person marker possessive, poss-localization ‘at’ [in Khwarshi] possessive after postpositional phrase potential adpositional phrase

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS PPRF PQ Prep PRET PRF PRI Pro PROG PROH PROSEC PROX PRS PRTV PST PTC PTCP Ptcp PV Q Qnt QUOT RED_AGR REFL REL REP RES RESTR RIP ROG RUS s S SA SA SBJ SBJV SG SM SO SOnsg SOsg SP sp. SS STAT

xvii

pluperfect polar question preposition preterite perfect prioritive pronoun progressive prohibitive prosecutive proximal present partitive past particle participle participle preverb question quantifier quotative reduced agreement reflexive relativizer reportative resultative restrictive particle Ripano interrogative Russian S-indexation single argument of canonical intransitive clause, subject, subject indexation ergative subject stem allomorphy subject subjunctive singular series marker undergoer subject Subject–Object indexation with non-singular object Subject–Object indexation with singular object specific species status suffix stative

xviii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

StIt SUB SUP SV T TAM TE TERM TH THITHER TMP TN TOP TP TR TRNS U UHS UP URPP UW V V VAL VEN VERS Vfin VMATRIX VP W Wh XP

Standard Italian sub-localization 'under' super-localization 'on' subordinate verb form unspecified tense marker tense–aspect–mood, unspecified tense–aspect–mood marker [in Teop] Tundra Enets terminative thematic element thither temporal Tundra Nenets topic tense phrase transitive translative undergoer unspecified human subject up University Research Priority Program unwitnessed gender V verb validator particle, valency operator venitive versative finite verb matrix verb verb phrase witnessed wh-word lexical head phrase

The contributors Oliver Bond is Reader in Linguistics in the Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey. His research explores the syntactic and information-structural evidence for the ways that speakers monitor, encode, and interpret reference to discourse participants using agreement and/or case marking in different linguistic systems. His fieldwork has focused on Eleme (Niger–Congo; Nigeria), Nuer (Nilo-Saharan; South Sudan, Ethiopia), and the Tibeto-Burman languages Gurung, Gyalsumdo, Manange, and Nar-Phu, spoken in Manang District, Nepal. He is co-editor of Archi: Complexities of Agreement in Cross-theoretical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2016), Prominent Internal Possessors (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Morphological Perspectives (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Marina Chumakina is Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey. Her research involves syntax–morphology interface problems viewed from a typological perspective. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on Nakh-Daghestanian languages of the Russian Federation, such as Tsakhur (Lezgic), Bagwalal (Andic), Andi (Andic), and Khwarshi (Tsezic), with a special focus on Archi (Lezgic). She is co-editor of Canonical Morphology and Syntax (Oxford University Press, 2012), Periphrasis: The Role of Syntax and Morphology in Paradigms (BA/Oxford University Press, 2013), and Archi: Complexities of Agreement in Cross-theoretical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2016). Steven Kaye is Research Fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey. He studied Comparative Philology and General Linguistics at the University of Oxford, where his DPhil thesis (2015) examined the development of mixed (‘heteroclite’) inflection in the Italic and Romance verb. Since 2008 he has also carried out research on languages of the Caucasus, including fieldwork on Northern Talyshi (Indo-European; Azerbaijan), and most recently on Andi (Nakh-Daghestanian; Russia). His research interests include morphological typology, language description, grammaticalization theory, and Indo-European historical linguistics. Ekaterina Lyutikova is Professor of Linguistics at Lomonosov Moscow State University. She received her PhD in linguistics in 1998 and Dr Hab. degree in 2017. Her specialization is in formal syntax of Slavic, Altaic, and North Caucasian languages. She has worked on noun phrase structure, argument structure and valency-changing derivations, anaphora, and the syntax of case and agreement, and is interested in studying underrepresented languages and field linguistics. Her recent work combines theoretical issues and experimental methodology. She is the author of three monographs: Cognitive Typology: Reflexives and Intensifiers (IMLI RAN, 2002), Formal Models of Case: Theories and Applications (JaSK, 2017), and Noun Phrase Structure in Articleless Languages (JaSK, 2018), and several collective volumes, including Russian Islands in the Light of Experimental Data (Buki Vedi, 2021).

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THE CONTRIBUTORS

Bruno Olsson is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Regensburg, Germany. His research interests revolve around typology and linguistic diversity, with a current focus on the languages of New Guinea and surrounding areas. He is co-editor of the two-volume work Grammatical Gender and Linguistic Complexity (Language Science Press, 2019) and author of A Grammar of Coastal Marind (De Gruyter, 2021). Tania Paciaroni is Professor of Romance Linguistics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Her main research interests are the grammar of Italo- and Gallo-Romance varieties (phonology, morphology, and syntax), historical Romance linguistics, morphological theory, sociolinguistics, and Vedic linguistics. She has contributed to edited volumes including The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Non-canonical Gender Systems (Oxford University Press, 2018). Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel defended his PhD thesis on grammaticalization in Kartvelian at the University of Frankfurt in 2012, undertook postdoctoral research at Collège de France, and is now a research fellow at the University of Mainz. His work mainly focuses on deixis, verbal aspect, morphosyntax, and grammaticalization in Kartvelian and Slavic languages. Nina Sumbatova received her PhD and Dr Hab. from the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences and was a professor and the head of the Institute of Linguistics at the Russian State University until 2016. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests include the Nakh-Daghestanian languages, linguistic typology, information structure, and agreement. She has conducted fieldwork in Daghestan, Adygea, the Russian Far East, and the Republic of Guinea.

1 Unusual agreement targets in unexpected domains Oliver Bond, Marina Chumakina, and Steven Kaye

1.1 Introduction Utterances in natural languages are not just strings of words that can be freely placed in any order. Rather, they show evidence of complex syntactic structure which is hierarchical in nature. The principles governing syntax not only account for phrase structure, but also constrain the domains in which syntactic dependencies are observed. Such dependencies lie at the heart of explaining one of language’s most intriguing and challenging morphosyntactic phenomena— agreement. Agreement is observed when the formal properties of one word (a TARGET) systematically co-vary with the formal or semantic properties of another word (a CONTROLLER) within a given syntactic DOMAIN (see Steele 1978; Corbett 2006). It is most frequently encountered when a finite verb form reflects grammatical features of one (or more) of its arguments. This may be the subject (S/A), the object (P), the absolutive (S/P), the agent (A), or any viable combination of these roles.¹ In each case, the grammatical features involved belong to a closed set of agreement features or phi-features: PERSON, NUMBER, and GENDER.² In many cases, the presence of these features is not immediately obvious from the form of the controller (if present at all); rather, it is the form of the target that reveals this, through displacement of grammatical information, as in (1) from Ingush (Nakh-Daghestanian; Ingushetia, Chechnya), where verbs agree with their absolutive argument. In (1a) and (1c) the intransitive verbs agree in gender (B and D respectively) with S. In transitive clauses, the P-argument, rather than the A-argument, is indexed on the verb, as seen in (1b) and (1d). ¹ Early theoretical accounts of agreement were largely concerned with modelling mechanisms that underlie predicate–argument agreement with a single argument (usually the subject), while more recent work has examined verbal agreement with multiple controllers (e.g. Hiraiwa 2001; Béjar 2003; Rezac 2004; Nevins 2007; Bárány 2018). These controllers are not necessarily even clausal arguments, as examples of long-distance agreement (e.g. Polinsky & Potsdam 2001), agreement controlled by prominent internal possessors (e.g. Nikolaeva et al. 2019), and allocutive agreement (e.g. Antonov 2015) demonstrate. ² In some languages, such as the Indo-Aryan language Maithili, respect is also an agreement feature. See Yadava et al. (2019) for an example of such a system. Oliver Bond, Marina Chumakina, and Steven Kaye, Unusual agreement targets in unexpected domains. In: Agreement beyond the Verb. Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Oliver Bond, Marina Chumakina, and Steven Kaye (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0001

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(1) Ingush (adapted from Nichols 2011: 432)³ a. jett aara-b-ealar b. aaz jett cow(B) out-B-go.PST.W 1SG.ERG cow(B) ‘The cow went out.’ ‘I led the cow out.’ c. zhwalii aara-d-ealar d. aaz zhwalii dog(D) out-D-go.PST.W 1SG.ERG dog(D) ‘The dog went out.’ ‘I led the dog out.’

aara-b-oala-b-yr out-B-go-B-CAUS.PST.W aara-d-oala-d-yr out-D-go-D-CAUS.PST.W

In (2), from K’iche (Mayan; Guatemala), a different pattern is illustrated. Here, indexation on the verb is the only indicator of the clausal arguments. The B-series of prefixes indexes the person and number of the absolutive argument (S/P), while the A-series indexes the A-argument of a transitive clause. (2)

K’iche (Can Pixabaj 2017: 466) a. x-oj-b’iin-ik b. x-oj-k-il-o CP-B1PL-walk-SS CP-B1PL-A3PL-see-SS ‘We walked.’ ‘They saw us.’

Following work by Bresnan and Mchombo (1987) and Siewierska (2004), we treat examples like those in (1), where the controller of agreement is overtly manifested as a co-nominal in a syntactically local domain, as instances of grammatical agreement, while those in (2), where there is no co-nominal expression of the argument, are instances of anaphoric agreement. We use the general terms ‘agreement’ or ‘indexation’ (see Haspelmath 2013) to refer to both of these patterns. While there is considerable debate about what constitutes agreement, and how it should be modelled, consistent themes emerge from a cross-theoretical survey of (verbal) agreement relations: (i) agreement is typically construed as a local, clause-bounded dependency between the head of a predicate and its argument(s), and (ii) agreement is viewed as a consequence of the requirement to satisfy matching or correspondence constraints between the featural specifications of controller and target (see Bobaljik 2008; Alexiadou et al. 2012; Bond, Corbett, Chumakina, & Brown 2016; Haug & Nikitina 2016; Franco et al. 2019; Smith et al. 2020 for recent overviews of some of the core properties of theoretical approaches to agreement). While finite verb forms—whether lexical verbs or auxiliaries—are undoubtedly the most uncontroversial loci of agreement from both a descriptive and theoretical perspective, verbs are not the only part of speech which can systematically co-vary ³ In Ingush the genders are named after the morphological exponents commonly used to express them. The inherent genders (B and D) of the controllers have been added in parentheses, glosses have been standardized, and periods indicating affix boundaries have been replaced with hyphens for consistency with the rest of the chapter.

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with the formal properties of a controller. In fact, as we will show, a wide range of parts of speech beyond verbs may participate in agreement. Discussion of agreement on non-verbal parts of speech has predominantly focused on agreeing predicative adjectives (e.g. Cinque 1990; Chomsky 1995) and agreement-like behaviour within nominal phrases (e.g. Corbett 2006; Baker 2008), where articles, adjectives, possessors, and other phrase-level elements covary in form with the head of the phrase. A key area for debate is whether ‘concord’ between the grammatical features of a head noun and its dependents within the NP/DP (e.g. Carstens 2000; Baker 2008; Danon 2011; Norris 2014; Preminger & Polinsky 2015; Ackema & Neeleman 2020), and case-sharing and definiteness spreading across elements within a noun phrase (e.g. Babby 1985; Corbett 2006; Wechsler 2015; Winchester 2019), should be modelled in the same way as predicate–argument agreement, or differently.⁴ Here, we leave aside predicative adjectives and head–modifier agreement observed in NPs/DPs, and instead focus on agreement targets that have received relatively little attention in the agreement literature, such as clause-level adverbs (§1.2.5), illustrated by data from the ItaloRomance variety Cosentino (Indo-European; Italy) in (3); adpositions (§1.2.2), exemplified by the Udihe (Tungusic; Far East Russia) data in (4); and pronouns (§1.2.4), illustrated with data from Archi (Nakh-Daghestanian; Daghestan) in (5). (3)

Cosentino (Ledgeway 2017: 68–9) a. Anna miscava buonu ’i carte Anna shuffled good.M.SG the.PL cards.F ‘Anna shuffled the cards well.’ (Anna shuffled the cards in a competent manner.) b. Anna miscava bone ’i carte Anna shuffled good.F.PL the.PL cards.F ‘Anna shuffled the cards well.’ (The cards ended up well-shuffled.)

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Udihe (Nikolaeva & Tolskaya 2001: 400, 415) a. hi ka¨ː-la-i b. aziga-ziga ka¨ː-la-ti me side-LOC-1SG girl-PL side-LOC-3PL ‘up to me’ ‘near the girls’

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Archi (Bond & Chumakina 2016: 66) b-is χːʕ ele b-ez e‹b›χni I/II.PL-1SG.GEN guest(I)[PL.ABS] I/II.PL-1SG.DAT ‹I/II.PL›forget.PFV ‘I forgot my guests.’

⁴ Preminger (2013a) observes that the mechanisms used to account for agreement are also sometimes recruited to account for a range of other effects within the clause, such as negative concord, sequence-of-tense effects, and the relationship between a pronoun and its antecedent.

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Despite a recent rise in theoretical and typological interest in agreement (Boeckx 2006; Sag 2010; Wechsler 2011; Alexiadou et al. 2012; Zeijlstra 2012; Ackema & Neeleman 2013; Preminger 2013b, 2014; Preminger & Polinsky 2015; Bond, Corbett, Chumakina, & Brown 2016; Haug & Nikitina 2016; Matasovi´c 2018; Bárány et al. 2019; Bjorkman & Zeijlstra 2019; Franco et al. 2019, among others), the properties of such targets are yet to be the focus of detailed typological research. But they are especially important for the construction of a model of syntax because they force us to reassess the domains in which agreement is anticipated to occur, and how many explanations may be needed for similar phenomena (see van Koppen 2017 on complementizer agreement and Ackema & Neeleman 2020 on agreeing adverbs). In order to elucidate this further, consider agreeing adpositions. One might expect an agreeing adposition to be controlled by its complement (thus mirroring the way verbs agree with their arguments), and this is indeed what is observed in Udihe, as exemplified in (4), and also Welsh (§1.3.1), where certain prepositions agree in gender and number with a pronominal complement, e.g. arno fo ‘on him’ vs. arni hi ‘on her’ (Borsley 2009: 229). But this is not the only pattern encountered in the world’s languages. In Avar, a Nakh-Daghestanian language spoken in Daghestan, postpositions agree with the absolutive argument of the clause, that is, the subject of an intransitive clause (S) and the object of a transitive clause (P). In (6) the agreeing postposition zˇaniw ‘inside’ has the neuter noun tusnaq ‘prison’ as its complement. Yet agreement on the postposition, realized by the masculine singular suffix -w, is not controlled by the complement of the postposition itself, but by Rasul, the absolutive object of the verb. (6)

Avar (Boris Ataev, p.c.)⁵ tusnaq-al-da zˇani-w t’amuna nizˇe-cːa Rasul prison(N)-SG.OBL-SUP in-M.SG put.PST 1PL.EXCL-ERG Rasul(M)[ABS] ‘We put Rasul in prison.’

An even more striking pattern of agreement—this time on a noun (§1.2.3)—is observed in (7) from Andi, another Nakh-Daghestanian language. Here, the subject of the verb ‘see’, imubo ‘father’, appears in the affective case and agrees in gender and number with the absolutive object q’inkom ‘bull’. Note that in both (6) and (7) the verb does not agree with any of its arguments, demonstrating that these patterns are independent of predicate agreement. (7)

Gagatli Andi (Salimov 2010: 105) imu-bo q’inkom haɢo father(I).SG.OBL-AFF.III.SG bull(III)[SG.ABS] see.AOR ‘Father saw a bull.’

⁵ This constructed example, based on an example from the Avar online corpus, was adapted and verified by Boris Ataev, a native speaker of Avar.

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Examples like (7) are unexpected from a theoretical perspective, because, while part of the same clause (and thus clause-bounded), the nominals are not arguments of one another, the subject is not c-commanded by the object (at least on the surface), and nouns in the affective case have both a lexically valued gender and a lexically unvalued one (see §1.2.3, §1.2.4, and Chapter 2, this volume, for discussion). We group together examples like (6) and (7) under the banner of EXTERNAL AGREEMENT—a cover term for agreement between a target heading a clause-level adjunct or argument, and a controller that (i) functions as an argument of the clause containing the phrase headed by the target, yet (ii) is not an argument or a complement of the target. To account for the facts presented by such examples we must accept that agreement-like behaviour can be manifested on a wider range of grammatical elements than previously thought, and that these unusual targets have their own domains that do not necessarily mirror the local agreement relations typically observed with verbs. In this chapter we introduce some of this diversity with an eye on some key questions: (i) Which parts of speech can participate in clause-level agreement? (ii) How is this syntactically constrained? (iii) How does the behaviour of non-verbal agreement targets differ from that of more canonical verbal targets within languages? We begin exploring these questions in §1.2, which provides a more detailed introduction to agreement targets beyond the verb, including some which exhibit external agreement. Then, §1.3 presents the domains in which agreement beyond the verb is attested, and the properties of non-verbal agreement controllers. A summary highlighting some of the major differences between verbal and non-verbal agreement is provided in §1.4. The chapter concludes in §1.5 with an outline of the contributions to the volume.

1.2 Non-verbal agreement targets Expectations about what constitutes a conventional agreement target have traditionally depended to a large extent on patterns in Standard Average European languages, where typical targets include verbs, auxiliaries, and copulas within the clausal domain, and nominal modifiers of various kinds, such as adjectives, numerals, and the heads of relative clauses within NPs/DPs (Matasovi´c 2018: 12). But a survey of descriptive literature demonstrates that any treatment of agreement aiming to be comprehensive must also recognize that many other parts of speech are potential agreement targets too. Many of these targets have been highlighted in major typologies of agreement (Lehmann 1982; Corbett 2006; Baker 2008;

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Matasovi´c 2018).⁶ Here we build on these studies, drawing on a range of recent empirical discoveries about the agreement potential of different parts of speech. Further detail and examples can be found in Bond et al. (2023).

1.2.1 Complementizers and other conjunctions Complementizers are functional elements that introduce a clause as a complement of a lexical category; they are also used to mark clauses as arguments (e.g. English that). In some descriptions, the term ‘complementizer’ is also used for functional elements that introduce any type of clause. Cross-linguistically, conjunctions are rarely sensitive to the featural properties of clause-level arguments; however, argument indexation on complementizers is prevalent in certain language groups and is particularly well attested in Bantu (e.g. Rizzi 1990; Kawasha 2007; Baker 2008; Diercks 2010, 2013), Mande (e.g. Idiatov 2010), and West Germanic (e.g. Haegeman 1992; Kathol 2001; van Koppen 2017) languages. Complementizer agreement has been observed in several other language families in Africa (Gu¨ldemann 2008) and is also a property of the Celtic language Welsh (see §1.3.1 for discussion). Agreeing complementizers belong to two distinct types: those that index a discourse participant coded in the matrix clause, and those that agree with an argument of the complement clause. As an example of the first type, consider the behaviour of the complementizer -di from the Bantu language Kinande (Niger– Congo, Bantu; Democratic Republic of Congo) which introduces the complement of a verb of speech, and agrees with the subject of the matrix clause, as in (8): (8) Kinande (Baker 2008: 120) mo-n-a-layir-ire Kambale in-di a-gul-e AFFM-1SGS-T-convince-EXTD Kambale(CL1) 1SG-that CL1-buy-SBJV amatunda fruits(CL6) ‘I convinced Kambale that he should buy fruits.’ In (8) the subject is first-person singular (as indicated by first-person singular agreement on the matrix verb), and accordingly we find the complementizer in a distinctive first-person singular form, indi. As Baker (2008: 179) observes, although the element in question is diachronically related to the Kinande verb meaning ‘say’, its syntactic behaviour argues against identifying it as a verb or part ⁶ Many of the examples discussed here feature languages belonging to Nakh-Daghestanian, a linguistic family particularly rich in unexpected agreement behaviour in terms of the perspective adopted here; unfortunately, Baker’s (2008) stratified sample draws only on Lezgian, one of the few Nakh-Daghestanian languages in which agreement marking has been lost altogether.

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of a verbal complex in synchrony.⁷ Agreement on complementizers in Bantu languages is not only observed when they are derived from verbs of speech. Kawasha (2007) discusses a range of agreeing complementizers elsewhere in the family which appear to descend from personal pronouns. The Mande languages of West Africa also have ‘clause linkage markers’ derived from verbs of speech that could be analysed as complementizers, but differ from more clear-cut examples of complementation in that the clauses introduced are doubled by a pronoun in the object position. In most Mande languages with such forms, the controller of agreement is always the subject, but in one language, Jula of Samatiguila spoken in Ivory Coast, agreement is (at least partially) semantically driven. Rather than indexing a particular grammatical function, the conjunction introducing the clause agrees with the source of the speech, emotion, or feeling depicted in the complement clause, which could be the subject, object, or a possessor in the matrix clause.⁸ We are not aware of any examples outside of the Mande group that behave in this way, making them especially important for developing appropriate theoretical models of such elements (see Idiatov 2010 for a detailed typology and references). The wealth of work on agreeing complementizers in West Germanic, largely inspired by Haegeman (1992), discusses complementizer agreement not with the subject of the matrix clause but with the subject of the embedded clause.⁹ An example from West Frisian can be seen in (9), where the second-person singular agreement morphology on the complementizer dat- is controlled by the adjacent subject of the subordinate clause, namely do ‘you’. (9)

West Frisian (van der Meer 1991, cited in Zwart 1993: 198) Heit sei dat-st do soks net leauwe moa-st dad said that-2SG you such not believe must-2SG ‘Dad said that you should not believe such things.’

The relative prominence of complementizer agreement in West Germanic and Bantu—two well-explored linguistic groups—means that several minimalist treatments of the phenomenon have now been proposed, although variation across the data indicates that more than one theoretical explanation may be necessary (see van Koppen 2017 for a detailed overview), especially as existing models do not address the more challenging Mande data presented by Idiatov (2010). While agreeing complementizers do not represent the focus of any of the chapters in the present work, conjunctions introducing adverbial clauses are one ⁷ A comparable agreeing element is the quotative marker found in Nanti (Arawakan; Peru), which does not introduce subordinate clauses in general, but acts specifically to mark out quoted speech within a clause (Michael 2012: 5). ⁸ Phrase-internal possessors are already known to control agreement on verbs under certain conditions. See the chapters in Bárány et al. (2019), especially Nikolaeva et al. (2019) and Yadava et al. (2019). ⁹ For a helpful introduction to Haegeman’s West Flemish data, see Corbett (2006: 49–51).

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of the many targets for agreement in the Italo-Romance variety Ripano described by Paciaroni (Chapter 5).¹⁰ Two targets in this class are attested in her corpus data, namely ˈdɔːpə kə ‘after’ and ˈkomːə ‘as soon as’, which optionally agree in gender and number with an argument belonging to the clause they introduce. In the attested examples, complementizer agreement is controlled by unaccusative, reflexive, and unergative subjects and transitive objects, but never by transitive subjects. In (10) the complementizer ˈkom:-u agrees with the pronominal direct object ˈkwiʃtu ‘this’ in a transitive construction. (10)

Ripano (Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume) e iɱˈfatːi l-i ˈka ˈkomː-u tə= and indeed DEF-M.PL dog(M).PL as_soon_as-M.SG IO2SG= ˈviːð-ə ˈkwiʃt-u jə= sə= ˈmetː-ə see.PRS-RED_AGR DEM.PROX-M.SG IO3= REFL.3= start.PRS-RED.AGR a ˈkːorːe ðeˈrɛːta to run.INF behind ‘And indeed, the dogs, as soon as they see him, dart after him.’ (LuCa, RIP74_42)

The data show that agreeing conjunctions, like certain other targets in Ripano, follow an ergative–absolutive alignment pattern, even though nominative–accusative alignment is prevalent in the verbal agreement system.

1.2.2 Adpositions Given that adpositions can subcategorize for their complement and govern its case, much like verbs do with their arguments (see, for example, Svenonius 2007), we may not be too surprised to find that sometimes they index features of their complements.¹¹ This is the case in many languages, as has now been well ¹⁰ Similar examples are seen in West Germanic languages. For instance, agreement on Bavarian waal ‘because’ and West Flemish omdat ‘because’ is also discussed by van Koppen (2017: 12, 22–3). In (i) from Bavarian, waal agrees for person and number with the subject mer ‘we’ of the clause it introduces. (i) Bavarian (Weise 1907, cited in Weiß 2005: 154) ∗ . . . waal-n (mer) graad besamn senn because-1PL we at_the_moment together are.1PL ‘. . . because we are together at the moment’. Troike (1981: 667) also identifies agreement for person on the word meaning ‘because’ in Coahuilteco, an extinct linguistic isolate of the southern United States. ¹¹ As with complementizers, one likely source of agreeing adpositions is represented by verbs. Indeed, the boundary between adpositions and verb forms is not always clear-cut (consider the status of English concerning, excluding, owing (to), treated as prepositions by Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 611): this again points to a potential diachronic route by which agreement on verbs could lead to agreement on targets of another kind.

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documented (see Baker 2008: 191–6; Hagège 2010: 172–8; Bakker 2013; Libert 2013). One important parameter of variation across languages, captured by Bakker (2013), concerns whether the occurrence of agreement marking on adpositions is sensitive to the part of speech of the complement. For instance, in (11), from Abkhaz (Abkhaz-Adyge; Georgia), indexation of person and number features is possible with both nominal and pronominal complements. If the complement is pronominal, however, the controller is typically absent and person–number indexes are the only expression of the postposition’s complement, i.e. they usually act as anaphoric agreement markers.¹² (11)

Abkhaz (Hewitt 1979: 103, cited in Bakker 2013) a. a-jəˋyas a-q’nəˋ b. (sarà) s-q’ənt˚’ DEF-river 3SG-at I 1SG-from ‘at the river’ ‘from me’

Bakker (2013)—who focuses only on person marking—lists a total of 23 languages (from a sample of 378) in which person agreement with a nominal complement is possible. This list includes person and number agreement on Abkhaz postpositions, exemplified in (11), person and number agreement on Udihe postpositions, as exemplified in (4), and person, number, and gender agreement on postpositions in the Papuan language Lavukaleve (§1.3.1). Note, however, that person is not always a relevant feature for agreeing adpositions; in Ripano (see Chapter 5), certain prepositions agree with their complement in gender and number, but not person.¹³ Although adposition agreement is observed in the presence of a co-nominal controller in some languages, it is much more common to find that agreement markers on adpositions are not compatible with NPs; 83 languages of Bakker’s (2013) sample follow this pattern. For instance, in Welsh, preposition agreement in person, gender, and number is only attested with pronominal complements, not with nominal ones (see §1.3.1 for further details). More unusual, however, are instances where an adposition agrees with a controller in some other syntactic position. This is exemplified in (12) with data from the Anim language of Coastal Marind, spoken in Southern New Guinea. Here the

¹² While Bakker (2013) notes that independent pronouns may co-occur with agreement marking on adpositions, he does not fully distinguish this state of affairs in his typology. Within the group of languages coded as having ‘person marking for pronouns only’, languages that allow or require the presence of an independent pronoun in addition to agreement on the adposition itself and those that do not permit the presence of a co-pronominal are lumped together into a single category. ¹³ When agreeing prepositions in Ripano are intransitive, they resemble temporal adverbs and can agree with the subject of the clause. See Paciaroni (Chapter 5, this volume) for examples.

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postposition lik ‘from’ agrees in gender not with its own complement sangga ‘arm’ but with lakalik ‘bracer’, the object of the verb: (12)

Coastal Marind (Olsson, Chapter 7, this volume) lakalik sangga lik mata-ka-kahwahwib bracer(IV) arm(III) from:IV HORT-PRI-take.off:IV.U ‘Let me take off the bracer from my arm first.’

The phenomenon of externally agreeing adpositions has remained almost entirely unexplored in the linguistic literature. Olsson (Chapter 7, this volume) examines external agreement on adpositions in Coastal Marind, Souag (2015) discusses the phenomenon in the Songhay language Kwarandzyey, and recent typological work by Chumakina et al. (2022) focuses on Nakh-Daghestanian languages, of which it is a common feature (see (6) from Avar in §1.1). Unlike with adpositional complements, there are no restrictions on whether the controller of external agreement on adpositions is pronominal or nominal; both are always possible in the data we have encountered. The examples of external agreement on adpositions discussed here so far have both been of postpositions agreeing with clausal objects, namely the undergoer in (12) and the absolutive argument of a (di)transitive clause in (6). However, Souag’s (2015) account of external agreement on a single preposition in Kwarandzyey, discussed in §1.3.2, demonstrates that adposition agreement can be controlled by the subject, direct object or indirect object of the verb, not a single privileged grammatical function. This is because the controller of agreement is determined by a semantic relation: it must be the primary concomitant in the comitative relation expressed by the preposition.

1.2.3 Nouns Arguments headed by nouns are the archetypal controller of canonical verbal agreement. At the clausal level they are seldom targets themselves, though nouns can bear agreement morphology when used as possessors within the nominal domain (see Siewierska 2004, for instance). While certainly unusual agreement targets with the clause, a growing body of evidence indicates that nouns functioning as core arguments, complements, and adjuncts of the verb may index features of another argument. Agreeing nouns functioning as adjuncts are found in several NakhDaghestanian languages in which nouns in spatial cases have an agreement slot that indexes the absolutive argument of the clause. For instance, in (13) from Standard Dargwa, karilarad ‘from the bakery’, itself a neuter noun in a locative form, agrees in gender with the feminine absolutive argument x̂unul ‘wife’. For further examples from Dargwa varieties, see §1.3.5.2.

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Standard Dargwa (van den Berg 2001: 126) . . . hacˇam-li-s x̂unul kari-la-r-ad cˇar+r-uq-i once-OBL-DAT wife(F)[ABS] bakery(N)-LOC-F-EL return+F-AUX-GER aħen be.not ‘. . . my wife has not yet returned from the bakery’.

Similar behaviour is observed in Andi (Chapter 2, this volume), where locative adjuncts containing nominals in the affective case show agreement in gender and number with the absolutive-marked argument of the predicate. The affective case can be used with spatial meaning in its own right, but more commonly it is selected on the complements of certain spatial adpositions, as in examples (14)–(16). As in Standard Dargwa, the affective-marked nominal has inherent gender and number values of its own, but it also indexes inflectional features of the absolutive argument of the clause. With controllers in genders I, II, IV, and V only gender (and not number) is indexed on the affective suffix, but in gender III, a further distinction between singular and plural controllers is made.¹⁴ Thus in (14), the gender III singular features of the absolutive argument χw ej ‘dog’ are marked on the case suffix in haq’ubo ‘to [its] house’, itself a gender V noun. In (15), the adjunct agrees in gender and number with the gender III plural absolutive argument hegejil ‘they’. (14)

Zilo Andi (Kaye, fieldnotes) χw ej en-ƛi=gu haq’u-bo dog(III)[SG.ABS] LOG.OBL-GEN=EMPH house(V).SG.OBL-AFF.III.SG ƛer-di b-uʔinn-e near-LAT III.SG-go.SG-HAB ‘The dog goes up to its house.’

(15) Andi proper (Magomedova & Alisultanova 2010: 29) hege-j-il j-et’on-gu-cˇ’igu karawatu-jo DEM-III.PL-PL[ABS] III.PL-speak-EMPH-CVB.NEG bed(IV).SG.OBL-AFF.III.PL hiƛ’u=lo j-uɢw on-dːu, hegeɬːu j-eq’ašːi-dːu under=ADD III.PL-go.down.PL-CVB there III.PL-hide-PRF ‘Without saying a word, they [the piglets] got under the bed and hid there.’ In (16), both the noun ‘wolf ’ and the agreeing postposition ‘among’ index the features of the gender III plural burdil ‘lambs’, the absolutive argument of the verb ‘send’ which has been elided in the second clause.

¹⁴ In Andi, gender III is a non-autonomous gender to which certain animals belong. The agreement morphology used with gender III singular controllers is syncretic with that used with gender IV controllers, while the agreement morphology used with gender III plural controllers is syncretic with the morphology used to index gender II controllers. See Kaye (Chapter 2, this volume) for details.

12 (16)

OLIVER BOND, MARINA CHUMAKINA, STEVEN KAYE Andi proper (Anonymous 2015, Luke 10:3) denni bisːil w-oƛelta-rado boc’o-li-jo I.ERG you.PL.ABS I-send-PROG wolf(III)-PL.OBL-AFF.III.PL j-oƛ’idi burdil=gagu III.PL-among.LAT lamb(III).PL.ABS=like ‘I am sending you out like [one sends] lambs into the midst of wolves.’

Remarkably, nominals marked with the affective case also mark experiencers in the so-called affective construction involving certain verbs of perception, cognition, and emotion. In such constructions, the experiencer agrees with the absolutive stimulus in gender (and number, if gender III). Note that this is possible even when the verb itself does not agree, as in (17). (17)

Zilo Andi (Kaye, Chapter 2, this volume) Aminati-wo en-ƛi=gu ima ǯiʔ-e Aminat(II).SG.OBL-AFF.I LOG.OBL-GEN=EMPH father(I)[SG.ABS] love-HAB ‘Aminat loves her father.’

In light of this unusual agreement behaviour, one obvious avenue of exploration would be to try to discount the agreeing affective as an adjunct or non-core argument of the type seen in (14) and (15), yet Kaye (Chapter 2, this volume) provides a detailed analysis of the subject properties associated with nominals marked with affective case in affective constructions, providing the most compelling evidence yet for agreement between core arguments. He contrasts this with more ambiguous evidence for agreement between core arguments in Coahuilteco (an extinct isolate of southern Texas) and Tsakhur (Nakh-Daghestanian). Beyond Nakh-Daghestanian, robust examples of agreeing nouns are observed in the Italo-Romance variety Ripano (Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume). In Ripano, the nominal complements of light verbs agree in gender and number with the subject of their clause. In (18), the feminine noun ‘hunger’ agrees with the masculine singular subject of the relative clause: (18)

Ripano (Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume) n-u ˈði ˈpasː-ə ðə ˈlɔːkə INDEF-M.SG day(M).SG pass_by.PRS-RED_AGR of there n-u ˈdʒoːvən-ə ʃtraˈnjeːr-u kə tːʃaˈvje INDEF-M.SG young-M.SG stranger(M)-SG REL have.IMPF.3 ˈfːaːm-u hunger(F)-M.SG ‘One day all of a sudden a young stranger who was hungry passed by.’ (ReBr, RIP74_8)

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For two older speakers, certain locative adjuncts and even objects can agree with the subject under certain conditions (see Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume, for examples and discussion). Yet unlike in Andi, where every noun can inflect for agreement in the affective case, this is a more marginal property of the Ripano system, which appears to be undergoing substantial attrition. One further syntactic environment in which nouns appear to exhibit agreement-like behaviour is when they are used in predicative function. In Tundra Nenets (Uralic, Samoyedic; North-West Siberia), the identificational copula ŋǣ- ‘to be’ is unexpressed with nouns and adjectives in the present and past tense. Consequently, predicative nouns are inflected for subject agreement morphology in a similar way to intransitive verbs belonging to the ‘subjective’ inflectional class (although the paradigm is not identical). They can also bear tense inflection, as in (19a).¹⁵ When they occur in constructions with the negative copula, which itself bears person and number marking, subject indexation on the predicative nominal is optional. (19) Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 29, 275) a. xan′ena-dəm-c′∘ b. səwa xan′ena(-d∘ m) n′ī-d∘ m ŋaq hunter-1SG-PST good hunter-1SG NEG-1SG be.CONN ‘I was a hunter.’ ‘I am not a good hunter.’ Whatever the formal analysis of this pattern might be, morphology indexing clausal arguments is part of the inflectional paradigm of the noun, much as it is with predicative adjectives or participles in other languages. While data on agreeing clause-level arguments are understandably scarce, there are some tentative typological generalizations that we can make on the basis of the data we have encountered. Agreement on clause-level arguments is never controlled by a noun functioning as an adjunct, or embedded in a PP. With the experiencer in an affective construction, the controller is always a licensed argument of the verb. Another important observation to make across the data on agreement between core arguments is that all available evidence indicates that it is never a general property of canonical transitive clauses. We conclude, then, that there are strong functional and syntactic constraints on the extension of agreement between core arguments from the types of structures discussed above to highly transitive clauses.

¹⁵ Adopting terms used in previous descriptions of Tundra Nenets, Nikolaeva (2014: 77) notes that ‘each intransitive verb in Tundra Nenets belongs either to the subjective or the reflexive class and is conjugated according to the respective conjugation type. Inflectional class is a feature which has to be specified lexically.’

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1.2.4 Pronouns Like nouns, pronominal arguments may index a core argument with which they are not co-referential.¹⁶ In some accounts of agreement (e.g. Corbett 1979; 2006: 41–2) all pronouns that index inflectional features are agreement targets. Here we are concerned with those examples where the inflectional features of two different nominals are marked simultaneously. The best-documented examples of this phenomenon are from NakhDaghestanian languages. In Archi, for instance, certain ergative and dative pronouns can exhibit agreement with the absolutive argument of their clause (Bond & Chumakina 2016: 63–70). This is illustrated in (20), repeated here from (5), where the dative pronoun bez agrees in gender (I) and number (PL) with the absolutive ‘my guests’. In such examples, agreement is obligatory. (20) Archi (Bond & Chumakina 2016: 66) b-is χːʕ ele b-ez e‹b›χni I/II.PL-1SG.GEN guest(I)[PL.ABS] I/II.PL-1SG.DAT ‹I/II.PL›forget.PFV ‘I forgot my guests.’ Agreeing pronouns in Archi are discussed in Polinsky et al. (2017) and in various contributions to Bond, Corbett, Chumakina, and Brown (2016). Polinsky et al. (2017) argue that pronominal targets bearing agreement morphology are weak pronouns that lack any inherent specification for the noun class (i.e. gender) feature [CL], and due to a language-specific constraint on all DPs having a [CL] feature, they must acquire their gender features from the nearest v head. Essentially, agreement on ‘deficient’ pronouns is seen as a by-product of agreement proper. Agreeing pronouns are also observed elsewhere in the Nakh-Daghestanian family. In (21), from Andi, a pronominal experiencer with subject properties agrees with the absolutive stimulus in the same way as was seen for nouns in the preceding discussion. (21)

Zilo Andi (Kaye, Chapter 2, this volume) hege-šːu-jo Aminati riχo-mado DEM-I.SG.OBL-AFF.II Aminat(II)[SG.ABS] dislike-PROG ‘He dislikes Aminat.’

See Kaye (Chapter 2, this volume) for a detailed discussion of why the analysis Polinsky et al. (2017) propose for Archi cannot be extended to Andi. Outside the Caucasus, examples of pronouns agreeing with core arguments with which they are not in a reflexive dependency are thin on the ground. However, there is some evidence to suggest that pronouns indexing (other) core arguments may be attested. For instance, consider (22), from the extinct linguistic isolate ¹⁶ We do not treat reflexive or logophoric pronouns as instances of agreement between arguments.

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Elamite once spoken in what is now Iran. Here, both the adposition ‘under’ and its pronominal complement ‘me’ agree in person, number, and gender (animate vs inanimate) with the object ‘him’: (22)

Elamite (Stolper 2004: 85) pat-r ta-t-ni ir u-r he/she.ACC under-ANIM.3SG I.NOM-ANIM.3SG put-2SG-OPT ‘May you place him beneath me.’

As Elamite is an ancient language with a restricted and textually difficult corpus, the possibility always remains that the structure of such examples has been misanalysed, but the structure shares some similarities with (14)–(16) from Zilo Andi. An alternative hypothesis could be that this reflects feature spreading from the adposition to its complement. Our final example comes from Teop (Austronesian, Oceanic; Papua New Guinea), which has a ‘fourth person’ object pronoun that exhibits signs of argument co-sensitivity. It is employed in lieu of the regular third-person object pronouns (singular eve and plural riori) whenever both the subject and object are third person. When the object referent is singular, this ‘fourth person’ pronoun indexes the subject’s number value, as illustrated in (23). In (23a), it takes the form bona because the subject of its clause, ‘Mum’, is singular, while in (23b), it takes the form bari because the clause has a third-person plural subject: (23)

Teop (Mosel 2010: 396) a. enaa paa sue vuru Aaron e iaa he vahuhu bona? 1SG TAM say earlier Aaron ART Mum CONJ give.birth 4SG.SG ‘Did I mention Aaron when Mum gave birth to him?’ b. erau, me-ori paa dao bari bene Avelaua so and-3PL.SBJ TAM call 4SG.PL OBJ.ART Avelaua ‘And so they called her Avelaua.’

While highly restricted in terms of distribution, these examples behave exactly as one might expect from agreement between arguments, as discussed by Kaye (Chapter 2, this volume). One must be cautious, though; under an alternative analysis, this is a type of obviation sensitive to number and the similarity to agreement is simply the result of different linguistic phenomena giving rise to similar surface patterns.

1.2.5 Adverbs Adverbs, which have traditionally been viewed as a non-agreeing category, may nonetheless serve as clause-level agreement targets too, a phenomenon which has been observed in Romance varieties spoken in Italy and Spain and elsewhere

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(e.g. Antrim 1994; Fábregas & Pérez-Jiménez 2008; Ledgeway 2011, 2017; Hummel 2014, 2015, 2017; Hummel & Valera 2017; Silvestri 2017).¹⁷ For instance, in Cosentino, the southern Italian variety of Cosenza (Indo-European, Romance; Italy), some adverbs agree, while others do not. Agreeing adverbs in transitive clauses exhibit variable behaviour. They can show a default pattern of agreement, in which the masculine form of the adverb is used, or they can agree with the clausal object, as illustrated by the alternation in (24), repeated from (3). (24)

Cosentino (Ledgeway 2017: 68–9) a. Anna miscava buonu ’i carte Anna shuffled good.M.SG the.PL cards.F ‘Anna shuffled the cards well.’ (Anna shuffled the cards in a competent manner.) b. Anna miscava bone ’i carte Anna shuffled good.F.PL the.PL cards.F ‘Anna shuffled the cards well.’ (The cards ended up well-shuffled.)

The default pattern of agreement produces an interpretation in which the adverb is event oriented (as in (24a)). Adverbial agreement with the object is resultoriented, such that the adverb indicates a property of the state arising from the event depicted by the verb (as in (24b)). The observation that adverbial targets can sometimes effectively alternate between different controllers, or between agreement and default agreement (/agreement failure), in order to signal different semantic orientations is seen in many languages with agreeing adverbs, such as Gujarati (Hook & Joshi 1991; discussed in §1.3.2), Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 180–3; discussed in §1.3.3) and Archi (Chumakina & Bond 2016). In some accounts, differences in agreement are also proposed to reflect structural differences that are not always immediately obvious from inspecting individual examples (for instance, see Ledgeway 2011 on southern Italian dialects, and Polinsky 2016: 207–13 for an outline of possible different theoretical analyses of Archi agreeing adverbs). One of the most important observations made about adverb agreement in ItaloRomance is that adverbs are not always controlled by the same argument as finite verbs; rather they follow an active–stative split, whereby objects (O) and undergoer intransitive subjects (SO ) can control agreement, but other types of subject cannot (see §1.3.2 for a brief discussion of Cosentino, Paciaroni (Chapter 5, this volume) for the ergative–absolutive alignment system in Ripano, and Ledgeway 2017 for an extensive account across different varieties). Parallels are observed in some Indo-Aryan languages. For instance, (25) from Urdu (Indo-Aryan) illustrates the use of an adverb of manner formally identical with the adjective ‘good’, ¹⁷ We are concerned here with clause-level adverbs, as opposed to adverbs which are used as modifiers within NPs/DPs.

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agreeing in number and gender with the object argument gaṛi ‘car’. Both the subject and the copula agree with the third-person singular masculine subject. (25) Urdu (Butt et al. 2016: 146) lɑṛka gaṛi ɑcch -i cɑla-ta hɛ boy(M).SG.NOM car(F).SG.NOM good-F.SG drive-IPFV.M.SG be.PRS.3.SG ‘The boy drives a/the car well.’ See Butt et al. (2016) for a description of adverb agreement in three Indo-Aryan languages, and a discussion of how the facts relate to the previous research in Romance languages. While adjectives are the best-documented diachronic source for agreeing adverbs, this is just one of many possibilities. Chumakina (Chapter 4, this volume) explores agreeing adverbs in Enets, a Uralic language spoken in Northern Siberia. Focusing on the Forest Enets variety, she describes their behaviour based on their distribution in texts. One of the distinctive properties of agreeing adverbs in Enets (as well as in its sister language Nenets) is that many of them are diachronically based on nouns, and their agreement morphology is not verbal in origin, but rather resembles possessive suffixes from the nominal paradigm. Agreeing adverbs are particularly prevalent in the Nakh-Daghestanian family. Sumbatova (Chapter 3, this volume) discusses ‘essive spatial expressions’ in Tanti Dargwa, while Chumakina and Lyutikova (Chapter 6, this volume) examine the syntactic behaviour of agreeing adverbs in Khwarshi. Data from these languages are particularly important for exploring how different syntactic structures determine the domain in which adverb agreement occurs, as discussed in §1.3.5. Elsewhere, meanwhile, there may be no such choice as to the identity of the controller. For example, in certain Luyia varieties of Bantu, the interrogative adverb meaning ‘how?’ systematically agrees with the subject argument of the clause, as in (26) where the adverb sirie(na), like the verb sifunikhe ‘broke’, agrees with the class 7 noun sitanda ‘bed’. (26)

Lubukusu (Carstens & Diercks 2013: 192) si-tanda si-funikhe si-rie(na)? NC7-bed(CL7) CL7S-broke CL7-how ‘How did the bed break?’

A particularly intricate system of adverb agreement, in which the assignment of case agreement on adverbs of degree is bound up with the complexities of Kartvelian morphosyntactic alignment, is observed in Megrelian. RostovtsevPopiel (Chapter 8, this volume) shows that adverbs appear to agree in case with one of the core arguments of the clause they modify—but it is the TAM series of the predicate that determines which argument that will be, and hence what case marking the adverbs will display. Given that case is not usually thought of as an agreement feature (see Corbett 2006 for discussion), a verbal concord analysis may

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be more appropriate for these data. See Rostovtsev-Popiel (Chapter 8, this volume) for discussion of a similar phenomenon in the Australian language Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan; Central Australia). For case agreement on adverbs in Panoan languages see Valenzuela (2005) and Baker (2014).

1.2.6 Particles and discourse markers Several Nakh-Daghestanian languages which show agreement on adverbs also possess agreeing particles and discourse markers. Sometimes, these stand in a clear synchronic or diachronic relationship with existing adverbs. For Tsez, Polinsky (2015: n.p.) identifies an agreeing, focus-marking ‘validator particle’ -uy, exemplified by buy ‘indeed’ in (27), which ‘indicates a strong degree of certainty on the part of the speaker’. Etymologically this forms the basis of several adverbs, including -uygon ‘already’ and -uytow ‘free of charge’; however, the validator particle stands out from adverbs in its syntactic distribution, in that it is restricted to root clauses and acts as a second-position clitic, systematically attaching to the first constituent of the clause. (27)

Tsez (Polinsky 2015) huł b-uy neł-a¨ micxir b-iqir-si yesterday III-VAL DEM.nI-ERG money.ABS.III III-catch-PST.W ‘It was indeed yesterday that she received the money.’

Meanwhile, Chumakina and Lyutikova (Chapter 6, this volume) illustrate how Khwarshi, also belonging to the Tsezic branch of the family, makes use of agreeing deictic adverbs as contrastive topic markers, as in (28), where abe, translated here as ‘as for’, agrees in number and gender with q’ale ‘children’. (28)

Khwarshi (Chumakina & Lyutikova, Chapter 6, this volume) a‹b›e di-ja q’ale micˇaha-b goɬe, ‹HPL›TOP I-GEN1 children(HPL)[ABS] rich-HPL COP.PRS Rasule-s q’ale biskina-b goɬe Rasul.OBL-GEN1 children(HPL)[ABS] poor-HPL COP.PRS ‘A s for my children, they are rich, but Rasul’s children are poor.’

Other agreeing particles in the family show no obvious relationship with adverbs, e.g. the emphatic particle with restrictive semantics found in Tsakhur, which takes the form ǯad in example (29). (29)

Tsakhur (Lyutikova 1999: 189) za-s kumag maˤhammad-ē ǯa-d haʔ-u I.OBL-DAT help(IV) Magomed(I)-ERG RESTR-IV [IV]do-PFV ‘It was Magomed (specifically) that helped me.’ (lit. ‘did help to me’)

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Note that agreement marking on ǯad is not controlled by the noun over which it has semantic scope, gender I maˤhammadē ‘Magomed’, but the absolutive argument of the clause, gender IV kumag ‘help’. See also §1.3.5.1 and Chumakina (2021) for discussion of the agreeing emphatic particle in Archi.

1.2.7 Converbs Converbs, verbal forms which head certain dependent and/or adverbial clauses, may also serve as agreement targets in ways which cannot be explained in terms of their own argument structure, a phenomenon observed in more than one NakhDaghestanian language (see Creissels 2012 on Northern Akhwakh; Kibrik 2001: 482–3 on Bagwalal) but outside this family as well. Foley (2020) cites the Northern Akhwakh sentence in (30) in order to point out that agreement with the (covert) human plural subject of the main clause is expressed on numerous verbal targets. But for our purposes here, the important point is that the converb heading the subordinate clause, wuʟ’ī ‘having died’, even while it agrees prefixally with its own subject (the masculine singular Mol¯a Rasadi), also agrees suffixally with the (covert) human plural subject of the main clause, signalled by ØHPL.ABS in the text line. (30) Northern Akhwakh (Creissels 2012: 140) Mol¯a Rasadi w-uʟ’-ī ØHPL.ABS šʷela-L¯a Molla Rasadi(M)[ABS] M-die-ADVR.HPL graveyard-LOC m-āne b-ak’-ī goli HPL-go.PROG HPL-be-ADVR.HPL AUX.HPL ‘Molla Rasadi having died, they were going to the graveyard.’ Compare example (31) from Nivkh, a linguistic isolate of Siberia, where the converb meaning ‘as it grew dark’ agrees suffixally with the 1PL subject of the matrix verb ‘sleep’: (31)

Nivkh (Nedjalkov & Otaina 2013: 345) nəŋ ŋəu-gu-t q‘o-d̦-ra we:EXCL grow.dark-CAUS-CVB:NAR:1PL sleep-IND-FOC ‘A s it grew dark we slept (=fell asleep).’

It is notable that in the same language, what are in etymological terms a range of converbial forms of the deictic verbs ha- ‘be so’ and ho(ʁo/a)- ‘be like that’, ‘do so’ are used as discourse-structuring elements, especially in narrative contexts (Nedjalkov & Otaina 2013: 201–2). In synchrony they are not perceived by native speakers as identical with true converbs, and Nedjalkov and Otaina identify them

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as conjunctive adverbs, appropriately translated by expressions such as ‘then’, ‘after that’, ‘therefore’: (32)

(Nivkh; Panfilov 1965: 22, cited in Nedjalkov & Otaina 2013: 296) hoʁor hemar pol-ra mu-ra then:3SG old.man fall-COORD.3SG die-COORD.3SG ‘Then the old man fell and died.’

However, as these words remain converbs in formal terms, they continue to show agreement with the subject accordingly, as in example (32), where the item translated as ‘then’ agrees in person and number with hemar ‘old man’; a more diachronically oriented glossing practice would instead give hoʁo-r [do.soCVB:NAR:3SG].

1.2.8 Coordinators Remarkably, the world’s languages even appear to attest instances of coordinators which agree with one or multiple controllers, although the relevant instances known to us leave some room for doubt with regard to their word class. Steeman (2011: 203, 209–10) notes the presence of agreement on two ‘narrative (coordinating) conjunctions’ of Sandawe, a Khoisan language of Tanzania, while Eaton (2010: 96–101) identifies a third in the same language. These conjunctions introduce clauses and agree with the clausal subject, as seen in (33), where sàː ‘and then’ agrees with the feminine subject ǀh ǐːã̂ːsu̥ ‘Dik-dik’ in person, number, and gender. (33) Sandawe (Eaton 2010: 102) sàː ǀh ǐːẫ su̥ ts’óngórˆaː dláʔ sáː ǀh ǐːà-ː͂̀ -sù̥ ts’óngórì̥ -à dláʔ NAR.CONJ.3SG.F dik.dik-SP-3SG.F jump_up_and_down-CNCT IDEO ‘And then Dik-dik jumped up and down, boing!’ Similarly, in example (34) the ‘subjunctive conjunction’ ʔòː, here translated as ‘and then; and let’s’, agrees with sṹːgı̃̂ː ‘we’. (34) Sandawe (Eaton 2010: 151)¹⁸ ǁàkı´kô ʔòː mǐːndʒó sṹːgı̃̂ ː bàːràː ǁàkı´-kò ʔóː mǐːndʒó sṹːì-ː͂̀ baˇːrà-é descend-2SG.IMP SBJV.CONJ.1PL journey(M) we-SP start-3SG.MO ‘Get down, and let’s start our journey/You should get down, and then we can start our journey.’

¹⁸ The Sandawe glosses depart from those used in the original source to increase the clarity on the point being made here.

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The fact that these items are used to coordinate clauses specifically (as opposed to nouns or phrases), thus articulating the narrative sequence, might suggest that they are better thought of as conjunctive adverbs, cf. the Nivkh items exemplified by hoʁor in example (32); however, in the literature on Sandawe they are universally treated as conjunctions (cf. §1.2.1). Agreement has also been found to appear on items which serve as NP coordinators, though the synchronic status of this phenomenon is even more debatable. In Walman, a Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea, alongside the morphologically invariant conjunction o ‘and’ there exist two lexemes, with the stems -aand -aro-, which can also be glossed as ‘and’ but show affixal agreement with both of the conjunct NPs involved (Brown & Dryer 2008). Consider example (35), in which the form naro ‘and’ shows agreement in person, number, and gender with John prefixally, and with Mary by means of a zero suffix. (35)

Walman (Brown & Dryer 2008: 539) kum m-etere-y John n-aro-Ø Mary 1SG 1SG-see-3PL John 3SG.M-and-3SG.F Mary ‘I saw John and Mary.’

Importantly, the way agreement is marked on -a- and -aro- parallels that seen on unambiguously verbal inflected forms, which mark subject agreement with a prefix and object agreement with a suffix, as in the case of m-etere-y [1SG-see-3PL] in the example above. What is more, Brown and Dryer point to evidence that in some instances these lexemes are best taken as components of a serial verb construction. However, at the same time, they conclude that an analysis in terms of serial verbs is not always appropriate, and that -a- and -aro- can sometimes genuinely be taken to coordinate two NPs to make a single conjunct NP, i.e. an argument can be made for treating them as conjunctions in syntactic terms although they have the morphology of verbs (Brown & Dryer 2008: 548–9).

1.3 Syntactic constraints on non-verbal agreement targets At the centre of all major theoretical models of agreement lies a set of structurally defined domains of application in which agreement processes occur. Domains explicitly define the syntactic boundaries of morphosyntactic operations (see Lehmann 1982; Corbett 2006; and Matasovi´c 2018 for a typological approach to agreement domains; and Brown & Sells 2016; Reeve et al. 2019; and Ackema & Neeleman 2020 for some recent theory-specific discussion). Thus, the domain for agreement both describes and limits the syntactic structures in which agreement between a controller and a target is expected to occur and predicts which possibilities should be ungrammatical.

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Since agreement domains are generally thought of as reflections of syntactic constituency, in descriptive and typological literature, they are frequently defined informally by referring to the maximal syntactic structure in which an agreement relation between a controller and target is permitted. For instance, the ‘clausal agreement domain’ sets the maximal syntactic structure in which agreement is expected to occur as the clause. This reflects the fact that the most prevalent target cross-linguistically—the verb—usually agrees with its selected arguments, within a clause that it heads. That is to say, verbal agreement is usually clause-bounded, and the controllers of agreement are usually arguments of the target. Given that the archetypal properties of agreement are so closely tied to the special role of verbs at the nucleus of a predicate, it seems reasonable to ask whether non-verbal agreement targets are subject to the same constraints as verbal targets, or whether they are better explained using different principles. One possible hypothesis is that agreement-like patterns observed on non-verbal targets must mirror those observed on verbs: the agreement domain is determined by the verb, and controllers of agreement on non-verbal targets are the same as those that control agreement on the verb. Yet it is also reasonable to suppose that non-verbal targets could exhibit distinctive behaviour in terms of the domains in which agreement occurs, and that the controllers of their agreement could be determined by independent principles. In fact, the cross-linguistic evidence demonstrates that agreement-like processes involving non-verbal targets vary considerably from language to language (as shown in §1.2). Consequently, the part of speech of an agreement target is only a partial predictor of the domain in which agreement occurs. The agreement targets this volume focuses on fall into three types according to their morphosyntactic properties. The first type, explored in §1.3.1, are constrained by their own argument structure and an agreement domain determined by the maximal projection of the target itself—whereby the head agrees with an argument or complement it licenses. This is a canonical agreement pattern in that constraints on locality are respected (see, for instance, Corbett 2006 on locality and canonical agreement, and Koopman 2006 on locality in a derivational approach). The second type are the targets which do not have argument structure or do not agree with an argument or complement within their maximal projection and therefore agree within their general domain, the clause (§1.3.2). This type is predominantly represented by adverbial phrases headed by either adverbs or locative forms of nouns. For these targets, the expected behaviour would be choosing the same controller as the canonical target within the clausal domain, i.e. the verb. Some adverbial phrases indeed copy the agreement behaviour of the verb— concordial agreement (§1.3.3)—while others choose a different controller. The extent to which the domain of agreement for unusual targets mirrors that of the verb (discussed in all chapters) or the head of other secondary predications (discussed by Olsson in Chapter 7 on Coastal Marind) varies across languages and

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constructions. This type includes nouns (§1.2.3) and pronouns (§1.2.4) which are themselves arguments of the predicate and are therefore only ever expected to be controllers of agreement, not targets. The final type—clause-external agreement—discussed in §1.3.4 is observed when the target exhibits agreement with a controller that is outside both the phrasal and clausal domains of the target. Finally, in §1.3.5 we examine whether agreement alternations on unusual targets are sensitive to both syntactic and semantic factors.

1.3.1 Phrase-level agreement One of the distinctive properties of verbal agreement targets is their argument structure. The controllers of verbal agreement are usually arguments of the verb. Of the other types of non-verbal agreement target discussed here, adpositions most closely resemble verbs with respect to argument structure, because, like verbs, many adpositions require the presence of an obligatory complement. In many languages, the case of the complement of the adposition is governed by the adposition that selects it—just as verbs govern their arguments. In languages that have adpositional agreement, the agreement patterns often resemble those seen with verbs. For instance, postpositions in Lavukaleve (Papuan; Solomon Islands) obligatorily cross-reference their complement with an object prefix (Terrill 2003: 60). When the object is singular, number and gender are indexed, as seen in (36a–c), while the plural agreement prefix does not vary for gender, as in (36d). Dual agreement markers (not shown here) also distinguish gender. (36) Lavukaleve (Terrill 2003: 92, 263, 151, 78)¹⁹ a. Karumulu la o-na vau hului ke Karumulun(F) SG.F.ART 3SG.FO-in go.seawards go.round EMPH ‘It went right round Karumulun.’ b. gaikoko na a-na aige o-ke canoe(M) SG.M.ART 3SG.MO-in anchor(F) 3SG.FO-drop foa-re a-e′rau go.down-NF 1SGS-fall/jump ‘. . . I drop the anchor from the canoe, I jump out.’ c. o′as ga huru-v e-na bush(N) SG.N.ART 3SG.NO-in go.inside-PL ‘They go into the bush.’ ¹⁹ Glosses have been slightly adjusted from the original.

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OLIVER BOND, MARINA CHUMAKINA, STEVEN KAYE d. olang gaikoko-mal monomono-v vo-na ta le-ao because canoe-PL small-PL 3PLO-in just 1DU.EXCL-go.in ‘Because we just got into small canoes.’

While adpositional agreement is obligatory, the presence of the noun phrase complement of adpositions is not (cf. §1.2.2). It is frequently elided in discourse, as illustrated in (37). In such cases the agreement pattern resembles anaphoric agreement. (37)

Lavukaleve (Terrill 2003: 188) foiga la-ham sia DEM.SG.N 3DU.MO-for do ‘It just happened for those two [ = male referents (M.DU)].’

Most prepositions in Welsh agree with their following object, provided that it is pronominal. Each inflecting preposition has distinct masculine and feminine forms in the third singular, and a third plural form that does not distinguish gender, as in (38). (38)

Welsh (Borsley 2009: 228) a. arno fo b. arni hi c. arnyn nhw on.3SG.M he on.3SG.F she on.3PL they ‘on him’ ‘on her’ ‘on them’

If the object of the preposition is nominal, a non-agreeing form of the preposition is required: (39)

Welsh (Borsley 2009: 228) a. ar y bachgen b. ar yr eneth on the boy on the girl ‘on the boy’ ‘on the girl’

c. ar y bechgyn on the boys ‘on the boys’

Preposition agreement in Welsh shares a number of properties with several other agreement processes in the language. For instance, where a clause is introduced by the preposition-complementizer i ‘to, for’, the latter must agree with any pronominal subject that follows it, as in (40a) and (40b): (40) Welsh (Borsley 2009: 228) a. disgwyliodd Emrys [iddo fo expect.PST.3SG Emrys to.3SG.M he ‘Emrys expected him to go to Bangor.’ b. disgwyliodd Emrys [iddi hi expect.PST.3SG Emrys to.3SG.F she ‘Emrys expected her to go to Bangor.’

fynd i Fangor] go to Bangor fynd i Fangor] go to Bangor

Similarly, if a noun is possessed by a pronominal possessor, the possessum must be preceded by an agreement clitic that cross-references the possessor. The agreement

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clitic is ungrammatical with a nominal possessor. As illustrated in (41), the thirdperson singular masculine and feminine are homophonous, but differ in that the former triggers soft mutation while the latter triggers aspirate mutation. (41) Welsh (Borsley 2009: 229) a. ei dad o b. ei thad hi 3SG.M father he 3SG.F father she ‘his father’ ‘her father’

c. eu tad nhw 3PL father they ‘their father’

The similarities between these structures, as well as others not discussed here, have led Borsley (2009) and others to argue that they should be accounted for as a single phenomenon. In each case, the relevant agreement relations share the following characteristics (Borsley 2009: 232): (42)

a. All involve agreement with pronouns, but not full noun phrases. b. All are obligatory. c. In all cases the pronoun follows the realization of agreement.

Furthermore, assuming that the inflectional elements in (41) are phrasal clitics that can attach to a complex nominal head, a similar structure emerges across each of the examples discussed here: each agreement target can be construed as a head inflected for agreement that is followed by a pronoun. Importantly, the pronominal controller of agreement in each case cannot be given a uniform analysis in terms of grammatical function. In (38) it is the object of a preposition, in (40) it is a clausal subject introduced by the complementizer, while in (41) it is a possessor. In his HPSG analysis, Borsley proposes that in each case the controller of agreement is the first item in the list of complements for a head acting as the agreement target. The central claim of Borsley’s analysis is that abstract levels of grammatical structure are not required to account for the agreement phenomenon observed in Welsh, and rather that superficial linear order is a sufficient tool to account for a number of related agreement scenarios. However, the syntactic domain that is relevant for agreement in each of the cases is determined by the target. Welsh prepositions agree with a controller functioning as the complement of the PP, and the preposition-complementizer is also controlled by an argument (internal to) a complement clause in the CP. The applicability of this generalization rests on an analysis where i belongs to the category prep(osition)-comp(lementizer) and takes the subject and predicate that follows it as two separate complements. Linearity has also proven to be an important concept in accounting for agreement between complementizers and arguments within the clauses they introduce (see van Koppen 2017 and §1.2.1).

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1.3.2 Clause-level agreement Not all agreeing non-verbal targets are controlled by their own arguments. Some agreeing targets, which clearly govern their own complements, do not agree at the phrasal level. Rather, they agree with clause-level controllers, just as verbal targets typically do. In some languages, this is fixed, such that all agreeing targets share the same controller. In such cases, neither linear order, phrasal constituency nor the argument structure of the target can be invoked as an explanatory factor. By way of example, recall (43) from Avar, repeated here from (6), which features a postposition agreeing with a clause-level argument: (43) Avar (Boris Ataev, p.c.) tusnaq-al-da zˇani-w t’amuna nizˇe-cːa Rasul prison(N)-SG.OBL-SUP in-M.SG put.PST 1PL.EXCL-ERG Rasul(M)[ABS] ‘We put Rasul in prison.’ The verb t’amuna ‘put’ in (43) requires three arguments: ergative nizˇecːa ‘we’, absolutive Rasul and an oblique prepositional phrase, headed by the agreeing postposition zˇaniw, which governs superessive case on its complement tusnaq ‘prison’. Rather than agreeing with its neuter complement (cf. the examples in §1.3.1), the postposition agrees with the absolutive argument of the verb. The verb itself, t’amuna ‘put’, does not show agreement, as the ability to agree is lexically specified for each Avar verb (as is typical for Nakh-Daghestanian languages). The example demonstrates that for some languages, at least, non-verbal agreement targets can agree with clause-level arguments independently of agreement on the verb.²⁰ Archi provides an example of a similar phenomenon. In (44) the postposition eq’en ‘up to’ takes the gender III noun maq’al ‘chapter’ as its complement and governs its contlative case. However, the controller of agreement on the postposition is the absolutive argument of the clause, the gender IV noun q’onq’ ‘book’. (44)

Archi (Bond & Chumakina 2016: 73) zari q’onq’ okɬni 1SG.ERG book(IV)[SG.ABS] [IV.SG]read.PFV maq’al-li-ra-k eq’en chapter(III)-SG.OBL-CONT-LAT [IV.SG]up.to ‘I read the book up to this chapter.’

ja-b this-III.SG

²⁰ For some theoretical analyses this is unexpected, principally because without agreement on the verb it is more difficult to justify a hypothesis in which non-verbal agreement targets are concordial in nature (i.e. receive their morphological specification through a mechanism that is distinct from agreement). One possible explanation for this is that those verbs which do not agree on the surface do bear the relevant agreement feature, but this is not reflected in the morphological form of the verb itself.

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In this example, the adverbial PP is entirely optional and is not selected as part of the argument structure of the verb itself. However, when it is present, agreement with the absolutive argument is obligatory. This relationship is not restricted to postpositional targets in Archi, rather the absolutive can control agreement on a large range of non-verbal targets (Bond & Chumakina 2016). Not all clause-level agreement is constrained by agreement with a syntactically privileged argument. In Kwarandzyey, a Songhay language spoken in Algeria, the comitative preposition indᶻ(a) indexes the primary concomitant in the comitative relation. Souag (2015) refers to this role as the ‘accompanied’ (in contrast to the ‘accompanier’ which is understood to be the object of the preposition). The agreement controller itself may fulfil the role of subject (45a), direct object (45b), or dative-marked indirect object (45c) in the clause containing the PP that it heads (Souag 2015: 79–80). (45)

Kwarandzyey (Souag 2015: 79–80) a. iškədda=ɣu, ks y-aʕam-dᶻyəy y-indᶻa child=this let 1PL-FUT-talk 1PL-COM ‘This little kid, let’s talk with him.’ b. ʕa-kkəs-ni n-indᶻa 1SG-leave-2SG 2SG-COM ‘I left you with him.’ c. tsuɣʉ=a yəṣṛa ni-šɨ n-indᶻ-ana what=FOC happen you-DAT 2SG-COM-3SG.EMPH ‘What happened to you with him/it?’

The object of the preposition can be expressed as a noun phrase, as in (46a), or remain unexpressed if third person, as in (46b). (46)

Kwarandzyey (Souag 2015: 79) a. xwəd gga nə-b-yəxdəm n-indᶻa nə-n when PST 2SG-IPFV-work 2SG-COM 2SG-GEN ‘When you (SG) were working with your friends . . .’ b. i-m-ka indᶻa 3PL-IRR-come [3]COM ‘They’ll come with him.’

bạ=yu . . . friend=PL

But if the object of the preposition is first or second person, or is ‘emphatic’, the object is realized as a suffix on the preposition. Thus indᶻ(a) can index two controllers simultaneously, as in (45c) and (47). (47)

Kwarandzyey (Souag 2015: 81) nə-s-bạ n-indᶻa-ɣəy 2SG-NEG-exist 2SG-COM-1SG ‘You are not with me.’

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Using a range of syntactic arguments, Souag (2015) convincingly demonstrates that indᶻ(a) is neither a lexical verb nor a noun, and that it has distributional properties that are more consistent with a preposition. Unlike the majority of agreeing prepositions, its argument structure clearly involves a relation between two referents, much like other predicators. While adpositions exhibit a wide range of behaviour with respect to agreement, we are not aware of any adpositions that exhibit the ability to switch between controllers—e.g. to sometimes agree with their own complement and sometimes agree with a clause-level argument. It is not just adpositions that can agree with arguments based on their syntactic or semantic properties. Southern Italian dialects systematically show agreement of adjectival adverbs under specific structural conditions. In these varieties, adverbial agreement is never controlled by a transitive (A) or unergative (SA ) subject, but rather indexes a transitive object (O) or an undergoer subject (SO ). The result is a classic active–stative split, where adverb agreement systematically discriminates between internal arguments generated as immediate constituents of the verb in the complement position, from where they can license agreement, and external arguments generated as modifiers of the verb+complement constituent, from where they fail to license agreement, as in (48) from Cosentino (Ledgeway 2017: 50). (48)

Cosentino (Ledgeway 2017: 50) Maria studia buonu/∗ bona Maria studies good.M.SG/good.F.SG ‘Maria studies (the book) hard.’

(’u the.M.SG

libbru) book.M

While synthetic verbal predicates never display the active split in their agreement behaviour, this active–stative split can be found in the distribution of participle agreement in many Italo-Romance varieties, such as Italian, where participle agreement is also controlled by transitive objects and unaccusative subjects but never by transitive/unergative subjects (Ledgeway 2017: 51). (49)

Italian (Ledgeway 2017: 51) Maria ha studiato/∗ -a Maria has studied.M.SG/F.SG ‘Maria has studied (the book).’

(il the.M.SG

libro) book.M.SG

Ripano (Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume) deviates from all the patterns observed by Ledgeway (2017) in his survey of Romance adverbial agreement. In Ripano, adverbial agreement may be controlled by the subject of an intransitive verb, whether unaccusative or unergative; but it is never controlled by the subject of a transitive verb, or by its object if it is a full noun phrase. If the object is a clitic pronoun, agreement is at best marginally acceptable, and only to some speakers. This configuration, in which adverbs agree readily in intransitive contexts but hardly

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at all in transitive contexts, adds a further type to Ledgeway’s typology of adverb agreement patterns in Romance. In the Indo-Aryan language Gujarati, verbs in preterite or perfect tenses agree with the intransitive subject (S), as in (50), or the patient-like argument of a transitive (P), as in (51). If the object is not present, the verb occurs in the neuter singular default form, in -U. In all other situations the verb agrees with the subject. Adverbs of quantity, degree, place, direction, manner, and (some) adverbs of time exhibit an absolutive pattern of agreement. Because verbs only exhibit absolutive agreement patterns in a subset of tenses, adverbs do not necessarily agree with the same noun that the verb agrees with, as illustrated by the contrasting behaviour of the verbs and adverbs in (51). For instance, in (51) the adverb paach-AA ‘back-N.PL’ agrees in gender (N) and number (PL) with the object ‘carts’ while the verb agrees in person and number with the first-person plural subject. (50)

Gujarati (Christian 1987: 231, cited in Hook & Joshi 1991) mallo tyAA-n-aa tyAA j thij-i gay-aa wrestler(M).PL there-GEN-M.PL there EMPH freeze-COMPL went-M.PL ‘. . . the wrestlers froze right there’.

(51)

Gujarati (Meghani 1981: 18, cited in Hook & Joshi 1991) aapaNaa gaaDAA paach-AA laie to kem? we(INCL) cart(N).PL back-N.PL take(1PL) then how ‘What if we take the carts back?’

Sentence adverbs and certain other temporal adverbs always agree with the same controller as the verb. In (52), both the verb ‘sold’ and the adverb ‘true’ agree with the object phrase. Note that gender and number resolution rules ensure that agreement with the conjoined noun phrase is neuter and plural. (52)

Gujarati (Hook & Joshi 1991) te-Ne ghar ane motar vEcy-AA khar-AA he-ERG house(M.SG) and car(F.SG) sold-N.PL true-N.PL ‘Did he really sell his house and car?’

Some agreeing adverbs share the same etymological source, but different syntactic positions and meanings. In (53), there are two adverbs with a shared origin. The first adverb paach-o ‘again’ agrees with the masculine singular subject te ‘he’, while the second adverb paach-i ‘back’ follows an absolutive agreement pattern and agrees with the feminine plural object copaDio ‘books’. (53)

Gujarati (Hook & Joshi 1991) te paach-o copaDio paach-i laav-vaa maNDy-o he again-M.SG book(F).PL back-F.PL bring-INF began-M.SG ‘He began again to bring the books back.’

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While there are default patterns of agreement for certain adverbs, alternative patterns are possible under certain circumstances, as illustrated by the contrast between (54a) and (54b). (54)

Gujarati (Hook & Joshi 1991) a. hU chokri-ne vahel-i jagaaDt-o hat-o I girl-DAT early-F.SG wakening-M.SG was-M.SG ‘I used to waken the girl early.’ b. hU chokri-ne vahel-o jagaaDt-o hat-o I girl-DAT early-M.SG wakening-M.SG was-M.SG ‘I used to (try to) waken the girl early.’

The difference in meaning between these two examples suggests that object agreement of the type in (54a) is more likely when the focus of the construction is on an affected referent (that is, a result-oriented interpretation), whereas in (54b) there is an interpretation that the object was not affected by the events depicted by the predicate. This resembles the patterns seen in Cosentino (§1.2.5) where agreement alternations on adverbs signal a semantic contrast.

1.3.3 Clause-level concord A key question regarding apparent cases of agreement on unusual targets is whether they are genuinely instances of agreement (i.e. involve the same theoretical mechanisms as verbal agreement) or whether the observed phenomena are better understood in terms of ‘agreement spreading’ (Keenan 2014: 396) or concord (Nikolaeva 2014: 178–80) within the clause. We follow Ackema and Neeleman (2020) and others in assuming that both (index) agreement (e.g. between a head and its arguments) and concord (agreement) (i.e. the spreading of features associated with a phrase to its constituent elements) are observed in the verbal and nominal domains.²¹ When dependencies exist between agreement on the head of the predicate and similar behaviour on an unusual target that is a dependent of that predicate, a concord analysis may be appropriate. The best candidates for concord at the clause level are seen with certain agreeing adverbs. When agreeing adverbs are concordial, they (i) can only agree in clauses in which the predicate agrees, and (ii) must agree with the same controller as that predicate.²² Concordial analyses of agreeing adverbs are proposed by Ackema and Neeleman (2020) to account for Archi and Gujarati data. While their approach is in many ways compelling, to arrive at ²¹ See Norris (2014) for a recent discussion of concord in the nominal domain. ²² We are not aware of examples where adverbs can only agree in contexts in which the verb agrees, but are controlled by a different controller from the verb.

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their conclusions they have to claim that verbs which do not show evidence for agreement in their morphological form are agreeing covertly. Yet in both Archi and Gujarati adverbs can agree even when the verb involved never shows agreement. As noted in Ackema and Neeleman (2020: 52), adverbs in infinitival clauses in Gujarati can agree, even though infinitives do not, as seen in (53). Similarly, certain verbs in Archi never agree, but their adverbial modifiers can nevertheless show agreement, as illustrated in (55). (55)

Archi (Chumakina, fieldnotes) a. Ajša ditːa‹r›u boq’ˤo Aisha(II)[SG.ABS] early‹II.SG› return.PFV ‘Aisha returned quickly.’ b. tu-w-mi-s Ajša horoːkeij‹r›u that-I.SG-SG.OBL-DAT Aisha(II)[SG.ABS] long.time.ago‹II.SG› kɬ’an love.IPFV ‘He has loved Aisha for a very long time.’

Examples like (55) are admittedly infrequent in Archi texts, but only because verbs that lack agreement are seldom encountered, and there are just 13 adverbs that agree (Chumakina & Corbett 2015). If concord in the verbal domain is to be taken seriously as an explanation for the distribution of inflectional features on nonverbal agreement targets, it seems that some of the theoretical assumptions about agreement may need to be re-examined and made less idealized. We hypothesize that the possibility of concord in the VP or higher in the clause does not arise directly as a result of verbal agreement as a feature checking/valuing mechanism (that is, we do not need to posit covert agreement to motivate the presence of features for a constituent). When adverbs agree and verbs do not, concord is possible because speakers make generalizations about featural properties of a VP (for instance) on the basis of parallels with other structures. To date the most robust examples of concordial adverbs come from the Samoyedic language Tundra Nenets. Nikolaeva (2014: 178–80) suggests that a subset of its agreeing adverbs are concordial in nature—demonstrating a dependency between agreement on the predicate and agreement on the adverb. At the same time, a second set of agreeing adverbs within the language is not subject to such constraints (cf. the Enets adverbs described by Chumakina, Chapter 4, this volume). This suggests that different syntactic analyses may be required for superficially similar phenomena within the same language. Agent-oriented agreeing adverbs in Tundra Nenets are so called because they are always controlled by an agent-like argument. This is typically the subject of the clause as in (56a), but it can also be the demoted agent of a passive (56b). Objects in active clauses and subjects in passive clauses cannot control agreement on these adverbs, as illustrated by the ungrammatical agreement patterns in (56).

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In each case the agreeing adverb indexes the person and number of the most agentive argument. Adverbs in this category include ‘quickly’, ‘with difficulty/hardly’, ‘unexpectedly’, and ‘earlier’. (56) Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 179) a. mən′∘ s′it∘ m′in∘ xə-n′i / ∗ m′in∘ xə-nt∘ xanaə-dəm-s′∘ I you.ACC quickly-1SG / quickly-2SG take-1SG-PST ‘I quickly took you away.’ b. war′eq-n′i / ∗ war′e-t′ih xo-we-xəyu-n∘ with.difficulty-1SG / with.difficulty-3DU find-PFV.PTCP-3DU-1SG ‘They (DU) were found by me with difficulty.’ Nikolaeva observes that this class of adverbs only agrees when there is agreement elsewhere in the clause. For instance, adverbial agreement with the agentive main clause subject (but not the object) is argued to be possible in (57) because the head of the predicate agrees with the same clausal argument. (57)

Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 180) [ti-m xada-∘ ] s′en′ana-nt∘ / ∗ s′en′ana-n′i reindeer-ACC kill-MOD earlier-2SG / earlier-1SG tab′ida-nə-s′∘ force-2SG-PST ‘In the past you ordered me to kill the reindeer.’

s′iqm′i I.ACC

Agent-oriented adverbs cannot appear in converbial clauses, hence structures like (58) are ungrammatical. Nikolaeva suggests that this is because agent-oriented agreeing adverbs are only permitted in dependent clauses when some other expression of agreement is present. (58)

Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 180) ∗ [ti-m s′en′ana-n′i xada-∘ ] s′iqm′i tab′ida-nə-s′∘ reindeer-ACC earlier-1SG kill-MOD I.ACC force-2SG-PST Intended: ‘In the past you ordered me to kill the reindeer.’

The proposed dependency does not exist for the non-agentive agreeing adverbs ‘therefore’, ‘immediately’, and ‘alone’, which can freely occur in converbial clauses, as illustrated in the impersonal construction in (59). Here the adverb tam′i-nt∘ ‘immediately’ agrees in person and number with the object of the converb ‘hit’, even though the verb itself does not agree. (59)

Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 182) [s′it∘ tam′i-nt∘ ladə-∘ ] tara∘ you.ACC immediately-2SG hit-MOD needed ‘One must hit you immediately.’

Non-agentive agreeing adverbs can agree with the subject or non-subject argument (usually an object) of an active clause, but the subject and obliquely encoded

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agent of a passive may also act as controllers. This gives rise to minimal pairs in which differences in agreement are associated with different interpretations. Note that this is independent of agreement on the verb, which may be controlled by a different clausal argument. In each case the agreement indicates a semantico-pragmatic link between the event and the controller of adverbial agreement (Nikolaeva 2014: 180–1). In (60) agreement singles out a referent as being associated with an implicit event after which the main clause event immediately occurs, while in (61) agreement reveals the scope of the adverb. (60)

Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 181) a. s′iqm′i tam′i-nt∘ l′ekarə-n∘ h xana-q I.ACC immediately-2SG doctor-DAT take-IMP.2SG ‘Take me to the doctor immediately (after you come).’ b. s′iqm′i tam′i-n′i l′ekarə-n∘ h xana-q I.ACC immediately-1SG doctor-DAT take-IMP.2SG ‘Take me to the doctor immediately (after I come).’

(61)

Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014: 181) a. yaqlə-n′i s′it∘ xamcəə-d∘ m alone-1SG you.ACC love-1SG ‘I alone love you.’ b. yaqlə-nt∘ s′it∘ alone-2SG you.ACC ‘I love you alone.’

xamcəə-d∘ m love-1SG

The fact that some agreeing adverbs can appear in dependent clauses that otherwise lack agreement suggests that the restrictions observed here may not be due to differences in the syntactic mechanism involved, but rather to issues surrounding semantic coherence. Regardless whether some systems of adverbial agreement are concordial, we have shown repeatedly in §1.2 and §1.3 that it is possible for the unusual target to have a controller different from that of the predicate (see Urdu adverb agreement in (25) and Welsh preposition agreement in (38), for example), or for agreement on an unusual target to be present even when the verb does not agree (see Avar postpositions in (6) and Andi nouns in (7) in support of this). Moreover, such split systems appear to be very common among languages which have unusual agreement targets, suggesting that this is an important property of their development. Given that there is less evidence in support of truly concordial systems, it is likely that agent-oriented agreeing adverbs in Tundra Nenets represent a highly grammaticalized endpoint, rather than a typical characterization of agreement on unusual targets. The fact that we see repeated evidence that non-verbal targets can agree with clause-level arguments independently of whether verbs in those constructions ever agree (e.g. converbial forms in Tundra Nenets never agree, but certain adverbs in dependent clauses can), and that

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they can also agree with different controllers from the verb, suggests that these are largely independent phenomena.

1.3.4 Clause-external agreement The term ‘external agreement’ which we define in §1.1 was coined by Creissels (2012) to describe a situation in which a verbal target within a converbial clause agrees with a controller that is not one of its selected arguments, but rather a clause-level argument of its matrix clause. For instance, in (62) repeated from (30) from Northern Akhwakh, the verb in the adverbial clause ‘die’ agrees in gender with its own subject Mol¯a Rasadi, a masculine proper noun, but also agrees in number and gender with the subject of the matrix clause ‘they’: (62)

Northern Akhwakh (Creissels 2012: 140) Mol¯a Rasadi w-uʟ’-ī ØHPL.ABS šʷela-L¯a Molla Rasadi(M)[ABS] M-die-ADVR.HPL graveyard-LOC m-āne b-ak’-ī goli HPL-go.PROG HPL-be-ADVR.HPL AUX.HPL ‘Molla Rasadi having died, they were going to the graveyard.’

Cross-linguistically, examples of this type are seemingly rare (although see §1.2.7), with most agreement on verbs being bounded by the argument structure of the head of the clause itself. But if considered in the context of general adverbial agreement in Nakh-Daghestanian languages they represent a fairly logical extension of a pattern in which the head of an adverbial phrase—in this case a verb, or arguably some form of phrase-final functional head—agrees with the absolutive argument of the main clause of which it is a dependent. See Sumbatova’s (Chapter 3, this volume) analysis of Tanti Dargwa essives for some interesting parallels.

1.3.5 Clause-level agreement alternations The data examined so far clearly illustrate that in many languages with clause-level non-verbal agreement targets the controller of agreement is either invariable, or it varies based on the semantic interpretation of the clause. Next, we look at three different scenarios in which alternations are observed between a pattern of agreement that is in some sense syntactically expected, and a less typical pattern. These are examples of a phenomenon that Comrie (2003) calls ‘trigger-happy’ agreement, whereby agreeing targets do not always index the same controller (known as a ‘trigger’ in the Chomskyan tradition), but rather can alternate between different controllers, motivated by syntactic, semantic and/or information-structural

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differences between seemingly parallel structures. Alternations of this kind are particularly common in Nakh-Daghestanian languages.

1.3.5.1 Biabsolutive constructions Nakh-Daghestanian languages typically exhibit ergative–absolutive alignment in their case morphology, with the absolutive argument of the clause demonstrating a robust morphosyntactic privilege as the controller of clausal agreement. At the same time, almost every Nakh-Daghestanian language allows a so-called biabsolutive construction, where both core verbal arguments of a clause take the absolutive case. Biabsolutive constructions are restricted to certain clause types, namely imperfectives, and they nearly always alternate with ergative–absolutive counterparts, conditioned by factors related to information structure (see Forker 2012; Gagliardi et al. 2014; Chumakina & Bond 2016; Chumakina & Lyutikova, Chapter 6, this volume, for details). The contrast between the two construction types is illustrated in (63) with data from Archi. In (63a), where each argument bears a different case, the lexical verb and auxiliary both agree in number and gender with the absolutive object. In (63b), where there are two absolutive arguments, each of the agreement targets is controlled by a different argument; the lexical verb agrees with the object absolutive, while the auxiliary agrees with the subject absolutive. Structures in which both targets agree with the subject absolutive, or in which the lexical verb agrees with the subject and the auxiliary with the object, are not permitted. (63)

Archi (Chumakina & Bond 2016: 91) a. Butːa-mu buq’ b-e‹r›k’u-r-ši Butta(I)-SG.ERG grain(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-‹IPFV›sort-IPFV-CVB b-i III.SG-be.PRS ‘Butta is sorting grain.’ b. Butːa buq’ b-e‹r›k’u-r-ši Butta(I)[SG.ABS] grain(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-‹IPFV›sort-IPFV-CVB w-i I.SG-be.PRS ‘Butta is sorting grain.’

While on the surface (63b) appears as though it could be biclausal, a range of evidence discussed in the chapters in Bond, Corbett, Chumakina, and Brown (2016) suggests that biabsolutives in Archi are synchronically monoclausal. This indicates that the patterns of agreement observed are not constrained by an embedded clausal structure. However, an analysis involving two clauses or clausal layers, each projecting its own absolutive argument, does seem appropriate for biabsolutives in some languages of the family and analogous constructions elsewhere (Coon 2013; Gagliardi et al. 2014; Ganenkov 2019: 227–31).

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In Archi biabsolutive clauses, adverbs display variable agreement depending on their position in the clause and the semantics of the adverb. In (64a) the absolutive argument most local to the verb, i.e. the object qˁw ib ‘potato’, controls the infixal agreement on the adverb ditːa‹b›u ‘early’. Meanwhile, in (64b) it is the subject Pat’i (a woman’s name) that controls agreement on the adverb, as it modifies the whole proposition: (64)

Archi (Chumakina & Bond 2016: 97) a. Pat’i ditːa‹b›u qˁw ib Pati(II)[SG.ABS] early‹III.SG› potato(III)[SG.ABS] b-o‹r›kɬin-ši d-i III.SG-‹IPFV›dig.IPFV-CVB II.SG-be.PRS ‘Pati is digging the potatoes out early.’ (It is too early for the potatoes to be ready.) b. Pat’i ditːa‹r›u qˁw ib Pati(II)[SG.ABS] early‹II.SG› potato(III)[SG.ABS] b-o‹r›kɬin-ši d-i III.SG-‹IPFV›dig.IPFV-CVB II.SG-be.PRS ‘Pati is digging the potatoes out early.’ (Pati got up early.)

Not all unusual targets allow variation of this kind in the biabsolutive context. Thus, the emphatic particle in Archi, =ej‹t’›u, described by Chumakina (2021), always agrees with the absolutive argument of the clause, independently of which constituent it modifies. It does not show variability in the biabsolutive construction either, only ever agreeing with the absolutive object, as the contrast between (65a) and (65b) demonstrates: (65)

Archi (Chumakina & Bond 2016: 102–3) a. lo χilibχˁi=j‹b›u child(II)[SG.ABS] porridge(III)[SG.ABS]=EMPH‹III.SG› bu-kan-ši e‹r›di akɬ’ III.SG-eat.IPFV-CVB ‹II.SG›be.PST meat(IV)[SG.ABS] kummu-s kilaw [IV.SG]eat.IPFV-FIN than ‘The girl was eating the porridge, she likes it better than eating meat.’ b. ∗ lo χilibχˁi=j‹r›u child(II)[SG.ABS] porridge(III)[SG.ABS]=EMPH‹II.SG› bu-kan-ši e‹r›di akɬ’ III.SG-eat.IPFV-CVB ‹II.SG›be.PST meat(IV)[SG.ABS] kummu-s kilaw [IV.SG]eat.IPFV-FIN than ‘The girl was eating the porridge, she likes it better than eating meat.’

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These differences in agreement behaviour between agreeing adverbs and the agreeing emphatic particle signal that only the former can be influenced by semantic factors.

1.3.5.2 Backward control Like biabsolutive constructions, constructions involving ‘backward control’ are found in the Nakh-Daghestanian family, but while the former are common, the latter are relatively rare. Backward control alternations have been identified in several varieties of Dargwa, where agreement on the copula is sensitive to the features of a covert absolutive argument. Before we turn to the evidence from Dargwa, we will introduce the notion of backward control as it was first presented by Polinsky and Potsdam (2002) in their analysis of Tsez. Tsez, the most widely spoken member of the Tsezic group, exhibits features of a typical Nakh-Daghestanian language: it is a head-final, morphologically ergative language with four genders, rich inflectional morphology in both nominal and verbal systems, and a large case paradigm featuring a multitude of locative cases. Agreement in the clause in Tsez is realized on vowel-initial verbs and some adverbs. Two matrix verbs in Tsez, -oqa ‘begin’ and -icˇa ‘continue’, can appear in the unusual construction illustrated in (66). On the surface, it seems that the matrix verb yoqsi ‘begin’ agrees in gender II with the ergative argument kidbaː ‘girl’. If this were indeed the case, the two verbs -oqa ‘begin’ and -icˇa ‘continue’ would be the only ones in the language able to display agreement with an ergative argument: (66)

Tsez (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002: 246) kidbaː ziya b-išra y-oq-si girl(II).ERG cow(III)[ABS.SG] III.SG-feed.INF II.SG-begin-PST.EVID ‘The girl began to feed the cow.’

However, Polinsky and Potsdam (2002) analyse these verbs as agreeing with a covert subject, which is obligatorily coindexed with the subject of an infinitival complement clause: in (66) this is the ergative kidbaː ‘girl’ (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002: 246). That is, the phenomenon is analysed as an example of backward control, a ‘configuration in which the lower argument position is pronounced and the higher one is not’ (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002: 246). Interestingly, in Tsez instances of backward control, the adverb can never agree as the matrix verb does, i.e. with the covert absolutive subject. As shown in (67), the only possible agreement controller of the adverb is the overt absolutive of the infinitival clause, in this case ziya ‘cow’: (67) Tsez (based on Polinsky & Potsdam 2002: 246)²³ b-išra a. b-ig kidbaː ziya III.SG-well girl(II).ERG cow(III)[ABS.SG] III.SG-feed.INF y-oq-si II.SG-begin-PST.EVID ‘The girl began well to feed the cow’ (but continued badly).

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OLIVER BOND, MARINA CHUMAKINA, STEVEN KAYE b. ∗ j-ig kidbaː ziya b-išra II.SG-well girl(II).ERG cow(III)[ABS.SG] III.SG-feed.INF y-oq-si II.SG-begin-PST.EVID Intended: ‘The girl began well to feed the cow’ (but continued badly).

The only other instantiation of backward control known in Nakh-Daghestanian is represented by some varieties of Dargwa, and is invoked as an explanation for essive adverbial agreement in Tanti Dargwa by Sumbatova (Chapter 3, this volume). While in Tsez the agreement of those two specific matrix verbs with the covert absolutive subject is obligatory, in Dargwa backward control functions as an alternative to a more familiar pattern involving agreement with the object absolutive. Dargwa is a conglomerate of about 15 lects which until recently were considered a single language (Koryakov 2021). Besides familiar instances in which gender and number agreement on all targets is controlled by the absolutive argument of the clause, several Dargwa varieties also allow agreement of the copula in a periphrastic form to be controlled by the ergative, as (68) from Aqusha Dargwa demonstrates: (68)

Aqusha Dargwa (Ganenkov 2018: 531) a. unra-ni kaʁar b-ucˇ’-uli neighbour(M)-ERG letter(N)[SG.ABS] N.SG-read:IPFV-CVB sa‹b›i ‹N.SG›COP ‘The neighbour is reading a letter.’ b. unra-ni kaʁar b-ucˇ’-uli neighbour(M)-ERG letter(N)[SG.ABS] N.SG-read:IPFV-CVB saj M.SG.COP ‘The neighbour is reading a letter.’

In (68) the predicate is realized by the periphrastic form bucˇ’uli saj/sabi ‘is reading’, which consists of a converb and a copula. Both parts of the periphrastic construction have a morphological position for agreement, but while the converb has only one possible controller, the absolutive argument kaʁar ‘letter’, the copula can agree either with the same controller as the converb (giving the neuter form sabi, as in (68a)) or—seemingly—with the ergative argument of the clause, the masculine noun unrani ‘neighbour’, giving the masculine form saj, as in (68b). To account for this, Sumbatova and Lander (2014) and Sumbatova (Chapter 3, this volume) propose a backward control analysis for such structures, postulating that in both (68a) and (68b) the copula has a covert absolutive subject coindexed ²³ We are grateful to Arsen Abdulaev for help with adapting this example.

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with one of the overt arguments of the converb. When the coindexed argument is the absolutive object, this produces the usual Nakh-Daghestanian pattern of agreement with the absolutive (68a), but when it is the ergative subject, what results is a surface pattern in which the ergative appears to control agreement directly (68b). This analysis of the Dargwa phenomenon is akin to the biclausal analysis of biabsolutives elsewhere. It is important to note that not all varieties of Dargwa allow such a construction. Thus, Icari Dargwa allows only the absolutive argument to control agreement: (69)

Icari Dargwa (Sumbatova & Lander 2014: 450–1) a. muradil ic’eri-d qil-bi Murad(M).ERG Icari-IN.ESS.N.PL house(N)-PL.ABS d-irq’a=ca-d N.PL-build=COP-N.PL ‘Murad builds houses in Icari village.’ b. ∗ muradil ic’eri-d qil-bi Murad(M).ERG Icari-IN.ESS.N.PL house(N)-PL.ABS d-irq’a=ca-w N.PL-build=COP-M.SG Intended: ‘Murad builds houses in Icari village.’

Unlike adverbs in Tsez, adverbials in Dargwa varieties with backward control can vary in terms of their agreement controller. In Tanti Dargwa, locative adverbials can agree ‘inside’ the dependent clause, i.e. with the object absolutive of the transitive verb as in (70a), or with the covert absolutive argument of the copula as in (70b): (70)

Tanti Dargwa (Sumbatova & Lander 2014: 464) a. maˁħaˁmmad-li-šːu-b rasul-li dig Magomed(M)-OBL-AD-N.SG Rasul(M)-ERG.SG meat(N)[SG.ABS] b-ukː-un-ne=sa-j N.SG-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M.SG ‘Rasul eats meat at Magomed’s (house).’ b. maˁħaˁmmad-li-šːu-w rasul-li dig Magomed(M)-OBL-AD-M.SG Rasul(M)-ERG.SG meat(N)[SG.ABS] b-ukː-un-ne=sa-j N.SG-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M.SG ‘Rasul eats meat at Magomed’s (house).’

In the varieties which do not allow backward control alternations, adverbials must agree with the object absolutive, just as the copula does. Compare the ungrammatical example in (71), where the adverbial indexes the ergative argument, with the grammatical example in (69a).

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OLIVER BOND, MARINA CHUMAKINA, STEVEN KAYE Icari Dargwa (based on Sumbatova & Lander 2014: 450–1)²⁴ ∗ muradil ic’eri-w qil-bi Murad(M).ERG Icari-IN.ESS.M.SG house(N)-PL.ABS d-irq’a=ca-d N.PL-build=COP-N.PL Intended: ‘Murad builds houses in Icari village.’

For a detailed discussion of backward control in relation to agreeing essive expressions (comprising locative forms of nouns, locative adverbs, and postpositions) in Tanti Dargwa, see Sumbatova (Chapter 3, this volume).

1.3.5.3 Long-distance agreement Long-distance agreement is observed when verbal targets agree with controllers outside of their immediate clause; instead of being controlled by a clause-level argument, targets in the matrix clause are controlled by a sub-constituent of a dependent clause. Long-distance agreement is usually found as an alternative pattern to local or default agreement. For instance, in (72) from the NakhDaghestanian language Khwarshi (Khonokh dialect), discussed in Chumakina and Lyutikova (Chapter 6, this volume), the matrix verb ‘be able’ has two different agreement patterns. In (72a), the verb leːqw a exhibits a default agreement pattern, taking a gender IV singular prefix l-, which can alternatively be construed as agreement with the infinitival clause as a whole. It is also possible for the matrix verb to agree with the gender V absolutive argument of the embedded clause, bataχu ‘bread’, as with jeːqw a in (72b). The subject of the modal verb appears here in the contessive case (see Khalilova 2009: 83–6, 217). (72)

Khonokh Khwarshi (Chumakina, fieldnotes) a. di-qo l-eːqw a [bataχu j-uwa] I-CONT IV.SG-be.able.PRS bread(V) V.SG-do.INF ‘I can make bread.’ b. di-qo j-eːqw a [bataχu j-uwa] I-CONT V.SG-be.able.PRS bread(V) V.SG-do.INF ‘I can make bread.’

If the matrix clause contains an agreeing adverb, it also demonstrates the same variability in terms of controller choice. As with the examples discussed in §1.3.5.2 where the agreement on locative expressions was controlled by the absolutive argument of the copula, in these constructions the adverb must always take the same controller as the matrix verb, as the contrast between (73a) and (73b) demonstrates: ²⁴ We are grateful to Rasul Mutalov for help with adapting this example.

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Khonokh Khwarshi (Chumakina, fieldnotes) a. di-qo a‹r›ɬoho l-eːqw a bataχu I-CONT ‹IV.SG›here IV.SG-be.able.PRS bread(V) šaha-tɬ’o l-eqw a-te town-SUP IV.SG-be.able-NEG ‘Here I can make bread, but in town I cannot.’ b. di-qo a‹j›ɬoho j-eːqw a bataχu I-CONT ‹V.SG›here V.SG-be.able.PRS bread(V) šaha-tɬ’o j-eqw a-te town-SUP V.SG-be.able-NEG ‘Here I can make bread, but in town I cannot.’

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j-uwa, V.SG-do.INF

j-uwa, V.SG-do.INF

Note that the pattern of agreement on the negative verb indicates that the controller need not be expressed in the same clause for long-distance agreement to be viable. Throughout §1.3.5 we have demonstrated that agreement alternations on adverbs in Nakh-Daghestanian languages occur in clauses where there are two overt absolutives (as with biabsolutive constructions), where there is an independent reason to postulate complex structure with a zero absolutive (as in backward control), or if a topical absolutive in the lower clause is ‘visible’ to the target in the main clause (as in long-distance agreement). While seemingly disparate at first glance, in all the examples we have seen in this section, adverbs always agree with an (underlying) absolutive argument, and they always copy the agreement behaviour of the predicate. Where the predicate is periphrastic, the adverb and at least one of the components of the verbal periphrase share a controller. Which absolutive controls agreement is dictated by syntactic, semantic, and/or information-structural factors.

1.4 Summary Agreement targets beyond the verb include practically every part of speech—yet the likelihood that members of any given category might agree are starkly asymmetrical, and within word classes there is substantial variation in terms of which members can index a nominal in the clause. Of all the unusual agreement targets investigated in this volume, agreeing adpositions are the most geographically disperse, with indexation of adpositional complements observed across a wide range of language families (Bakker 2013). This includes examples where the index is the only expression of the complement, and those where agreement marking occurs with a co-nominal expression. For instance, in languages like Lavukaleve (Terrill 2003), agreeing postpositions always index their complement, even when the co-nominal is present, but it is

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also common to find that the nominal complement is not expressed, if its referent is fully retrievable (§1.3.1). Agreement of this type resembles object agreement on verbs. In contrast to those showing phrase-internal agreement, externally agreeing adpositions are much more restricted in their distribution. To date, we know only of examples in the Nakh-Daghestanian (Chumakina et al. 2022), Anim (Olsson, Chapter 7, this volume), and Songhay (Souag 2015) groups (§1.3.2), but see Paciaroni (Chapter 5, this volume) for another possible case. It is clear that the potential for agreement on adpositions is not restricted by the function of the PP as a nominal complement or a verbal adjunct since both are attested, but it is not yet known if adposition agreement first emerges in only one of these contexts. We are not aware of any adpositions that exhibit the ability to switch between phrase-internal and external controllers—e.g. to sometimes agree with their own complement and sometimes agree with a clause-level argument. However, an adposition can agree with both an internal and external controller at the same time, as in Kwarandzyey preposition agreement (Souag 2015). While the indexed argument must be external, it can be the subject, direct object, or indirect object of the immediate clause, provided that the grammatical function in question is the primary concomitant in a comitative relation (§1.3.2). Conceptually, external agreement on adpositions resembles subject agreement on verbs, but the external argument is not A, but a figure or ‘theme of location and motion’ (Svenonius 2007). In the data we have observed, it is never the case that all adpositions within any given language have the potential for agreement. For instance, in Kwarandzyey just one adposition agrees, while Coastal Marind (Olsson, Chapter 7, this volume) has four that do. In each case, the languages have many other items classed as adpositions that do not agree. This is clearly a lexically specified phenomenon. Like adpositions, complementizers can also agree with an element they introduce, but rather than indexing features of the clause as a whole (which would presumably trigger a default pattern), they agree with the subject of the complement clause.²⁵ This has been observed in West Germanic (see van Koppen 2017) and Celtic languages. In accounting for agreement in Welsh, Borsley (2009) proposes that complementizer agreement, like preposition agreement, is subject to linear constraints, where the controller of agreement is the first item in the list of complements for a head acting as the agreement target. In his analysis, these two types of unusual target are different examples of the same morphosyntactic phenomenon, even though the grammatical functions of their controllers are not the same (§1.3.1). Linear adjacency of the complementizer and subject controller of the complement clause has also proven to be an important aspect of some accounts of ²⁵ Note that in Irish, complementizers can be marked for the tense of the clause they introduce.

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complementizer agreement discussed by van Koppen (2017), such as Ackema and Neeleman (2004). But it seems like a less likely factor in accounting for examples of agreement on conjunctions and connectors, such as those in Ripano (§1.2.1) and Sandawe (§1.2.8), since the controller and the complementizer need not be adjacent.²⁶ Just as adpositions can have external controllers of agreement, so too can complementizers. In the most robust examples, this is always the subject of the matrix clause (as documented in Bantu languages). This typically occurs in the context of a verb of speech or cognition, where the subject of the matrix verb is also the source of the content of the complement clause. It remains an open question whether agreement is ever possible with non-subjects that fulfil the semantic role of source within a matrix clause. Convincing examples would require that the complement clause is clearly part of the VP (cf. Idiatov 2010). Clause-level adverbs that index arguments of the predicate are particularly prevalent in four groups spoken across Eurasia (Bond et al. 2022a), namely Romance, Indo-Aryan, Nakh-Daghestanian, and Uralic, most notably in the Samoyedic branch. Just as with adpositions and complementizers, agreeing adverbs are not best served by a single unified analysis of their behaviour. For instance, some adverbs that bear the inflectional features of clausal arguments, whether phi-features, or indeed case features—as seen in Megrelian (RostovtsevPopiel, Chapter 8, this volume)—might be best analysed as examples of concord, as proposed for agreeing adverbs in Archi and Gujarati by Ackema and Neeleman (2020). While we recognize that concord in the verbal domain (and the sentential domain, including the subject) is likely to be a powerful explanation for the distribution of inflectional morphology for at least some adverbs, and some other unusual targets, it does not seem to be an adequate explanation of adverb agreement in every case, because of the number of underlying assumptions that need to be entertained to adopt the analysis (see §1.3.3). Within Romance varieties the potential for agreement on adverbs is lexically, structurally, and semantically determined. For instance, in Cosentino (Ledgeway 2017), VP-level adverbs agree following an active–stative split; unaccusative, intransitive subjects and nominal objects control agreement. But there is a mismatch between the behaviour of the verb and that of the adverb. In transitive clauses with a VP adverb, the verb agrees with the subject in person and number, and the adverb agrees with the object in gender and number. Ledgeway (2017) proposes an analysis which assumes a local agreement relationship between the object and the adverb, followed by movement. A concordial analysis of these data would be unattractive, because it requires us to propose that transitive verbs all ²⁶ In (10) from Ripano the complementizer is adjacent to a clitic pronoun, but the pronoun is not a controller, and does not realize the gender feature indexed on the complementizer.

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undergo covert gender–number agreement with the object. In Ripano (Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume) where adverbs agree with subjects but never objects, an alternative analysis is required. In the Nakh-Daghestanian languages, agreeing adverbs include a range of different spatial, temporal, and manner adverbs (see Chumakina and Lyutikova, Chapter 6, this volume). Many of the agreeing spatial adverbs resemble intransitive adpositions (see Sumbatova, Chapter 3, this volume). In Samoyedic languages, the morphology used for agreement is not verbal in origin. Rather, it developed from the paradigm of possessive affixes found on present-day nouns. Most of the agreeing adverbs identified in Forest Enets (Chumakina, Chapter 4, this volume) and Tundra Nenets (Nikolaeva 2014) have developed diachronically from nouns. Perhaps the most surprising agreement targets we have identified are nouns and pronouns. The most robust evidence of nouns functioning as arguments agreeing with other arguments is observed in Andi (Kaye, Chapter 2, this volume). There is little doubt based on the data presented that the experiencer argument in affective constructions has many properties associated with subjects. A remaining question concerns whether this should be considered agreement—or an example of verbal concord, operating over the entire sentential domain.

1.5 Outline of the volume The contributions to this volume explore the properties and peculiarities of unusual agreement targets in a wide range of languages spoken from Western Europe to New Guinea. In Chapter 2, Steven Kaye draws on data from a number of Andi varieties (Nakh-Daghestanian; Daghestan) to examine a striking pattern of agreement in which nominals in the affective case agree in gender and number with the absolutive argument of their clause. Agreement between arguments is observed with verbs of perception and cognition such as ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘know’, and ‘understand’ which require affective case on the experiencer and absolutive case on the stimulus argument (Salimov 2010: 105). Agreement between the arguments of a predicate is at best unexpected, and accordingly attempts have been made to demonstrate that apparent instances of this behaviour have an alternative explanation (see Polinsky et al. 2017). Building on these observations, Kaye examines the behavioural properties of agreeing nominals in Andi to elucidate the syntactic status of the item expressing the experiencer. In other Nakh-Daghestanian languages possessing a set of syntactically divergent experiencer verbs, both of the nominals involved are treated as arguments in the full sense, and often the experiencer can be identified as a subject or subject-like on syntactic grounds (e.g. Comrie et al. 2018). A robust set of evidence is presented (including the results of tests on imperative clauses, control structures, and reflexivity) that the same is true in

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Andi: the experiencer is a genuine argument of the verb and has a range of subject properties. Nina Sumbatova examines the behaviour of ‘essive spatial expressions’ (comprising locative forms of nouns, locative adverbs, and postpositions) in Tanti Dargwa (Nakh-Daghestanian; Daghestan) in Chapter 3. Essives are distinguished from lative and elative locatives by the presence of a gender–number agreement suffix in word-final position. While the absolutive agreement pattern is typical for targets in Tanti Dargwa, in transitive clauses containing a copula, both the copula and the essive adverbial can be controlled by the ergative agent (Sumbatova & Lander 2014: 429–536). Sumbatova demonstrates that the essive adverbial can show this behaviour providing two conditions are met: (i) the copula must be controlled by the ergative argument, and (ii) the adverbial itself must be clauseperipheral. An even more complex situation is observed when essive marking is applied to embedded participles and deverbal nouns. In such cases agreement on the essive adverbial can be controlled by the matrix ergative, the matrix absolutive, or an embedded absolutive. Sumbatova argues that these phenomena can be explained by postulating that copulas head their own constituents (CopPs) and govern their own absolutive arguments, which control agreement on the copula and hence the essive adverbial. These arguments can be coreferential with any core argument of the predication dominated by the copula. The CopP is absent in non-finite dependent clauses, which explains why the essive adverbial cannot be controlled by the ergative NP of the dependent clause. Sumbatova concludes that the facts of Tanti Dargwa agreement provide evidence of the typologically rare phenomenon of backward control. In Chapter 4, Marina Chumakina examines agreeing adverbs in Enets (Uralic, Samoyedic; Siberia), which until recently was thought to lack agreeing adverbs altogether. In Forest Enets agreeing adverbs form a closed subclass, some of which can be traced back to frozen case forms of nouns. These adverbs, however, have lost all grammatical properties of nominals, and their etymology is not always transparent. Chumakina demonstrates that all agreeing adverbs in Forest Enets are controlled by the subject, but that the morphology used for agreement is not verbal in origin. Rather, it developed from the paradigm of possessive affixes found on present-day nouns and some non-finite verbal forms. In Forest Enets, adverbs retain the possibility of agreement even if the verb does not. This behaviour differs from that seen in Tundra Nenets, where some adverbs can only host agreement in the presence of agreement on the verb, and adverbial agreement is impossible in dependent clauses headed by converbs which do not show agreement themselves. Descriptions of unusual agreement targets in Romance varieties have typically concentrated on agreeing adverbs (e.g. Antrim 1994; Ledgeway 2011) but, as Tania Paciaroni shows in Chapter 5, Ripano, the Italo-Romance dialect of Ripatransone from southern Marche, exhibits a wide range of unusual agreement

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targets, including interrogative words, conjunctions, and even nouns (Parrino 1967; Harder 1988; Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018a). For instance, when in direct object function, certain nouns exhibit (optional) gender and number agreement with the subject of the clause. Paciaroni demonstrates that this sort of agreement is restricted in two ways: (i) there is no part of speech where agreement is found in all lexical items (e.g. the conjunction ˈdɔːpə kə ‘after’ can agree, but e ‘and’ cannot); (ii) the acceptability of external agreement is subject to variation depending on the target and the domain (e.g. agreeing adverbs are more widespread than agreeing interrogative words, and these are more widespread than agreeing nouns). Agreement between arguments is also subject to intra-speaker variation, being more widespread in older speakers and speakers of rural varieties. The chapter examines the controllers, targets, domains, features, and values involved in the extensive agreement system of Ripano through both qualitative and quantitative analysis, using data collected during interviews with 10 native speakers of urban and rural Ripano differing in age and education. In Chapter 6, Marina Chumakina and Ekaterina Lyutikova explore the morphological and syntactic properties of agreeing adverbs and postpositions registered in the variety of Khwarshi spoken in the village of Khonokh (Nakh-Daghestanian; Daghestan). Comparing Khonokh Khwarshi with other Tsezic languages, they demonstrate that the former stands out not just by having more agreeing adverbs than other varieties but also by exhibiting a morphologically exceptional pattern of infixal agreement. The syntactic analysis of agreeing adverbs in biabsolutive clauses and long-distance agreement constructions focuses on the extent to which the choice of controller is syntactically vs. pragmatically determined. They propose that biabsolutive constructions in Khwarshi form a biclausal structure and that the agreeing adverbs can be ambiguous with respect to their structural position in the matrix or in the embedded clause. They show that the variability in agreement controllers exhibited by the biabsolutive construction is structurally determined, and that the adverb agrees with the absolutive of the clause it belongs to. Pragmatic factors come into play in the usage of one class of locative adverbials: when used as locative predicative elements, they agree with the absolutive of the clause and do not allow the presence of the copula or other verbs. However, when these elements are used as discourse particles, they exhibit properties of concord and freely combine with other predicates. In Chapter 7, Bruno Olsson examines gender agreement on unexpected targets in Coastal Marind, an Anim language of Southern New Guinea. He argues that while agreement in general is widespread, agreement on unusual targets such as certain adpositions and locative adverbs has a rather marginal place in the morphosyntax of the language. Not only is it restricted to a small set of targets, the set of contexts in which it is found is also rather limited. Examination of spontaneous speech data demonstrates that the vast majority of instances of gender agreement are NP-internal, or more typical agreement of the verb with its arguments. Olsson

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argues that agreeing prepositions are participant-oriented adjuncts, demonstrating that their behaviour is similar, but not identical, to a class of adjuncts described as depictive secondary predicates (Olsson 2017). In Chapter 8, Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel examines case-shift as it affects an unusual set of agreement targets in the Kartvelian language Megrelian spoken in Western Georgia. Case-shift, a well-known characteristic of the Kartvelian family, is the phenomenon whereby the case marking assigned to core arguments in the clause can show sensitivity to the TAM series that the verb predicate belongs to. In Megrelian the large majority of verbs produce case-shift effects on their arguments in this way. Exceptionally, however, case-shift effects are also shown by certain Megrelian adverbs. In the context of verbs belonging to a particular morphosyntactic type, known as inverted verbs, these adverbs appear to agree in case with one of the core arguments of the clause they modify—but it is the TAM series of the predicate that determines which argument that will be, and hence what case marking the adverbs will display. The chapter provides a comprehensive description of this remarkable and apparently unique agreement phenomenon, and of the complex conditions under which it arises. It also suggests a pragmatic rationale for the emergence of case-shift on adverbs in Megrelian, based on the proposal that speakers have come to treat particular case markers as salient identifiers of the entire morphosyntactic construction in which they are found.

Acknowledgements The research presented here was carried out as part of the project ‘External Agreement’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant AH/R005540/1. The AHRC’s institutional and financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The ideas presented here reflect joint work by the authors, but writing responsibilities were distributed differently across individuals. Bond is the primary author of §1.1, §1.3.1–§1.3.4, and §1.4. Bond and Kaye jointly authored §1.2.1–§1.2.5. Kaye is the primary author of §1.2.6–§1.2.8. Chumakina is the primary author of §1.3.5 and §1.5. Special thanks go to Boris Ataev for discussion of Avar data, Arsen Abdulaev for his help in adapting Tsez data, Rasul Mutalov for insights into Icari Dargwa, and Bulbul Musaeva for discussion of Archi data.

2 Agreement between arguments in Andi Steven Kaye

2.1 Agreement between arguments as a disputed notion In linguistic works that deal with agreement, whether these are theoretical accounts, typological surveys, or descriptions of individual languages, certain types of behaviour generally take centre stage. The agreement of a verb with one or more of its arguments and that of an attributive adjective with its head noun, for example, are such widespread phenomena that any discussion of the concept must address them in one way or another: there is no controversy about their existence or about the need to find some account (or multiple distinct accounts) for them, though the terminology and theoretical mechanisms used can differ widely from one treatment to the next. At the other end of the scale, however, there lie phenomena which figure only peripherally in general works on agreement, and which do not feature prominently in discussions of what is and is not possible in syntax—to a large extent because of how weakly they seem to be attested in the descriptive literature, which has raised the question whether they really exist at all. One of these is agreement between two arguments of a single verb. This phenomenon is reportedly attested in Coahuilteco, an extinct language of southern Texas, as illustrated in (1). According to Troike (1981; 1996), object NPs in Coahuilteco are regularly marked with a suffix that co-varies with the person of the subject. In (1a), the object Anillo apan ‘the ring’ bears a suffix -n (glossed by Troike as 1CON for first-person concord) that indexes the person of the subject cin ‘I’; in (1b), the object tawaxaːyo kw eːx bears the 3CON suffix -x because the subject is third-person Dios tupoː ‘God’. (1)

Coahuilteco (Troike 1981: 660) a. cin Anillo apa-n na-k-aːx I ring DEM-1CON 1S-2O-give ‘I give you the ring.’ b. Dios tupoː tawaxaːyo kw eː-x a-p-oːy God DEM all DEM-3CON 3S-SV-make ‘God made everything.’

poːm PST

The existence of languages in which one argument can agree with another, for example a verb’s object with its subject as in (1), is reported in the cross-linguistic

Steven Kaye, Agreement between arguments in Andi. In: Agreement beyond the Verb. Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Steven Kaye (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0002

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overviews of agreement provided by both Corbett (2006: 67) and Matasovi´c (2018: 22), where the phenomenon is respectively described as ‘remarkable’ and ‘curious’ in contrast with the more widely attested agreement patterns to which they devote more attention. But references to agreement between arguments are rare in the linguistic literature, and there is no consensus as to what relevance (if any) instances of this remarkable behaviour should be thought to have for theories of agreement more generally. For example, Baker (2008), a wide-ranging, typologically informed study into the syntax of agreement and concord which offers a unified parameterized model of agreement on a wide range of targets, simply does not mention the possibility that one argument might be found to agree with another: thus he neither demonstrates that examples along the lines of (1) can be accommodated within his model, nor proposes that they represent an underlyingly different syntactic effect from the one he is considering, to be accounted for in some other way. The low level of attention paid to the idea of agreement between arguments is understandable, in light of its apparent rarity in the first place: it is telling that among the four languages mentioned by Matasovi´c, two (including Coahuilteco) also feature among the three already listed by Corbett, which suggests that existing descriptions do not provide a wide range of potential examples from which to draw, even if they are all to be taken at face value.¹ But beyond this, it should also be pointed out that the examples proposed cannot all be considered very secure. Our principal source for the extinct language of Coahuilteco is a single printed work from the eighteenth century (Garcı´a 1760), and it is hard to be certain that what Troike (1981: 658) identifies as a ‘potentially unique’ pattern would not yield to a less surprising analysis if we had access to the same quality and variety of syntactic data for Coahuilteco as we can rely on for living and better-attested languages.² What is more, some languages which do display agreement between arguments do so only in highly restricted ways. For example, as discussed in Bond et al. (Chapter 1, this volume), Teop (Oceanic) displays number agreement of the object with the subject, but this applies in the case of just a single personal pronoun found in the language (Mosel 2010: 396). Similarly, agreement between arguments in Archi (Nakh-Daghestanian) is mentioned by both Corbett (2006: 114–15) and Matasovi´c (2018: 23), but it is observed only on a very small number of targets, all pronominal. In (2), the gender II singular agreement prefix d- which appears on the dative subject, the first-person singular pronoun dez, indexes the number and gender of the phrasal object tor ɬːonnol ‘that woman’; but agreement marking of this kind is found only on certain case forms of first-person pronouns (Bond & ¹ Corbett provides examples from Archi, as well as citing Troike (1981) on Coahuilteco and Testelets (2001: 387–8) on the Andi phenomenon discussed in this chapter; Matasovi´c also mentions Archi and Coahuilteco, but also Ripano (discussed by Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume), Lak, and Tsakhur (though for a different view of his Tsakhur examples see §2.5). ² For example, while Branan (2019) makes the case against it, ultimately it is hard to rule out the possibility that the element identified as a suffixal agreement marker -n in (1) is really a clitic pronoun =n which may have argument status in its own right. This point is revisited in §2.5.

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Chumakina 2016: 64), and does not characterize Archi pronouns or nominals in general.³ (2)

Archi (Polinsky et al. 2017: 49) to-r ɬːonnol that-II.SG woman(II)[SG.ABS] ‘I forgot that woman.’

d-ez e‹r›χni II.SG-I.DAT ‹II.SG›forget.PFV

The existence of these severe lexical restrictions does not alter the fact that, in descriptive terms, agreement between arguments does exist in Teop and Archi. However, it does lend plausibility to analyses which treat this type of agreement as a kind of lexical accident, with no substantial ramifications for our view of the grammatical system as a whole. This is the approach taken by Polinsky et al., who work on Archi examples like (2) from within the minimalist framework, and observe (2017: 49) that they may be thought to pose a problem for their existing conception of Agree, the syntactic mechanism that they take to underlie agreement at the clause level. This is because for them the Agree relation is established between a phrase and a v head, which makes available the possibility of agreement between an argument and a predicate; but it cannot be established between two phrases, and so would not ordinarily be expected to give rise to a state of affairs where one argument of a predicate is sensitive to the features of another.⁴ Polinsky et al. (2017) thus provide an account of the Archi facts which avoids the need for any fundamental change to this conception. Their account is based on the observation that the few pronominal forms which serve as agreement targets in Archi are also exceptional in other ways. Consider the dative of the 1SG personal pronoun, which Polinsky et al. (2017: 70), abstracting away from the prefixal agreement morphology whose presence is at issue, treat as a root e followed by case suffix -z. Citing Kibrik et al. (1977: 325–6), they point out that as a root this is phonologically deficient, as in general only affixes may lack stops in Archi; at the same time, it is also unusual in syntactic terms, in that it is unable to host focus modification. Accordingly, they identify e as an example of a weak pronoun—a type that has been identified cross-linguistically, in the tradition inaugurated by Cardinaletti and Starke (1994), on the basis of just such phonological and syntactic idiosyncrasies.

³ This type of pronominal agreement occurs in ergative, genitive, and dative cases only, and is restricted to first-person forms. In the ergative case, agreement is only attested on the first-person plural inclusive pronoun. ⁴ See this quotation from the introduction to their chapter (p. 49): ‘This pattern of apparent argument–argument agreement may seem to challenge existing theories. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate that the theory is safe.’ However, that this is not the only possible conception of Agree is shown by the fact that Rudnev (2020), also working on a Nakh-Daghestanian language (Avar) from within the minimalist framework, readily accepts the existence of agreement between arguments, and deals with it using Agree. For a related approach, see Clem (2022), who models switch-reference in the Panoan language Amahuaca by taking Agree to operate between full phrases (here CP and DP).

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The crux of the account provided by Polinsky et al. (2017) is their suggestion that Archi weak pronouns, in addition to these idiosyncrasies, are also structurally deficient, in that they lack any inherent specification for the noun class (i.e. gender) feature [CL]. At the same time, they take it to be a principle of Archi syntax that no DP is permitted to emerge from the syntactic derivation without a specified [CL] feature. Accordingly, in order not to violate this principle, weak pronominal forms in Archi undergo a process whereby they take on the [CL] feature of the nearest v head, which has acquired this feature in the course of the derivation by means of the ordinary operation of Agree. This feature-copying process is theoretically distinct from Agree itself; but it has the surface effect of giving rise to pronominal forms showing ‘apparent’ agreement with the absolutive argument of the clause (Polinsky et al. 2017: 69). The same feature-copying process is also held to be responsible for the appearance of agreement marking on a set of Archi pronominal forms which are structurally unusual for a different reason: they obligatorily bear a suffixed emphatic marker, which is identifiable as such on the basis of its behaviour elsewhere in the language. On this account, the emphatic marker also enters the syntactic derivation with an unspecified [CL] feature: but, again, the pronominal DP of which it forms a part is not permitted to surface without having this feature specified by means of copying from the nearest v head. This analysis of the Archi phenomenon noted by Corbett (2006) and Matasovi´c (2018) is therefore predicated on the fact that the few pronouns involved are inherently exceptional in their structure, and as a result are acted on by the syntax in a different way from all other nominals in the language; their behaviour cannot be explained as resulting directly from the Agree mechanism. That is, if agreement between arguments can be identified at all, it is not a phenomenon which can be likened to genuine clausal agreement such as that of a verb with its arguments, but one which can only arise in circumstances involving lexical exceptionality: hence the title of Polinsky et al.’s (2017) article, ‘Agreement between Arguments? Not Really’. The existing attestations of apparent agreement between arguments, then, are cross-linguistically sparse, can sometimes be interpreted in ways which do not involve positing such a typologically unfamiliar phenomenon at all, and may affect just one or a few idiosyncratic targets in a given language, raising the possibility that some specialized process distinct from ‘genuine’ agreement is at work. Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that the phenomenon does not feature prominently in linguists’ thinking on agreement as a whole and, even when its existence is acknowledged, may be explicitly sidelined as being of only marginal relevance for those interested in the mechanisms that make agreement possible. But in keeping with the goals of this book, my aim in the present chapter is to strengthen the case that agreement between arguments, though seemingly rare, does exist, and deserves to be taken seriously. I do this by presenting in

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detail the crucial behaviour displayed by a single construction in Andi, a NakhDaghestanian language distantly related to Archi, which I take to speak for the syntactic reality of agreement between arguments in the most convincing way possible. As I argue here, in the Andi affective construction (introduced in §2.2.3), the subject argument of the verb agrees obligatorily with the object: this is illustrated in examples (3a) and (3b), in which the form taken by the subject, the personal name Aminati, co-varies with the gender of the object, gender I ima ‘father’ in (3a) and gender II baba ‘mother’ in (3b). (3)

a. Aminati-wo Aminat(II).SG.OBL-AFF.I ǯiʔ-e love-HAB ‘Aminat loves her father.’ b. Aminati-jo Aminat(II).SG.OBL-AFF.II ǯiʔ-e love-HAB ‘Aminat loves her mother.’

en-ƛi=gu ima LOG.OBL-GEN=EMPH father(I)[SG.ABS]

en-ƛi=gu baba LOG.OBL-GEN=EMPH mother(II)[SG.ABS]

Agreeing subjects use precisely the same agreement morphology as is employed widely elsewhere in the language, and unlike in Archi the phenomenon is entirely lexically general, meaning that any nominal playing the relevant syntactic role will act as an agreement target in exactly the same way. That is, there is no languageinternal reason not to identify what we see in Andi examples like (3a) and (3b) as fully fledged agreement between arguments: only the a priori assumption that it is impossible would go against this identification. The Andi facts thus provide firm evidence that any theory aiming to take account of the syntactic behaviour observed in the world’s languages must acknowledge and accommodate the phenomenon of agreement between arguments, without relying on mechanisms that are intended to account for lexically idiosyncratic instances only. In order to make the case for this analysis of the Andi affective construction, the rest of this chapter will proceed as follows. §2.2 provides an introduction to the Andi language, and especially the details of its case marking and agreement morphology, before turning to examine how they operate in practice in the affective construction, an experiential construction in which the nominal representing the experiencer must be inflected for gender and number agreement with the argument representing the stimulus. §2.3 shows that cross-linguistically, and specifically in existing analyses of other Nakh-Daghestanian languages, it is common to find constructions in which the experiencer is recognizable as an argument on syntactic grounds, and indeed as a non-canonical subject, i.e. an argument which displays behaviour proper only to subjects in a given language, despite failing to resemble normal subjects in morphological terms. In §2.4, several syntactic

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diagnostics are applied to the affective construction in Andi specifically, which demonstrate that the same is true of the noun phrase encoding the experiencer here: it shows properties which allow us to identify it as the subject of the verb. §2.5 discusses two ways in which the evidence for agreement between arguments in Andi is more resistant to being explained away than that seen in some other languages. The upshot is that Andi attests a construction in which agreement between arguments can be securely identified as a lexically general grammatical requirement: this poses a challenge for any model of syntax which suggests that this state of affairs could never arise. §2.6 concludes.

2.2 An introduction to Andi This section gives basic information on Andi, setting it in its sociolinguistic and typological context before concentrating on those morphosyntactic characteristics that are crucial for a discussion of the agreement phenomenon presented here.

2.2.1 Fundamentals of the language Andi, the language of the ethnic group of the same name located in south-eastern Daghestan, Russia, is among the most prominent members of the Andic group of languages within the Avar–Andic branch of Nakh-Daghestanian. It is hard to make an accurate estimate of its speaker population: most Andi speakers are also proficient in the local lingua francas of Russian and Avar (Dobrushina et al. 2017), and according to Simons and Fennig (2018), the 2002 Russian census recorded 23,729 Andi speakers while the 2010 census recorded only 5,800. However, Andi is certainly the primary language used in everyday life by thousands of people as well as the first language acquired by children in the indigenous Andi settlements, which have not undergone language shift. Each of the dozen or so Andi-speaking villages has its own linguistic variety, and altogether these can be divided into two dialect groups labelled Upper and Lower Andi; there is little mutual intelligibility between these two groups. However, between the best-documented Upper Andi varieties mutual intelligibility is high and there are relatively few substantial morphosyntactic differences. The present chapter is entirely based on Upper Andi material, and especially material from the variety of the village of Zilo, which has been the subject of investigation by several researchers since 2016. Unless otherwise stated, the Andi example items and sentences provided are drawn from my own fieldwork on this variety, which is also the variety treated in Rochant (2018). Andi is a largely unwritten language, not taught in schools or used in writing in any public or administrative setting. Besides the textual material provided in various linguistic descriptions, notably

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Dirr (1906) and Cercvadze (1965) on Andi proper (i.e. the variety of the village of Andi itself ), Sulejmanov (1957) on Rikwani, and Salimov (2010) on Gagatli, there are only two published works in the language: a collection of folk tales from around the world transmitted in Andi proper (Magomedova & Alisultanova 2010), and a recent translation of the Gospel of Luke (Anonymous 2015, henceforth cited as Luke) into a deliberately dialect-neutral version of Upper Andi. In its typological profile, Andi is in many ways typical of a Nakh-Daghestanian language. It has a relatively simple vowel inventory but a complex consonant inventory, featuring labialization and lenis/fortis oppositions (fortis a.k.a. ‘geminate’ consonants are marked here with the symbol ː that denotes length in the IPA), and a three-way opposition between aspirated, ejective, and voiced stops (including affricates). Its syllable structure is simple and allows for few consonant clusters, and its morphology is largely agglutinative, though some morphological material is lexically conditioned, notably in the domain of stem formation in Andi’s extensive nominal paradigm, to which I return below. Although there is a great deal of freedom in the surface ordering of constituents, the syntax is predominantly left-branching; and morphosyntactic alignment is basically ergative–absolutive, in that the direct object in a transitive clause patterns morphologically with the subject in an intransitive clause, both of them appearing in the absolutive case. The absolutive argument also serves as the controller of clausal agreement (for more on this, see §2.2.2). These features are illustrated in the following three examples, which present the morphosyntax of canonical intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive clause types. (4)

hege-w hoɬːu cˇom=lo rešin w-uʁi DEM-I[SG.ABS] here how.much=ADD year(V)[SG.ABS] I-stay.SG.AOR ‘He stayed here for several years.’

(5)

jošuli-di ʁan-ol b-ezˇ-e woman(II).PL.OBL-ERG bread(IV)-PL.ABS IV-bake-HAB ‘The women bake flatbreads.’

(6)

wošu-di di-ɬu sajʁati boy(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.OBL-DAT present(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘The boy gave me a present.’

icˇːi give.AOR

Another typical Nakh-Daghestanian feature shown by Andi is the division of the nominal lexicon into several grammatical genders, which are partly but not entirely semantically motivated. In most Upper Andi varieties, there are five genders (signalled by Roman numerals in the glosses provided here). Genders I, II, and III almost exclusively comprise male humans, female humans, and non-human animates respectively, while genders IV and V apportion the remaining, inanimate nouns between them more or less arbitrarily: representative examples of nouns

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from each gender are I ima ‘father’, II baba ‘mother’, III gedu ‘cat’, IV hinc’o ‘stone’, V χːucˇa ‘book’. Gender is not generally expressed overtly on nominal roots, but it can have an influence on the shape of inflectional stems, as will be seen below; it is also one of the two features relevant for Andi agreement, the other being number (singular vs plural). It is to the morphology of agreement and the nominal paradigm that I now turn.

2.2.2 Agreement and case marking In terms of the expression of agreement marking on targets, Andi can be said to have three formal systems which operate in parallel, in that all three make use of distinct types of exponence, each of which can feature independently of the others. In this chapter I will have little to say about two of these, which mark only the distinction between singular and plural. First, one may find number marked by vowel alternation or even suppletion in the stem of a verb, e.g. šammi- ‘throw.SG’ vs šːari‘throw.PL’; and, second, a wide range of targets display an opposition between an unmarked singular form and a plural form bearing a suffix -Vl, for example adjective t’ulu ‘bad’ and t’ul-ol ‘bad-PL’. For our purposes here, the crucial type of agreement marking in Andi is the third, which expresses the combination of the controller’s number and gender features on the target by means of one of a small set of consonantal affixes, realized as prefixes, suffixes, or infixes: w, j, b, and r. Table 2.1 shows how number and gender interact to identify the required affix: notably, and unlike in the many other NakhDaghestanian languages which display a counterpart to this agreement system, the number distinction plays a very restricted role, featuring as a factor only in the selection of gender III forms. Nonetheless, in essence this system resembles other ‘consonantal’ agreement systems seen elsewhere in the family and particularly in the Avar–Andic branch. Table 2.1 The consonantal gender–number agreement affixes of Andi

As (7)–(11) illustrate, the gender–number (henceforth GN) affix can appear on targets belonging to many different lexical classes, including some which are rarely

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found as agreement targets cross-linguistically, such as adverbs and postpositions. It features both on targets agreeing within the NP domain and on those showing clausal agreement, which in Andi is always controlled by an absolutive-marked argument, as seen in (9)–(11). (7)

šu-r inkw a good-V cart(V)[SG.ABS] ‘a good cart’

(8)

j-oʔo-gu II-four-NUM ‘four girls’

(9)

denni ɬedir-dul j-ak’arun I.ERG calf (III)-PL.ABS III.PL-gather.AOR ‘I gathered the calves.’

joši girl(II)[SG.ABS]

(10)

išːi-di darsi-l we.EXCL-ERG lesson(IV)-PL.ABS ‘We did the schoolwork jointly.’

b-oƛ’u ǯidi IV-jointly do.AOR

(11)

. . . hege-li-cˇ’u w-eχudu w-eƛ-ija den DEM-nI.PL.OBL-CONT I-behind I-walk-FUT I.ABS ‘. . . and I [ = male referent (I)] go after them [the boars].’

The position the GN marker takes up within the word is partly subject to lexical conditioning (for example, there are adverbs which feature the consonantal marker as an infix rather than a prefix). In fact, in most circumstances the presence or absence of a consonantal agreement affix in the first place is an entirely lexical matter: that is, the existence of a GN slot to be filled in šu-GN ‘good’ but not t’ulu ‘bad’ is just an arbitrary, syntactically irrelevant fact about the respective lexemes.⁵ Similarly, there are numerals, verbs, adverbs, and postpositions that do not include a GN agreement slot, and this makes no difference to their syntax. However, the above examples omit one important context for the presence of the consonantal GN affix: it also plays a role in the marking of two different core cases in the nominal paradigm, one of which, the affective, is central to the present chapter. I will treat the affective case and its uses in Andi in §2.2.3, after introducing the nominal paradigm in general.

⁵ For discussion of the types of principles that result in uninflecting members of a word class, see Fedden (2019), as well as Paciaroni (Chapter 5, this volume) on non-agreeing adverbs in Ripano, and Chumakina and Lyutikova (Chapter 6, this volume) on sporadic agreement in Khwarshi.

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Nouns in Andi, as well as other (‘secondary’) nominals such as demonstrative pronouns and substantivized adjectives, inflect for number and case. The forms making up the inflectional paradigm can be treated as based on four distinct stems: absolutive singular (which also serves as the citation form) and absolutive plural, which take no case suffix; and oblique singular and oblique plural, to which case suffixes are applied to give inflected forms in both numbers. While some patterns and tendencies can be observed in the formal relationship between these paradigmatic stems, for our purposes here it does not simplify matters too much to treat all four of them as independent and lexically conditioned, at least in nouns; in glosses, it is sometimes impossible to identify distinct morphemes expressing plurality and/or obliqueness.⁶ Besides the absolutive–oblique distinction, a separate split in the paradigm can be identified between core and local cases. The majority of the large Andi paradigm is composed of local case forms, which can be treated as encoding both a type of localization (e.g. on, under) and the orientation of motion or the lack of motion with respect to that localization (i.e. to, from, at). For example, the case marking -ƛ’i-kːu [-SUB-EL(ATIVE)] applied to an oblique stem expresses movement from under the item(s) in question. However, the local cases do not always have concrete locational semantics. For example, what can be called extended intransitive verbs (following e.g. Næss 2007: 8) select a non-subject argument in a specified oblique case, which may be a local case, e.g. siri ‘fear’⁷ governs the contelative as in (12), while sːori ‘turn (into)’ requires the superlative as in (13). (12)

wošo imu-cˇ’u-kːu boy(I)[SG.ABS] father(I).SG.OBL-CONT-EL ‘The boy fears his father.’

siri-r fear-PROG

(13)

q’urru χan-š-ʔo sːori frog(III)[SG.ABS] king(I)-SG.OBL-SUP.LAT turn.AOR ‘The frog turned into a king.’

Meanwhile, the inflection of the core cases is illustrated by the two nouns ima ‘father’ and gurdo ‘shirt’ in Table 2.2, which exemplify Andi masculine (gender I) and non-masculine nouns respectively.

⁶ However, secondary nominals do reliably make use of discrete stem-forming elements in order to produce oblique stems which can host case morphology. These are singular -šːu-/-š-, plural -lu- for gender I, and singular -lɬːi-/-l-, plural -li- otherwise. ⁷ For all verb lexemes, I treat the aorist (singular) as the citation form, as it is formally simple and (unlike the infinitive) does not make use of different affixal material in the different Upper Andi varieties.

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STEVEN KAYE Table 2.2 The core inflectional paradigm of Andi nouns

A few points can be noted. First, there are two competing dative case suffixes given here, -j and -ɬu, which are almost entirely interchangeable. No functional distinction between these two suffixes has been identified, and either one can be applied to practically any nominal. But the same does not apply to the suffixes listed in the genitive cells; the choice here is motivated by agreement, because the genitive is required to agree with its head noun. The genitive of nouns not belonging to gender I is marked by SG -ƛi, PL -ƛ-ol, where the form chosen depends on the number feature of the possessum, as is illustrated in (14). Meanwhile, agreement plays an even more central role in genitive formation for gender I nouns, which is characterized by no distinctive material of its own: instead, the oblique stem is followed directly by the appropriate GN marker (plus plural -ul as required) corresponding to the gender and number of the possessum, as in (15). (14)

jošu-ƛi reʔa; girl(II).SG.OBL-GEN hand(V)[SG.ABS] reʔobil hand(V).PL.ABS ‘the girl’s hand; the girl’s hands’

jošu-ƛ-ol girl(II).SG.OBL-GEN-PL

(15)

imu-r reʔa; imu-r-ul father(I).SG.OBL[GEN]-V hand(V)[SG.ABS] father(I).SG.OBL[GEN]-V-PL reʔobil hand(V).PL.ABS ‘the father’s hand; the father’s hands’

The genitive predominantly serves as a prenominal modifier in the attributive possession construction as illustrated here, making it typologically rather unsurprising that it inflects for agreement with the head noun in the NP; and the morphological behaviour seen here is commonplace within Avar–Andic, including the existence of genitive forms consisting only of the oblique stem plus suffixal

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agreement morphology (see Daniel 2001: 139–40 for the same phenomenon in Bagwalal). However, as shown in Table 2.2, the agreeing GN marker also features in the morphology of another of the core cases, the affective. This is the distinctive morphological characteristic of Andi that is central to the argument developed in this chapter.

2.2.3 The affective case and the affective construction For all nominals in the language, in both singular and plural, the affective case suffix has the same composition: it consists of the consonantal GN marker followed by the vowel o. That is, -wo, -jo, -bo, -ro are all possible forms of the affective suffix, whose appropriateness in any given syntactic context depends on the gender and number of the relevant agreement controller. But here, as illustrated in the following examples (16)–(18), the agreement involved is not like that of a modifier with its head, because the Andi affective (unlike the genitive) does not appear on NP modifiers. Instead, the affective-marked form inflects for gender and number according to the corresponding features of the absolutive argument of the clause. In this way, it has the same controller as agreeing adverbs, postpositions, and verbs, as already seen in the examples in §2.2.2. As a result, the affective-marked nominal has gender and number values of its own, but at the same time inflects for the gender and number values of another element of the clause. In (16), the agreement target hegešːubo ‘him’ has a gender I singular referent, and this is reflected by the form of the oblique stem-forming element -šːu-; but it also agrees with the absolutive argument of the clause, χalʔi ‘folk, people’, a gender IV singular noun. In (17), the gender I singular features of the absolutive argument Isa ‘Jesus’ are marked on the case suffix in rešnowo ‘to heaven’, itself a gender V noun. Likewise, jecːubo ‘sister’ is a noun belonging to gender II, but its case suffix shows gender IV agreement with the absolutive argument, kino ‘film’. (16)

tušman-š-di hege-šːu-bo badi b-ihu enemy(I)-SG.OBL-ERG DEM-I.SG.OBL-AFF.IV against IV-big χalʔi elto folk(IV)[SG.ABS] let.AOR ‘The enemy sent out a large crowd of people against him.’

(17)

Isa rešno-wo w-ulo-mado Jesus(I)[SG.ABS] heaven(V).SG.OBL-AFF.I I-go.SG-PROG ‘Jesus ascends to heaven’ (Luke 24:50–53, section heading)

60 (18)

STEVEN KAYE hege-š-di harcˇ’-onɬi kino DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG watch-CAUS.AOR film(IV)[SG.ABS] jecːu-bo sister(II).SG.OBL-AFF.IV ‘He made his sister watch a film.’ (Rochant 2018: 81)

Various functions of the affective case are exemplified here. As shown in (16), it is required on the complement of certain postpositions with spatial meaning, such as badi ‘against’. More rarely, it is used with spatial meaning in its own right, as in (17). In the variety of Zilo such uses are very infrequent, but the use of the affective in spatial function does survive, for example, in the normal expression for ‘go hunting’, ˇconi-GN o GN -iʔon, where the noun ˇcon ‘prey’ appears in the affective case as the goal of motion (i.e. ‘go to the prey’). It is also the case taken by the causee in the derived causative construction based on a transitive verb, as seen in (18).⁸ However, our focus in this chapter is on the use of the affective in examples such as (3a), repeated here as (19), alongside other examples of the so-called affective construction. The affective construction is encountered in the context of certain verbs of perception, cognition, and emotion, such as haʔo ‘see’, anɬi ‘hear’, c’inni ‘know’, GN -icˇːun ‘understand’, recˇːo ‘forget’, ǯiʔi ‘like, love’, riχon ‘dislike, find annoying’, which are commonly accompanied by the overt mention of both a stimulus (the thing seen, etc.), appearing in the absolutive case, and an experiencer (the person seeing, etc.), appearing in the affective case.⁹ (19)

Aminati-wo en-ƛi=gu ima Aminat(II).SG.OBL-AFF.I LOG.OBL-GEN=EMPH father(I)[SG.ABS] ǯiʔ-e love-HAB ‘Aminat loves her father.’

(20)

se-b=lo du-ɬu bosinn-ija one-IV=ADD you.SG.OBL-DAT tell-IPFV.PTCP di-bo c’inn-esːa I.OBL-AFF.IV know-NEG.FUT ‘I don’t know anything else to tell you.’

(21)

wošu-jo hede-j boy(I).SG.OBL-AFF.II DEM-II[SG.ABS] ‘The boy doesn’t understand her.’

dan thing(IV)[SG.ABS]

j-icˇːu-mallo-sːu II-understand.SG-PROG-NEG

⁸ This aspect of Andi grammar for the Zilo variety in particular is dealt with in detail by Rochant (2018). ⁹ This is not to say that all verbs involving emotion or cognition encode the experiencer in the affective case: for example, we have seen in (12) that siri ‘fear’ encodes the experiencer in the absolutive case and the stimulus in the contelative.

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du-bo anɬi=dile hundo-b quj? you.SG.OBL-AFF.IV hear.AOR=Q DEM-IV noise(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘Did you hear that noise?’

The fact that the affective case is used with these verbs brings with it the presence of a GN agreement slot in the morphology of the nominal representing the experiencer. And as illustrated by the sentences above, agreement for gender and number in the context of the affective construction works in precisely the same way as we have seen elsewhere: the GN affix borne by the affective-marked experiencer systematically varies to express agreement controlled by the absolutive-marked argument of the verb, just as it does in other contexts where the affective case is used, and as on any verb, adverb, or postposition which happens to bear a GN affix. It cannot fail to take up the appropriate form (cf. 22′), and cannot be omitted, regardless of the surface order of the sentence. Whether or not the verb is one which lexically bears a GN agreement slot itself is also immaterial to the morphological marking of the affective experiencer. In all these points, agreement on the affective experiencer behaves identically to agreement by means of the GN affix in any other context. (22′)

∗

du-wo / ∗ du-jo / ∗ du-ro you.SG.OBL-AFF.I / you.SG.OBL-AFF.II / you.SG.OBL-AFF.V hundo-b quj? DEM-IV noise(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘Did you hear that noise?’

anɬi=dile hear.AOR=Q

Several more examples of the affective construction in Andi, all showing the same behaviour on the affective-marked nominal, will be provided in the course of this chapter. I return in §2.5 to the point (which I take for granted for the time being) that this obligatory formal co-variance observed between the absolutive controller and the affective target must be taken to constitute agreement, if it makes sense to speak of agreement existing anywhere in Andi at all. However, now that the affective construction has been introduced against the background of the fundamentals of Andi grammar, I turn back to the central claim made in this chapter: that Andi syntax treats the affective-marked experiencer as the subject of its clause in numerous ways, while it is nonetheless able—and indeed required—to agree with the absolutive-marked argument representing the stimulus. The implication of this claim is that agreement between arguments is not only possible, but demonstrably central to the clausal syntax of a living language, where it is attested in a lexically general way in the context of such frequently encountered verbs as ‘like’, ‘see’, and ‘know’. In order to prepare the case for this analysis, §2.3 demonstrates that it is both plausible on typological grounds and in keeping with the syntactic diagnoses made elsewhere in the Nakh-Daghestanian family, where many languages have a

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counterpart to the Andi affective construction. Then §2.4 addresses the Andi construction directly, subjecting it to several syntactic tests which demonstrate that the experiencer patterns with what are uncontroversially clausal subjects in canonical transitive and intransitive contexts.

2.3 Experiencer predicates in cross-linguistic perspective One obvious consideration might appear to speak against identifying the experiencer participant as the subject in the affective construction—namely, the very fact that it appears in the affective case. We have already seen that in Andi, as is standard for the Andic languages and for the Nakh-Daghestanian family in general, the subject can appear in the ergative or the absolutive case depending on the nature of the verb; what is more, a bivalent verb with an absolutive subject, such as siri ‘fear’, can assign a specified oblique case to its non-subject argument, as illustrated in §2.2.2. This raises the possibility that examples of the affective construction in Andi simply belong with siri among the extended intransitives, with the stimulus in the role of subject (and so appearing in the absolutive) and the experiencer encoded as an oblique-marked peripheral argument. In that case, an English translation attempting to mimic the true argument structure of (23), as opposed to capturing its meaning, would read not as ‘He dislikes Aminat’ but something more like ‘Aminat grates on him’. (23)

hege-šːu-jo Aminati riχo-mado DEM-I.SG.OBL-AFF.II Aminat(II)[SG.ABS] dislike-PROG ‘He dislikes Aminat.’

On the other hand, on the basis of the examples seen so far it is at least conceivable that affective case marking is not assigned by the verb in any sense, but simply marks the adjunct status of an experiencer participant whose presence in the clause is not syntactically required at all: that is, ‘A s far as he is concerned, Aminat grates’ (see Rákosi 2006: 137–44 on the identification of some experiencers in Hungarian as ‘non-thematic adjuncts’ of this kind). Neither of these interpretations would require us to identify an additional case, the affective, which can be lexically assigned to subjects in Andi alongside the ergative and the absolutive. In §2.4, I will provide syntactic evidence of various kinds which demonstrates that we do in fact have good reason to treat the nominal representing the experiencer participant as the subject of the affective construction, albeit one with unusual case marking. This implies that the absolutive-marked stimulus can be taken as the object of the verb, and that Andi can display agreement between subject and object within a single clause, the configuration also proposed for Coahuilteco and Ripano (Paciaroni, Chapter 5, this volume), although with the controller and target roles reversed.

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In the present section I prepare the ground for the Andi-specific syntactic argumentation to follow, by pointing out that the proposed analysis is by no means unprecedented, whether it is viewed in global typological terms or in the NakhDaghestanian context in particular. On the contrary, it is widely recognized that within a given language certain verbs may assign a case to their subject argument which is non-standard or ‘quirky’ against the backdrop of the case-marking system overall. Perhaps the best-known instances of this phenomenon treated in the syntactic literature are drawn from Icelandic. Icelandic is a language with nominativeaccusative alignment, and under ordinary circumstances both nominal case marking and verbal inflection track the identity of the subject, in that the latter generally appears in the nominative and controls agreement on finite verbs. However, as observed in Andrews (1976), Zaenen et al. (1985), and many subsequent studies, a large number of Icelandic verbs assign a non-nominative case (accusative, genitive, or dative), generally expected to appear on non-subjects, to an argument that is nonetheless recognizable as their subject on the grounds of its syntactic behaviour. For example, while the dative-marked pronoun representing the experiencer in example (24) fails to control agreement on the verb, it does appear in the canonical position for a subject in an Icelandic declarative clause; the formation of the corresponding interrogative would require it to exchange places with the verb in the surface string, in accordance with the standard behaviour of subjects in the language (‘subject–verb inversion’); and further syntactic manipulation reveals that the experiencer argument instantiated by mér here patterns with canonical Icelandic subjects in numerous other ways, involving much more than just linear order.¹⁰ Thus we can be confident that mér [I:DAT] is the subject of the sentence in (24) just as its counterpart I is in English, despite the difference in the case marking they display. (24)

Icelandic (Barðdal 2001: 48–9) mér lı´ka Guðmund-ur I:DAT like.3SG Guðmund-NOM.SG ‘I like Guðmundur.’

Icelandic stands out for the sheer number of verbs it possesses which assign quirky case to their subjects in this way (as well as for the volume of research that they have inspired), but it is far from unique in featuring this phenomenon of noncanonical subject marking. Considerable typological work has been carried out on the topic from synchronic and diachronic points of view (for important surveys, see Aikhenvald et al. 2001; Bhaskararao & Subbarao 2004; de Hoop & de ¹⁰ For a list of the many diagnostics that have been invoked, now numbering well into double figures, see Barðdal (1999); and cf. Andrews (2001: 89), who remarks: ‘I am not aware of any other area in grammatical theory where there has been such a relentless accumulation of evidence for a non-obvious point of analysis’.

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Swart 2008; Serzˇant & Kulikov 2013; Barðdal et al. 2018) and has drawn attention to the existence of arguments displaying the behavioural properties of subjects, while lacking the morphological coding usually associated with them, in diverse and unrelated languages worldwide from Imbabura Quechua (Hermon 2001) to Tamil (Lakshmi Bai 2004). For example, in Imbabura Quechua the subject of a derived desiderative verb must be non-canonically marked in the accusative when it is expressed overtly, but it can be the target of gapping when the desiderative verb is subordinated in a control construction as in (25), a property exclusive to subjects in the language. In this way, it is just like non-canonical subjects in Icelandic (Zaenen et al. 1985: 454), which can likewise be gapped in control structures (cf. §2.4.3, where the corresponding phenomenon in Andi is treated at length). (25)

Imbabura Quechua (Hermon 2001: 161) ñuka-Ø-ka [ØACC puñu-ñaya-y-ta] kati-ju-rka-ni 1SG-NOM-TOP sleep-DESID-INF-ACC continue-PROG-PST-1 ‘I continued to desire to sleep.’

Meanwhile, again as observed for Icelandic, non-canonical subjects in Tamil can serve as the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun (26). (26)

Tamil (Lakshmi Bai 2004: 247) kumaar-ukkui tann-aii puriyav-illai Kumar-DAT self-ACC understand-NEG ‘Kumar did not understand himself.’

Naturally, there is a great deal of variation between languages, and between different constructions within a language, with respect to the details lying behind this general observation. Rather than being selected by particular lexemes as in (24), non-canonical subjects may instead be required by particular morphological derivations (such as the desiderative in Imbabura Quechua) or syntactic contexts (see Moore & Perlmutter 2000: 386–90 on dative subjects of infinitives in Russian). Meanwhile, the diagnostics of subjecthood are themselves not identical from one language to the next (Keenan 1976: 306). What is more, morphological issues aside, it emerges that the non-canonical subjects identified may share all of the behaviour proper to their fully canonical counterparts within a given language, or they may fail to pattern with canonical subjects in certain important ways while behaving like them in others: for example, in Bickel’s (2004) areal study of experiential predicates in the languages of the Himalayas these two possibilities are observed for Tibeto-Burman languages such as Belhare and Indo-Aryan languages such as Nepali respectively, e.g. in Belhare both canonical and non-canonical subjects can be gapped in control structures, while in Nepali this possibility is only available to canonical subjects (Bickel 2004: 94–5). The crucial point, however, is that it is well established that within a given language it may be possible to identify arguments which possess subject properties

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apparently in spite of their case morphology, which are not shared by all forms bearing that morphology. And it is often observed (e.g. Croft 1991: 213–19; Næss 2007: 89, 190; Rott 2013: 93) that if a language does feature predicates which show such deviations from canonical subject marking, it is normal for these to include types whose function is the linguistic representation of psychological and sensory experiences. In the words of Næss (2007: 190), ‘a fundamental property of experience events is that they are difficult to classify in terms of the properties which define the transitive prototype’: to the extent that the more agent-like participant in a scenario will be encoded as the subject, in experience events it is not clear-cut whether this status should belong to the experiencer (which is by nature always sentient, and most likely human) or the stimulus (which is in some sense the initiator of an experience that may be undergone involuntarily), and not every instance will involve the same balance of power between the two. This ambiguity is reflected in the non-canonical or ‘downgraded’ (Bickel 2004: 78) morphology that experiencers commonly display, and also in the variable extent to which they pattern syntactically with morphologically fully fledged subjects. Accordingly, experiential predicates feature prominently in cross-linguistic surveys of the semantic types featuring non-canonical subject behaviour (Onishi 2001). Significantly in the context of the case made in this chapter, everything that has been said above holds good for the situation in Nakh-Daghestanian languages too. Indeed, along with South Asia, the Caucasus is recognized as one of the linguistic areas where non-canonical subject marking is most abundantly attested (Narrog 2007: 454); and in Nakh-Daghestanian specifically, predicates of psychological and sensory experience feature prominently among those which require such marking (see the wide-ranging study carried out by Ganenkov (2006) which indicates the prevalence and diversity of types of experiential predicate that can be observed within and across its branches). As is regularly acknowledged in both descriptions of individual languages (e.g. Haspelmath 1993: 294–5; Forker 2013: 497) and more general typological presentations (e.g. Kibrik 1997; Ganenkov 2013), it is true that in the Nakh-Daghestanian family fewer generalizations need to be stated over grammatical relations such as subject than in languages such as Icelandic, the latter being more heavily reference-dominated rather than roledominated, in the terms of Foley and Van Valin (1980). Nonetheless, where subject properties can be identified which unite canonically ergative- and absolutivemarked A- and S-arguments in a given language, the same properties often turn out to be shared by experiencers bearing other cases as required by specific predicates. For example, Haspelmath (1993: 296–8) identifies a group of ‘experience verbs’ in Lezgian (from the Lezgic branch of Nakh-Daghestanian) whose experiencer participant appears in the dative case: as he demonstrates, this dativemarked experiencer patterns exclusively with ergative and absolutive subjects in the control construction illustrated by (27) and (28).

66 (27)

(28)

STEVEN KAYE Lezgian (Haspelmath 1993: 297) Nabisat.a-z ktab k’el-iz Nabisat-DAT [book read-INF] ‘Nabisat wants to read a book.’

k’an-zawa. want-IPFV

Lezgian (Haspelmath 1993: 298) Nabisat.a-z xwa akwa-z k’an-zawa. Nabisat-DAT [son see-INF] want-IPFV ‘Nabisat wants to see her son.’ (Not: ‘∗ Nabisat wants her son to see her.’ )

Only the covert subject of the embedded infinitive can be coreferential with the ‘wanter’ in this control construction, demonstrating subjecthood for the dative-marked experiencer of akwaz ‘see’ in a similar way to that seen above for accusative-marked subjects in Imbabura Quechua. The same also applies in Godoberi (Haspelmath 1996: 197), which belongs to the Avar–Andic branch and thus represents a close relative of Andi within the family. There, different verbs can select experiencers in the dative, affective, and contessive cases, and all three pattern with canonical subjects in terms of restrictions on coreference in this context, as illustrated by the similarities between (29) and (30). (29)

Godoberi (Haspelmath 1996: 193) waš-u-ɬi [ØABS išqa wu-n-i] q’w araʕ-an-da boy-OBL-DAT [ home M-go-INF] want.PST-CVB-COP ‘The boy wants to go home.’

(30)

Godoberi (Haspelmath 1996: 197) Ali-ɬi q’w araʕ-an-da [ØAFF reɬa haʔ-i] Ali-DAT want.PST-CVB-COP [ sea see-INF] ‘A li wants to see the sea.’ (Not: ‘∗ Ali wants the sea to see him.’ )

In Ingush, from the Nakh branch of the family, Nichols (2011: 465) identifies a group of verbs which select for dative-marked experiencers, including all frequent verbs of cognition and perception: she observes that ‘[i]n their word order, control properties, etc. these A’s seem entirely subject-like’. Meanwhile, van den Berg (2001: 56, 65) notes the existence of only one such item in Standard Dargwa, dig ‘want, like’, but observes that its dative-marked experiencer can control person agreement in the clause (a property which is not extended to nominals in the dative fulfilling any other function), meaning that in this respect the verb is treated as an ordinary transitive. A recent survey treating the topic for the Tsezic branch (Comrie et al. 2018) points to the existence of a morphosyntactically identifiable affective construction type across all five of its languages, as illustrated by (31) from Bezhta; the authors explicitly label this as a non-canonical subject construction involving two arguments, and one which has more in common with the canonical transitive construction than with the extended intransitive, in that it is the oblique-marked

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argument (o¨zˇdil in the example given) whose behaviour is more closely aligned with that of canonical subjects in a range of syntactic contexts. (31)

Bezhta (Comrie et al. 2018: 65, cited from Khalilov 1999: 40) o¨zˇdi-l kid y-at’-ca boy.OBL-LAT girl(II) II-love-PRS ‘The boy loves the girl.’

This is not to say that such experiencers behave exactly like canonical subjects in every respect. For example, Comrie et al. (2018: 68) observe that in Tsezic reflexive clauses based on the affective construction, which make use of an antecedent and a reflexive pronoun, the assignment of absolutive and oblique case marking on these two elements can occur either way round, a type of syntactic flexibility which is not possible in normal transitive contexts. Comrie et al. (2018: 79) take this to reflect the semantic point made by Næss (2007: 190) that such predicates inherently ‘lack a maximal distinction between one clearly controlling and one clearly affected argument’, with which she accounts for the syntactic variability that they display within and across languages in general. From these observations, we glean the following. On the evidence of our knowledge of the world’s languages, it is not controversial to state that experiencer participants are often encoded as arguments, and indeed arguments with identifiable subject properties, regardless of the morphological case they are assigned. This phenomenon is widely attested in the Nakh-Daghestanian languages in particular. As seen elsewhere, languages in the family possess bivalent verbs with meanings such as ‘see’ and ‘like’, which select for subjects in cases other than those that subjects typically bear. Of course, none of this has anything to say directly about the status of the Andi construction at issue here. However, it at least serves to make plausible the analysis I propose, whereby the affective-marked experiencer participant in Andi is an argument, and one with subject properties. It also suggests a prediction. One way in which Andi does clearly differ from the Nakh-Daghestanian languages mentioned above is the presence of agreement marking on its experiencer participants. Therefore, if there does exist any kind of synchronic restriction inherent to the syntax which rules out the possibility of agreement between arguments, the fact that the affective experiencer in Andi is an agreement target ought to entail that it cannot display argument properties of any kind, let alone subject properties. Given that its apparent counterparts in the family, and even elsewhere in Avar–Andic, do display subject properties, this would be a striking finding, and would suggest that agreement between arguments simply cannot be generated by syntactic mechanisms. On the other hand, if the Andi affective experiencer turns out to behave similarly to experiencer arguments as they are seen elsewhere in the family and beyond, this casts doubt on the idea that any such synchronic restriction exists. In §2.4 I present several facets of Andi grammar which point to the second of these possibilities.

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2.4 Subjecthood and the Andi affective construction Practically all syntactic models assume some role for a cross-linguistically valid notion of subject, whether they consider subjecthood to be a theoretical primitive (as in LFG, see Bresnan 1982) or simply the ‘epiphenomenal’ (Poole 2016: 1) result of an item’s structural position, arising from the interaction of independent structural principles (as in much formalist syntax); but the precise syntactic properties displayed by subjects naturally differ from language to language (Keenan 1976), as does the typological background against which these properties can be identified. Thus the value of different types of behaviour as evidence of subjecthood is also language-dependent. For example, one indication of the subject status of the Icelandic dative subject in (24) is its preverbal position, which is shared with canonical subjects: this is a reasonably powerful diagnostic because of the important grammatical role played by constituent order in the language (e.g. the use of subject–verb inversion in distinguishing interrogative from declarative sentences). But the same diagnostic cannot be applied so readily in Andi. As discussed in §2.2, constituent order in Andi is rather free: this is commonplace for the Nakh-Daghestanian languages, where pragmatic considerations play an important role in the linear arrangement of elements in the clause. Accordingly, although affective-marked experiencers are often found in initial position, just like canonical ergative or absolutive subjects, I do not treat this as strong evidence for their subjecthood. For one thing, this ordering preference is by no means overwhelming, see (20); and as Haspelmath (1993: 295) points out with respect to dative experiencers in Lezgian, where precisely the same observation applies, the tendency for experiencers to feature in initial position could be taken to reflect topichood rather than subject status. On the other hand, it has long been recognized that cross-linguistically, the particular properties of subjects observed in individual languages are not radically diverse (indeed, if this were the case there would be little reason to employ a common concept of ‘subject’ at all). Instead, subject properties tend to come to light in certain predictable domains of the grammar, meaning that similar or identical tests for subjecthood are found to be useful for a wide range of languages: examples are provided e.g. in Falk (2006), Andrews (2007), and Dalrymple et al. (2019: 20–1). For instance, subjects are often treated distinctively in contexts involving coreference relations between one clause and another, as in the control construction, which has already been mentioned above as relevant to the diagnosis of subjecthood in Imbabura Quechua and Icelandic and is discussed in more detail in §2.4.3. In this section I examine the behaviour of the affective experiencer in four such areas of the grammar of Andi, in which subjects can be identified as grammatically privileged (regardless of their case marking) on language-internal grounds, but in

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typologically familiar ways. At issue are the syntax of imperative clauses (§2.4.1); restrictions on reflexive binding (§2.4.2); the control construction (§2.4.3); and subordination by means of converbs (§2.4.4). In all four, the affective experiencer demonstrates subject properties.

2.4.1 The syntax of imperative clauses One characteristic which unites S- and A-arguments in Andi is their relationship with the imperative. Imperatives can be formed both from intransitive verbs, whose S-argument under ordinary circumstances would appear in the absolutive case, and from transitive verbs, whose A-argument would appear in the ergative; regardless of this distinction in their case marking, the addressee of an imperative can equally be an S or an A. By contrast, the addressee cannot serve as the object of a transitive clause, although this patterns with S-arguments in terms of case marking (as well as control of clausal agreement) throughout the language. In all this, the behaviour of Andi conforms to a well-documented typological observation (Dixon 1994; Falk 2006: 59–60): regardless of a language’s case-marking patterns, it is the subject that can be targeted as the imperative addressee, meaning that no ‘ergative’ behaviour is observed in this area of the grammar. Accordingly, examples (32) and (33) are grammatical in Andi, in that the unstated argument corresponding to the second-person addressee is S and A respectively, yet (34) is ungrammatical, because it attempts to cast the addressee as the object argument in the structure. (32)

iši‹w›a w-uʔo-m! homewards‹I› I-go.SG-INTR.IMP ‘Go home!’ [ = male addressee (I)]

(33)

hege-w DEM-I[SG.ABS] ‘Beat him up!’

(34)

∗

cˇ’inn-o! beat-TR.IMP

hege-š-di cˇ’inn-o! DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG beat-TR.IMP Intended: ‘Have him beat (you) up!’/ ‘Get beaten up by him!’

The fact that an absolutive subject is covertly present in (32), and an ergative subject in (33), is not merely an assumption based on the corresponding declarative clauses. Andi allows for the addressee of the imperative to be present in the form of an overt second-person pronoun in the sentence structure: when this occurs, the pronoun adopts the appropriate case according to its role as S or A. Again, a counterpart with the addressee in object function is not permitted.

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(32′)

men iši‹w›a w-uʔo-m! you.SG.ABS homewards‹I› I-go.SG-INTR.IMP ‘You go home!’ [ = male addressee (I)]

(33′)

menni hege-w you.SG.ERG DEM-I[SG.ABS] ‘You beat him up!’

(34′)

∗

cˇ’inn-o! beat-TR.IMP

hege-š-di men cˇ’inn-o! DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG you.SG.ABS beat-TR.IMP Intended: ‘Have him beat you up!’/ ‘You get beaten up by him!’

Furthermore, imperative addressees are not permitted to fulfil the role of obliquemarked arguments in extended intransitive structures, e.g. with siri ‘fear’, whose stimulus appears in the contelative case. Sentence (35) is ungrammatical whether or not the second-person pronoun is overtly present to host the appropriate case marking and thus make explicit the intended role of the addressee. (35)

∗

[du-cˇ’u-kːu] hege-w siri-b! you.SG.OBL-CONT-EL DEM-I[SG.ABS] fear-INTR.IMP Intended: ‘Have him be frightened [of you]!’/ ‘[You] frighten him!’

Against the ungrammaticality of (35), compare what is observed when one attempts to produce an imperative clause headed by a verb whose experiencer appears in the affective case, with this experiencer as the addressee. Like the stimulus argument of siri, the intended addressee is low in agency, and in a declarative clause it would be encoded in an oblique case other than the ergative. One might thus expect imperative clauses based on the affective construction to be ruled out just like (35). However, this is not what we find. Instead, as illustrated in examples (36)–(38), to the extent that it is semantically plausible to make demands featuring the relevant verbs, it is grammatical for the experiencer in the affective construction to be treated as an imperative addressee. (36)

[du-bo] hege-b you.SG.OBL-AFF.IV DEM-IV[SG.ABS] ‘[You] understand this!’

b-icˇːu-m! IV-understand.SG-INTR.IMP

(37)

[du-jo] ǯiʔi-b maduhal-ada-j you.SG.OBL-AFF.II love-INTR.IMP neighbour(I)-PL.OBL[GEN]-II joši! daughter(II)[SG.ABS] ‘[You] fall in love with the neighbours’ daughter!’

AGREEMENT BET WEEN ARGUMENTS IN ANDI (38)

denni bosonn-ib-ʁib-ʔa-sːi I.ERG tell-PTCP-RESTR-DEGR-ATTR [du-bo] recˇːo-b! you.SG.OBL-AFF.IV forget-INTR.IMP ‘[You] forget everything I’ve told you!’

71

dan thing(IV)[SG.ABS]

In this respect, the affective experiencer patterns distinctively with absolutive- and ergative-marked subjects, and in opposition to all other participants. Note further that, as above, the second-person pronoun can (but need not) appear overtly in the clause, in the case appropriate to it; as this is the affective, like any nominal in the affective case it is reliably inflected for agreement with the absolutive argument. Examples such as (36)–(38) thus apparently feature a second-person pronoun which displays both a property specific to the subject argument in Andi and agreement with another argument of the same verb. In the introduction to §2.4, it was noted that it is important to distinguish genuinely syntactic effects from those which can be attributed to non-syntactic considerations. It might be argued that the ability to appear as the addressee of an imperative is licensed not syntactically, but semantically, in that it only makes sense to make demands of a participant which has control over the situation invoked: this is the position taken by Dixon (1994) to explain why in a transitive clause it is always A and not O that can serve as the imperative addressee. However, with Falk (2006: 59–60), I reject an exclusively semantic account. As he points out, cross-linguistically it is often possible to treat a subject as an imperative addressee even when it would not be taken as agentive in the corresponding declarative clause, in which case the imperative coerces an agentive reading (e.g. English ‘Be good!’, ‘Get well soon!’); semantics alone would not lead us to expect such examples to be grammatical, suggesting that the inherent syntactic availability of subjects as imperative addressees in the first place is what makes the phenomenon of agentive coercion possible here. Some Andi speakers also accept sentences such as the following, where it is the stimulus, taking the absolutive case, that is treated as the addressee of the imperative of a verb found in the affective construction. (39)

%

budun, [men] anɬi-b! muezzin(I)[SG.ABS] you.SG.ABS hear-INTR.IMP ‘Muezzin, [you] be heard!’

This cannot be licensed on the basis of the addressee’s semantic role of stimulus (cf. the unacceptable example (35)). Rather, it implies the existence of a distinct analysis whereby the stimulus, rather than the experiencer, is the subject of the verb, recalling the observation made in §2.3 that in experiential contexts both

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STEVEN KAYE

participants have some claim to be thought of as being in charge of the situation.¹¹ However, the acceptability of examples such as (39) does not speak against the central claim made here and throughout, namely that the experiencer in the Andi affective construction can display behaviour otherwise only available to uncontroversial subject arguments, while nonetheless inflecting for agreement with another argument of the verb. We now turn to another facet of Andi clause-internal syntax, namely reflexive binding, which points to the same conclusion.

2.4.2 The simple reflexive construction The pronoun used in reflexive constructions in Andi is based on the logophoric pronoun, which is strongly suppletive according to case: absolutive forms are built on a root zˇi-, bearing GN and -Vl suffixes to specify gender and number, while all other forms in the paradigm feature a root en- to which the usual oblique stemforming elements (see §2.2.2, fn. 6) and then case suffixes are added as appropriate. These morphological traits are illustrated in examples (40) and (41), which contain the gender I singular logophor in the absolutive and dative case respectively and demonstrate its basic use: its reference is bound by a previously mentioned entity in situations where speech or thought is reported. Consequently, it appears even in what are ostensibly direct speech contexts where the original utterance would have contained a first-person pronoun, as in (41) from Gagatli Andi. (40)

hege-š-di rošo icˇːi DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG word(IV)[SG.ABS] give.AOR w-uʔinn-ija I-go.SG-FUT ‘He promised that he would leave soon.’

zˇi-w onšːilo LOG.ABS-I then

(41)

onšːilo hede-š-di en-šːu-j then DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-DAT j-iɢo-b=ʁodːu q’int’iji-b rihi … II-come.SG-INTR.IMP=QUOT torment-PTCP time(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘then when he pestered her, saying “Come to me” . . .’ (Salimov 2010: 223)

The addition of the particle =gu (which serves as an emphatic marker in other contexts) to the logophor gives a pronoun which is used in both intensive and third-person reflexive functions: compare English pronouns of the form X-self, which also play these two roles, as in He himself wrote the letter and He bought ¹¹ Along the same lines, it is notable that imperatives based on the affective construction always make use of the suffix which otherwise characterizes intransitive imperatives, as indicated in the glosses of the examples given here.

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73

himself an ice cream. In its intensive function this pronoun can appear on its own, as in (42). In such instances, the referent of a form in =gu may be identifiable thanks only to the discourse context. (42)

en-š-di=gu kaʁar qw ari LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-ERG=EMPH letter(V)[SG.ABS] write.AOR ‘He himself wrote the letter.’ (lit. ‘Himself wrote the letter.’ )

At the same time, this pronoun, unlike the logophor, can also be found in the same clause as an overt antecedent; in fact, one way of encoding reflexive meaning in Andi involves the repeated use of the pronoun in =gu alongside the antecedent binding its reference, as in (43), where the fact that the same referent (Rasul) fulfils both A and O roles is captured by the use of the reflexive/intensive pronoun in both ergative and absolutive in the same transitive clause. (43)

Rasul en-š-di=gu zˇi-w=gu Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-ERG=EMPH LOG.ABS-I=EMPH w-ecːiqi I-praise.AOR ‘Rasul praised himself.’

The full range of binding, ordering, and case-marking possibilities available to combinations of nominal antecedents and multiple instances of zˇi-GN =gu, as seen in (43), must await further study. Here I consider only the simple reflexive construction involving a single use of the pronoun, as in (44), from Gagatli Andi. (44)

halt’i-l-qi b-iɢo-b orsi=lo work(IV)-SG.OBL-APUD IV-come.SG-PTCP money(IV)[SG.ABS]=ADD hede-š-di en-šːu-j=gu DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG LOG-I.SG.OBL[GEN]-II=EMPH ilu-χo lelto b-ik’o-dːu mother(II).SG.OBL-AD.LAT send.HAB IV-be.SG-PRF ‘And the money he received for his work hei used to send to hisi mother.’ (Salimov 2010: 221)

In the above example, drawn from a text in the Gagatli dialect, the reference of the pronoun zˇi-GN =gu is bound by a free nominal in the ergative case (the pronoun hedešdi ‘he’), which serves as the subject of the transitive verb that heads the clause. The same syntactic configuration for simple reflexives is grammatical in Zilo Andi, as illustrated by the following examples. (45)

Ali-di zˇi-w=gu w-ecːiqi Ali(I).SG.OBL-ERG LOG.ABS-I=EMPH I-praise.AOR ‘A lii praised himselfi /himj .’

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STEVEN KAYE

(46)

hege-š-di en-šːu-j=gu DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-DAT=EMPH marozˇin b-iχi ice.cream(IV)[SG.ABS] IV-take.SG.AOR ‘Hei bought himselfi /himj an ice cream.’

(47)

Rasul-di en-šːu-b=gu Rasul(I).SG.OBL-ERG LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL[GEN]-III.SG=EMPH χw ej cˇ’inni dog(III)[SG.ABS] beat.AOR ‘Rasuli beat hisi/j dog.’

As signalled by the subscript letters in the translation, it would also be possible for (45) to mean that Ali praised another referent belonging to gender I (under the intensive reading of the pronoun), i.e. a male already identifiable on the basis of the discourse context, upon whom emphasis is being laid. The same applies in the other examples, e.g. in the appropriate context example (47) has a reading in which Rasul beat another man’s dog. Crucially, however, a reflexive interpretation is indeed available in all three sentences. That is, it is grammatical for a subject in the ergative case to bind the reference of a reflexive pronoun. This does not appear to be affected by the relative ordering of the constituents, i.e. the ‘antecedent’ can in fact appear after the pronoun whose reference it binds, as in (48). (48)

en-šːu-b=gu χw ej LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL[GEN]-III.SG=EMPH dog(III)[SG.ABS] Rasul-di cˇ’inni Rasul(I).SG.OBL-ERG beat.AOR ‘Rasuli beat hisi/j dog.’

Meanwhile, free nominals in oblique cases other than the ergative are not generally permitted to bind the reference of a pronoun in =gu. Thus, although sentences such as (49) and (50) are grammatical in Andi, they cannot be given a reflexive interpretation in which the two arguments have the same referent: only an intensive reading of enšdigu / zˇiwgu is available in each instance, such that it refers to a referent of gender I already salient in the discourse, ‘X himself ’, which does not appear elsewhere in the clause (i.e. not Rasul). (49)

Rasul-ɬu en-š-di=gu Rasul(I).SG.OBL-DAT LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-ERG=EMPH sajʁati icˇːi present(IV)[SG.ABS] give.AOR ‘Hei gave Rasulj a present/∗ Himselfi gave Rasuli a present.’

AGREEMENT BET WEEN ARGUMENTS IN ANDI (50)

Rasul-ʔo zˇi-w=gu urʁu-mallo Rasul(I).SG.OBL-SUP.LAT LOG.ABS-I=EMPH think-PROG ‘Hei is thinking about Rasulj /∗ Himselfi is thinking about Rasuli .’

(51)

Rasul-cˇ’u-kːu zˇi-w=gu siri-r Rasul(I).SG.OBL-CONT-EL LOG.ABS-I=EMPH fear-PROG ‘Hei is frightened of Rasulj /∗ Himselfi is frightened of Rasuli .’

75

Note that the exchange in the case marking on the ergative and dative arguments between (46) and (49) is apparently what rules out the possibility of a reflexive interpretation in the latter example: the ergative subject can bind the indirect object, but the reverse is not possible. In the same way, the impossibility of a reflexive reading in (50) and (51) is remedied if the case marking on the two arguments is exchanged, giving (50′) and (51′). That is to say that an absolutive subject, like an ergative subject, is able to bind reference in the simple reflexive construction. (50′)

Rasul en-š-ʔo=gu urʁu-mallo Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-SUP.LAT=EMPH think-PROG ‘Rasuli is thinking about himselfi /himj .’

(51′)

Rasul en-š-cˇ’u-kːu=gu siri-r Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-CONT-EL=EMPH fear-PROG ‘Rasuli is frightened of himselfi /himj .’

Against this background, the binding possibilities observed for the affective construction are revealing. As illustrated in examples (52)–(54), the affective experiencer is able to bind the reference of a reflexive pronoun—just like ergative and absolutive subjects, but unlike other nominals in oblique cases. Compare (52), for which the natural reading is the reflexive ‘A li saw himself in the mirror’, with the superficially similar (50), where a reflexive reading of zˇiwgu is ruled out. (52)

Ali-wo zˇi-w=gu haʔo Ali(I).SG.OBL-AFF.I LOG.ABS-I=EMPH see.AOR mat’u-do-la-kːu mirror(V)-SG.OBL-IN-EL ‘A lii saw himselfi /himj in the mirror.’

(53)

hege-šːu-wo zˇi-w=gu ǯiʔi-r-sːu DEM-I.SG.OBL-AFF.I LOG.ABS-I=EMPH love-PROG-NEG ‘Hei doesn’t like himselfi /himj .’

76 (54)

STEVEN KAYE Rasuli-bo en-šːu-b=gu Rasul(I).SG.OBL-AFF.III.SG LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL[GEN]-III.SG=EMPH χw ej haʔo dog(III)[SG.ABS] see.AOR ‘Rasuli saw hisi/j dog.’

In examples such as these, the ability of the affective-marked nominal to bind the reference of the pronoun in =gu would be unexpected—except on the assumption that it is the subject argument of the verb heading the clause, and thus naturally able to pattern with ergative and absolutive subjects. The evidence of the simple reflexive construction thus corroborates the evidence provided in §2.4.1 on imperatives: the experiencer in the affective construction is shown to be able to display syntactic behaviour within the clause which is not available to oblique-marked nominals in general, but which does characterize the subject arguments of both transitive and intransitive verbs. The next two sections (§2.4.3 and §2.4.4) will move on to issues of cross-clausal syntax, which further support the claim that the affective experiencer is an argument with subject properties. Nonetheless, in any example illustrating this subject-specific behaviour, the affective experiencer will agree with the absolutive argument of the clause, just like any other instance of a nominal in the affective.¹²

2.4.3 Interactions with syntactic control As highlighted in §2.3, one syntactic context commonly invoked in the identification of non-canonical subjects is the subordination construction known as control (more specifically the variety of control labelled ‘complement equi’ by Falk 2006: 135). Control in this sense involves restrictions on reference, whereby a covert subject of a subordinate complement clause is constrained to corefer with a particular element of the superordinate clause in which it stands. Different superordinate verbs can impose different restrictions on the reference of this covert subject: thus in English I tried [Ø to leave the room] the subject of the subordinate verb leave is

¹² In fact, the above does not exhaust the possibilities for reflexive binding in the affective construction. We have just seen that the affective experiencer is able to bind the reference of zˇiwgu in the absolutive. However, it appears that a reflexive reading is also available where the absolutive binds the affective, as in the following example: (i)

Ali en-šːu-wo=gu Ali(I)[SG.ABS] LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-AFF.I=EMPH ‘A lii saw himselfi /himj in the mirror.’

haʔo see.AOR

mat’u-do-la-kːu mirror(V)-SG.OBL-IN-EL

I do not pursue this here, but note that this flexibility parallels that recorded by Comrie et al. (2018: 68) for reflexive binding in the affective construction in the Tsezic languages, mentioned in §2.3.

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understood to corefer with the subject of tried, while in I allowed them [Ø to leave the room] it corefers with the object of allowed. Thus one can talk of subject control, object control, etc., according to the role played in the superordinate clause by the controlling nominal. There is no guarantee that the syntax of every language will feature both subject and object control—or indeed feature restrictions on coreference in subordination in this way, in connection with every lexeme that can select a clausal complement. However, if such restrictions do exist, they are found to target the subject position in the subordinate clause (Polinsky 2013: 581), as in the English examples just provided: that is, the subject is the only argument whose reference can be determined by a superordinate element in the absence of any explicit marking. This is one sense in which the subject possesses a privileged status with respect to cross-clausal syntax (Falk 2006: 74); as illustrated in examples (25) from Imbabura Quechua and (27)–(28) from Lezgian in §2.3, this syntactic privilege need not be restricted to canonically marked subjects. Syntactic generalizations stated over grammatical functions such as subject and object on the whole play a less important role in Nakh-Daghestanian languages than they do in languages such as Icelandic or English (see §2.3). For instance, in Andi, certain verbs taking clausal complements do not bring with them the restrictions on omission that might be expected on the basis of their English counterparts. Thus both (55) and (56), in which the superordinate verb is elto ‘allow, let (out)’, are grammatical, although the ‘missing’ argument in the subordinate clause (which has the object of elto as its antecedent) is the subject in the former and the object in the latter. This suggests that in this instance the possibility of omitting overt arguments is not governed by syntactic considerations as in the control construction, but instead reflects a more general pragmatically motivated tendency to allow the omission of participants whose reference is clear in context. (55)

Ali-di den elto [ØERG mašinobil b-eq’aš-eri] Ali(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS let.AOR car(IV).PL.ABS IV-steal-INF ‘A li allowed me [Ø to steal the cars].’

(56)

Ali-di den elto [adam-di ØABS Ali(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS let.AOR people(I).PL.OBL-ERG cˇ’inn-eri] beat-INF ‘A li allowed me [people to beat Ø up]’, i.e. ‘A li let me get beaten up’.

However, the control construction is attested in Andi. For example, consider the verb t’ammi ‘put, place’, which is also used with the meaning ‘force, compel’. In the latter function this takes a complement clause headed by a verb in the infinitive, as in (57) and (58), where the subject of the subordinate clause is left unstated.

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STEVEN KAYE

(57)

Rasul-di den t’ammi Rasul(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS put.AOR b-eq’aš-eri] IV-steal-INF ‘Rasul forced me to steal the cars.’

[ØERG

mašinobil car(IV).PL.ABS

(58)

Rasul-di den t’ammi Rasul(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS put.AOR ‘Rasul forced me to run away.’

[ØABS

w-ucˇ’unn-u] I-flee.SG-INF

Unlike in the context of elto, here only a covert subject argument in the subordinate clause can corefer with the object of the superordinate verb. Thus examples (59), (60) are ungrammatical, because they require participants that are not subject arguments in the subordinate clause to corefer with superordinate den [I.ABS]. ∗

(59)

Rasul-di den t’ammi [adam-di ØABS Rasul(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS put.AOR people(I).PL.OBL-ERG cˇ’inn-eri] beat-INF Intended: ‘Rasul forced me to get beaten up by people/have people beat me up.’

(60)

∗

Rasul-di den t’ammi [adam ØCONT.EL Rasul(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS put.AOR people(I)[PL.ABS] sir-eri] fear-INF Intended: ‘Rasul forced me to be feared by people/have people fear me.’

Note that this is the case despite the fact that the object of ˇc’inneri ‘beat up’ in (59), if expressed overtly, would appear in the absolutive, just like the intransitive subject of wucˇ’unnu ‘run away’ in (58). What distinguishes the acceptable (58) from the unacceptable (59) is the grammatical function of the covert argument. The potential to undergo omission in an infinitive-headed complement clause selected by t’ammi ‘force’ can thus be considered a subject property in Andi. Accordingly, the grammaticality of example (61), which can be taken as based on a simple clause along the lines of (62), is revealing. Here the object of the superordinate verb is able to control the reference of the omitted experiencer participant in the subordinate clause: this implies an analysis whereby the affective-marked experiencer is treated as the subject of haʔo ‘see’. (61) Rasul-di den t’ammi [ØAFF misidi haʔ-eri] Rasul(I).SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS put.AOR gold(IV)[SG.ABS] see-INF ‘Rasul forced me to see the gold.’

AGREEMENT BET WEEN ARGUMENTS IN ANDI (62)

di-bo misidi I.OBL-AFF.IV gold(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘I saw the gold.’

79

haʔo see.AOR

Other complement-taking verbs which impose the same restriction on crossclausal coreference include muk’urijdi ‘persuade’ and moɬijdi ‘teach’. Again, these can select complement clauses in which the subject of the subordinate verb is omitted and understood to corefer with an argument in the superordinate clause; and, again, this restriction does not rule out sentences such as (63) and (64), in which the omitted participant is the experiencer of a verb featuring in the affective construction. This demonstrates that the experiencer is treated as a subject with regard to this syntactic diagnostic. (63)

hege-š-di den muk’urijdi DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG I.ABS persuade.AOR ǯiʔ-eri] love-INF ‘He persuaded me to love her.’

[ØAFF

hege-j DEM-II[SG.ABS]

(64)

hege-š-di di-qi moɬijdi [ØAFF b-icˇːunn-u DEM-I.SG.OBL-ERG I.OBL-APUD teach.AOR IV-understand.SG-INF bucː’ir-o-ƛi micː’i] cattle(V)-SG.OBL-GEN tongue(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘He taught me to understand the language of animals.’

It is also possible to identify subject control verbs in Andi, for which the subject of the matrix verb binds the reference of a covert subject in the subordinate clause. One example is suloʔo ‘be shy about, shrink from’. Again, a covert affective experiencer (67) can have its reference determined in the same way as canonical intransitive and transitive subjects, as in (65) and (66). (65)

den suloʔo [ØABS hege-š-qi w-ahinn-u] I.ABS be.shy.AOR DEM-I.SG.OBL-APUD I-speak-INF ‘I was shy about speaking to him.’

(66)

den suloʔo [ØERG b-iχ-eri hocˇ’o b-eχudi‹b›a-sːi I.ABS be.shy.AOR IV-take.SG-INF most IV-behind‹IV›-ATTR maza] piece(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘I was shy about taking the last piece.’

(67)

den suloʔo [ØAFF hege-j ǯiʔ-eri] I.ABS be.shy.AOR DEM-II[SG.ABS] love-INF ‘I was shy about loving her.’ (cf. di-jo hege-j ǯiʔi ‘I loved her.’ )

80 (68)

STEVEN KAYE ∗

den suloʔo [hege-w ØAPUD w-ahinn-u] I.ABS be.shy.AOR DEM-I[SG.ABS] I-speak-INF Intended: ‘I was shy about him speaking to me.’

The ungrammatical example in (68) shows that this possibility is not available to all case forms. Again, the affective case behaves like the absolutive and the ergative, and unlike the other cases.

2.4.4 Coreference with aorist converbs A fourth piece of evidence in favour of identifying the experiencer of affective verbs as a non-canonical subject argument in Andi is provided by the detailed facts of subordination with the aorist converb. The Andi varieties possess two general converbs.¹³ On morphological grounds they can be labelled aorist and perfect, being homophonous with the respective finite tense forms, though neither the formal nor the functional characteristics of the constructions they appear in are entirely predictable from those of the finite system. A detailed account is provided in Verhees (2019), which considers the semantics and morphosyntax of these two converbs in several Andi varieties. As is noted there, the precise makeup of the aorist and perfect converb constructions varies in some ways from one variety to another, but in this respect the differences between the dialects of Rikwani, Gagatli, and the settlement of Andi itself are fairly superficial; however, the Zilo variety in particular happens to diverge in crucial ways which make it unsuitable for the argument presented here, and accordingly the rest of this section will proceed without discussion of Zilo Andi.¹⁴ Subordination involving a perfect converb is illustrated for present purposes by sentences (69) and (70), from the variety of Andi proper. For reasons that will become clear, the suffix -dːu borne by the converb can be glossed simply as -CVB, and as just mentioned this converb is identical with the finite perfect form, which is also in -dːu. The perfect converb appears rightmost in its clause, and often it is accompanied by an enclitic particle =lo (otherwise functioning as the additive particle ‘also, even’, and taking the form =no after a nasal) to its left, as in both elicited examples here.

¹³ An alternative analysis would hold that there is only one general converb (the form treated as the perfect converb here), and no aorist converb as such—just a converbial construction that employs the finite aorist form. This difference in interpretation does not affect the argument made here. ¹⁴ Zilo Andi is unsuitable as a source of examples here because it appears to be in the process of losing the distinction between the aorist and perfect converbial constructions which remains intact in other Upper Andi varieties. Thus, in Zilo the presence of the particle =lodu (the equivalent of =lodːu in Andi proper) does not rule out use of the perfect converb (Rochant 2016), and in fact examples of the aorist converb are rare altogether.

AGREEMENT BET WEEN ARGUMENTS IN ANDI (69)

mašina=lo b-iʁ-ol-dːu, hege-w-ul rejlo car(IV)[SG.ABS]=ADD IV-stay.SG-CAUS-CVB DEM-I-PL[ABS] outside.LAT ɬibdi jump.AOR ‘Having stopped the car, they jumped out.’ (Verhees 2019: 213)

(70)

mašina=lo b-iʁi-dːu, hege-w-ul rejlo car(IV)[SG.ABS]=ADD IV-stay.SG-CVB DEM-I-PL[ABS] outside.LAT ɬibdi jump.AOR ‘The car having stopped, they jumped out.’ (Verhees 2019: 210)

81

Note that subordination of this kind is not limited by any general restriction on coreference; in (69) the unstated subject of the converb is the same as that of the main verb, whereas in (70) each has its own distinct subject. The structure of subordination involving an aorist converb is crucially different. Again, the verb form itself does not differ at all from its finite counterpart, which in this case bears no distinct suffix to be glossed. However, its status as a converb is clear thanks to the presence of a dedicated clitic particle =lodːu / =nodːu, which comes rightmost in the subordinate clause and cannot be attached to the converb itself. This restriction results in the VO ordering observed in example (71). (71)

b-iʁ-oɬi mašina=lodːu, hege-w-ul IV-stay.SG-CAUS.AOR(CVB) car(IV)[SG.ABS]=PTC DEM-I-PL[ABS] rejlo ɬibdi outside.LAT jump.AOR ‘Having stopped the car, they jumped out.’ (Verhees 2019: 210)

But a more important restriction on the aorist converb, for our purposes, is that its use is ruled out when the main and subordinate clauses have different subjects. The only configuration possible is one where the subject of the main verb is shared by the aorist converb. Thus (72), the counterpart to (70) in which the perfect converb is replaced by an aorist, is ungrammatical owing to the switch in subject that would be required from one clause to the next. (72)

∗

b-iʁi mašina=lodːu, hege-w-ul rejlo IV-stay.AOR(CVB) car(IV)[SG.ABS]=PTC DEM-I-PL[ABS] outside ɬibdi jump.AOR Intended: ‘The car having stopped, they jumped out.’ (Verhees 2019: 210)

General converbs are employed frequently in Andi. Our textual sources thus provide numerous instances of all three possible configurations—perfect converb with shared subject (73), perfect converb with different subjects (74), and aorist converb with shared subject (75).

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(73)

w-oχoq’ud‹w›a=lo sːor-dːu, hege-lu-qi=lo harcˇ’on-dːu, I-back‹I›=ADD turn-CVB DEM-I.PL.OBL-APUD=ADD look-CVB Isa-di=ɬodi hit’on … Jesus(I).SG.OBL-ERG=REP say.AOR ‘Turning back and looking at them, Jesus said . . .’ (Luke 23:28)

(74)

berq’a=gu hege-lu-j ila=lo early=EMPH DEM-I.PL.OBL[GEN]-II mother(II)[SG.ABS]=ADD j-icˇ’o-dːu, imu-di se-j=lo II-die.SG-CVB father(I).SG.OBL-ERG one-II=ADD horcˇː’i j-icˇon-dːu. woman(II)[SG.ABS] II-take.SG-PRF ‘Their mother having died early, the father took another wife.’ (Magomedova & Alisultanova 2010: 4)

(75)

he-b rihi b-olo ješi-li-ƛi DEM-IV time(IV)[SG.ABS] IV-put.on.AOR(CVB) girl(II)-PL.OBL-GEN rolal=lodːu c’inn-ol-dːu . . . clothes(IV)[SG.ABS]=PTC know-CAUS-PRF ‘Then, putting on women’s clothing, she announced . . .’ (Salimov 2010: 225)

As Verhees (2019) observes, from a diachronic perspective it is interesting to speculate how these two types of converb clause, featuring such similar material, arose and took on their distinct patterns of behaviour, with the aorist converb subject to a restriction which does not affect the perfect converb. But given that this restriction exists, it can evidently serve as another indicator of the syntactic status of the experiencer of affective verbs. Whenever a verb appears in an aorist converb clause, we are in a position to identify its subject with the subject of the superordinate clause; and, in particular, when the subordinated predicate would normally contain both an experiencer in the affective and a stimulus in the absolutive, we can see which of these is treated as the subject for the purposes of the shared subject restriction. In total, seven examples of the relevant structure are found in the published Andi material, all of them in the Gospel translation, and in every instance it is the experiencer, and not the stimulus, of the subordinate affective verb that shows coreference with the superordinate subject, as in (76). Here the fact that the use of an aorist converb is possible shows that both the intransitive verb ʁulʁušodːu ‘grumbled’ and the converb haɢo ‘seeing’ are treated as having the same subject argument, which surfaces as absolutive adam in accordance with the argument structure of the superordinate verb.

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haɢo higi-b=lodːu, w-oqidu-s-ol see.AOR(CVB) DEM-IV[SG.ABS]=PTC I-around-ATTR-PL adam ʁulʁušo-dːu … people(I)[PL.ABS] grumble-PRF ‘Seeing this, the people who were in attendance grumbled . . .’ (Luke 19:7)

The same applies in (77), where the subject of the matrix clause is marked with the ergative, and in (78), where the converb clause intervenes between the mention of the shared subject and the main verb. (77)

haɢo hege-lu-b buzˇur=lodːu, see.AOR(CVB) DEM-I.PL.OBL[GEN]-IV faith(IV)[SG.ABS]=PTC Isa-di ruq’udosi-š-qi hit’o-mado … Jesus(I).SG.OBL-ERG sick-I.SG.OBL-APUD say-PROG ‘Seeing their faith, Jesus says to the sick man . . .’ (Luke 5:20)

(78)

Isa iš‹w›a w-ali-b Jesus(I)[SG.ABS] homewards‹I› I-call-PTCP farisej-š-di, haɢo higiɬu Pharisee(I)-SG.OBL-ERG see.AOR(CVB) there ihi-r-si=lodːu, hisab ihi-dːu … do-PROG-ATTR[SG.ABS]=PTC account(IV)[SG.ABS] do-PRF ‘The Pharisee who had invited Jesus home, seeing what he was doing there, said to himself . . .’ (Luke 7:39)

Not only haɢo ‘see’, but also anɬi ‘hear’ and c’inni ‘know’ are attested in examples of this kind; note that (80) features two aorist converbs, only one of them from an affective verb, but both sharing a subject with the main verb wuk’oldːu ‘placed, made stand’. (79)

anɬi ret’on=nodu, Isa-di hear.AOR(CVB) speech(V)[SG.ABS]=PTC Jesus(I).SG.OBL-ERG hit’on-dːu Jair-qi . . . say-PRF Jairus(I).SG.OBL-APUD ‘Hearing these words, Jesus said to Jairus . . .’ (Luke 8:50)

(80)

c’inni hege-lu-r rok’o-li-cˇ’u hinu-si know.AOR(CVB) DEM-I.PL.OBL[GEN]-V heart(V)-PL.OBL-CONT in-ATTR pikru=lodːu, Isa-di, w-uχi thought(V)[SG.ABS]=PTC Jesus(I)-ERG I-take.SG.AOR(CVB) kodi=lodːu, en-š-cˇ’u=gu ƛer-χa in.hand.LAT=PTC LOG.OBL-I.SG.OBL-CONT=EMPH near-AD.ESS

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STEVEN KAYE w-uk’-ol-dːu se-w micˇ’i mocˇ’i I-be.SG-CAUS-PRF one-I small child(I)[SG.ABS] ‘Knowing the thoughts in their hearts, Jesus took a small child and had him stand beside him.’ (Luke 9:47)

The same-subject constraint on the use of aorist converbs identified for certain Andi dialects thus provides further evidence that the affective-marked experiencer is an argument with subject properties.

2.5 Taking stock: some drawbacks of alternative interpretations In the four areas of the grammar treated in §2.4, where subjects display distinctive syntactic properties, the behaviour of affective-marked experiencers in Andi shows that they can be identified as non-canonical subjects, and therefore certainly as arguments. This does not distance them from their counterparts in other NakhDaghestanian languages, and we have even uncovered some detailed parallels (cf. the flexible binding behaviour in reflexives seen in §2.4.2 and the flexible binding behaviour reported for Tsezic languages by Comrie et al. 2018). At the same time, as seen in the introduction to Andi case and agreement provided in §2.2 and the many examples which have been provided in the course of this chapter, the form of the affective case suffix is sensitive to the gender and number of the absolutive argument of the clause: this applies in the context of the affective construction just as it does elsewhere. Taken together, these two observations point to a significant conclusion. In some dialects of Andi, in at least the syntactic context under discussion here, agreement between two arguments of the same verb is the norm, not merely attested but grammatically required. It would appear, then, that a successful general model of syntax must allow a language to possess such a grammatical requirement. Of course, since the other proposed examples of this behaviour which have been adduced in the linguistic literature are so few, it is important to make sure that what we are dealing with in the Andi case is genuinely the agreement of one argument with another. That the phenomenon treated in this chapter deserves to be described as agreement is supported by the morphological details involved. The gender and number of the absolutive argument is reflected in the selection of the appropriate GN marker to form a component of the affective suffix in a given clause. This GN marker is found widely in Andi (and related languages) on agreeing elements of many different kinds, including verbs which inflect for predicate–argument agreement in a typologically unexceptional way. The forms available to the marker are the same in the affective suffix as everywhere else in the language. If Andi can be said to possess agreement at all, then, it would seem hard to deny this label to the systematic co-variance seen between experiencer and stimulus inside the affective construction.

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However, in the introduction to this chapter I pointed out that other languages besides Andi have been reported as displaying agreement between arguments, but for various reasons the evidence leaves unclear the syntactic significance of the phenomena observed. Now that the morphosyntax of the affective construction has been treated in some detail against the backdrop of Andi grammar as a whole, we are in a position to demonstrate that the same issues do not arise here. First, I drew attention in §2.1 to the fact that in some instances, what has been identified as an agreeing inflectional affix on an argument may in fact be better interpreted as a clitic, and thus syntactically distinct from the element that happens to host it. This would undermine the notion that we are really dealing with the phenomenon of one argument agreeing with another at all. This is arguably the case for one of the examples of alleged agreement between arguments listed by Matasovi´c (2018). With reference to examples such as (81), drawn from Ibragimov (1990: 72), Matasovi´c claims (2018: 23) that ‘[i]n Tsakhur, a focused dative argument agrees with the absolutive argument of the verb in gender’. In fact, both gender and number are relevant here, as in Andi. But, more crucially, it is not the dative argument itself (duχajs ‘for [his] son’) that serves as the agreement target, but the morpheme attached to it, glossed by Matasovi´c as ‘also’—which is not constrained to appear on dative forms (or even on nominals in general) but is a syntactically independent element able to be hosted by almost any word. Compare example (82), which follows Kibrik’s (1999a: 359–60) more careful analysis where the same agreeing element is treated as a coherence particle (COH) that attaches enclitically; here this particle happens to be hosted by an adverb, hale ‘still’.¹⁵ (81)

Tsakhur (Ibragimov 1990: 72, with glossing based on Matasovi´c 2018: 23)¹⁶ duχajs-ɨd mašin ališːu for.son-also.IV car(IV) he.bought[IV] ‘He bought a car for his son too.’

(82)

Tsakhur (Kibrik 1999b: 776) ɨk’ar hale=d ut’um-ex-e disease(IV) still=COH.IV strong-IV.become-IPFV ‘The disease is progressing’ (lit. ‘is still becoming stronger’).

Similarly, as mentioned in §2.1, given the nature of our knowledge of the extinct language Coahuilteco, it is hard to rule out the possibility that clauses such as ¹⁵ As mentioned in §2.1, Polinsky et al. (2017) suggest what is effectively an analysis along these lines for certain agreeing personal pronouns in Archi. They identify these as containing a focus marker ej‹t’›u which serves as an agreement target in its own right, although they are agnostic as to whether it should be labelled a clitic in morphological terms (fn. 18 on p. 77). The remaining instances are covered by the ‘weak pronoun’ analysis to which I return below. ¹⁶ For a more accurate glossing of the same sentence, see the introduction to Sumbatova, this volume (Chapter 3).

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(1a), repeated here as (83) and apparently displaying agreement between arguments, should really be glossed along the lines of (83′), with a first-person clitic recapitulating the subject but hosted by the final element in the object NP. (83)

Coahuilteco (Troike 1981: 660) cin Anillo apa-n na-k-aːx I ring DEM-1CON 1S-2O-give ‘I give you the ring.’

(83′)

cin Anillo apa=n na-k-aːx I ring DEM=1S 1S-2O-give

In that case, Coahuilteco could be argued to display clitic doubling of its subjects, reminiscent of that observed for objects in Romance languages such as Romanian, where under various conditions a direct object may be obligatorily recapitulated by a clitic pronoun in the accusative, as illustrated in (84). (84)

Romanian (Pană Dindelegan 2013: 136) scrisoarea am trimis=o letter.DEF.ACC AUX.PRS.1SG sent=ACC.F.3SG ‘I have sent the letter.’

Could a similar analysis be applied in the Andi case, meaning that it is not the affective-marked nominal itself that is the target for agreement in number and gender, but instead a clitic element =GN o merely hosted by the nominal? This would undercut the evidence for agreement between arguments in Andi provided above. However, I claim that it is not a plausible interpretation of the facts, because there is no evidence to suggest that the putative =GN o exists as a syntactically independent element like the clitic particle of Tsakhur or the pronominal clitics of Romanian, and plenty of evidence that it does not. The material which I have identified as the affective case suffix is never found attached to items belonging to any other part of speech except nominals, nor does it appear after fully inflected nominal forms in the absolutive or any oblique case. It only occurs immediately following the singular or plural oblique stem of a nominal—which itself is an element that can never be attested independently in Andi, but only when followed by an inflectional suffix of some kind, as laid out in §2.2. Meanwhile, among the genuine clitics even those with ‘case-like’ functions, such as comitative =loj, never appear directly attached to an oblique stem, but only on fully inflected word forms, as in (85). (85)

b-ih-ol=gu cˇː’ant’-ol t’aʔel-ol=loj IV-big-PL=EMPH small-PL tool(IV)-PL.ABS=COM ‘with many fine tools’

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There are also more subtle indications that the affective is a single, suffixed form. I provide one of them here. The paradigm of some nouns shows a morphophonological alternation between two different forms of the singular oblique stem (depending on the case suffix that follows), one of which ends in a consonant and the other in a vowel. An example is the word dan ‘thing’, whose singular oblique stem is also dan- in most forms (e.g. ergative singular dan-di); however, use of the dative suffix -j requires the variant oblique stem danɬːi-. In the paradigm of such items, the affective singular requires the stem form which is otherwise proper only to the dative in -j, giving e.g. danɬːi-jo as opposed to the phonologically permissible ∗ dan-jo. We do not expect clitics to pattern with inflectional suffixes in selecting particular stem allomorphs in this way. The morphological behaviour of words such as dan thus corroborates the position taken here, which rules out the possibility that we are faced with a clitic as in the Tsakhur case and entails that we are genuinely dealing with agreement between arguments themselves. For Andi, we can also rule out a second way in which, for some languages, it has been possible to cast doubt on the potential significance of apparent agreement between arguments. In light of what we have seen in the preceding sections, it is interesting to revisit example (2) from the Nakh-Daghestanian language Archi, repeated here as (86). (86)

Archi (Polinsky et al. 2017: 49) ɬːonnol to-r that-II.SG woman(II)[SG.ABS] ‘I forgot that woman.’

e‹r›χni d-ez II.SG-I.DAT ‹II.SG›forget.PFV

Recall that in this example, what is identified by Polinsky et al. (2017) as a 1SG dative experiencer subject (dez) agrees in number and gender with the absolutive argument of a clause headed by an experiencer verb, a state of affairs which is clearly reminiscent of what we have seen in Andi. However, as Polinsky et al. point out, Archi nominals in the dative case are not in general agreement targets— only a very small number of items are affected, all of them first-person pronouns which are already formally unusual on other grounds. This observation allowed for an account built on the conception that such ‘weak pronouns’ have a structural deficiency which gives rise to their idiosyncratic behaviour. As seen in §2.1, Polinsky et al. thus feel happy to keep the Archi phenomenon separate from the Agree mechanism proper which they take to underlie clausal agreement in normal circumstances, thereby preserving the spirit of the theoretical position that agreement between arguments cannot be generated by the syntax. The presentation that has been provided in the sections above, however, implies that a similar proposal will not suffice as an explanation of the Andi facts, despite the known genealogical relationship between the two languages and the formal similarity between the phenomena being addressed. As illustrated by the examples given throughout this chapter, there is no lexical restriction as to which items

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in Andi can show GN agreement when in the affective case. Not just certain personal pronouns, but any item which can appear in the affective will agree. This includes all nouns, but also pronouns of all kinds (personal pronouns such as 1SG di-GN o, 2SG du-GN o as in examples (62) and (22) respectively; demonstratives such as gender I hegešːu-GN o in (23); the logophoric/reflexive/intensive en-šːu-GN o as in example (i), fn. 12); and indeed any secondary nominal, such as the substantivized Hilasiš:u-GN o ‘He on high, the Almighty’, from hila ‘above’, as in (87). Forms based on singular stems and on plural stems behave identically. No theoretical treatment of the type put forward for Archi examples like (86), based on identifying the structurally exceptional status of a few lexical items belonging to a closed class, can be employed to account for the systematic and entirely lexically general phenomenon seen in Andi. (87)

amma šekima-cˇ’u w-uh-ol=gu hilu-do bisːil but bird(III).PL.OBL-CONT I-big-PL=EMPH love-HAB you.PL.ABS Hila-si-šːu-wo above-ATTR-I.SG.OBL-AFF.I ‘But He on high loves you more than the birds.’ (Luke 12:24)

In the strict sense, these observations are not decisive. Despite the evidence given above of its suffixal status, lack of lexical independence, and generality across the nominal lexicon, with the right underlying assumptions in place it would of course still be possible to identify the agreeing affective marker as a structurally deficient closed-class lexical item, whose close relationship with its nominal host is only superficial; that is, to offer an account using elements of the one proposed by Polinsky et al. (2017) for Archi. However, attempting this move would have the effect of rendering vacuous any syntactic principle addressing the general question treated in this chapter: can the syntax generate agreement of one argument with another? That is because any other apparent instance of agreement between arguments could always be recast in the same way used to deal with the Andi facts—as showing agreement not on the argument itself, but on an anomalous and otherwise unattested lexical item, coincidentally always found attached to a nominal stem that can appear in argument position. Such an account might simply have to be accepted, unpalatable as it would be on the basis of Andi-internal considerations, if the technical impossibility of a syntactic mechanism which truly allows agreement between arguments (or between phrases more generally) could be demonstrated from first principles. After all, there is no reason to expect languages to make things easy for those analysing them. But in light of the phenomenon seen here, the burden of proof lies with those who do not consider agreement between arguments possible. All things being equal, the evidence of Andi argues strongly in favour of a model of syntax which does not rule out agreement at the clausal level between two arguments of a single verb, however cross-linguistically unusual this phenomenon may be.

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2.6 Conclusions This chapter has looked in detail at the clausal morphosyntax of a largely unwritten and under-described minority language, Andi, in the context of a thorny question: whether we should expect the mechanism that produces clausal agreement to have the potential to produce agreement between phrases, and in particular between two arguments of the same verb. After outlining the reasons why apparent instances of agreement between arguments in other languages have not been seen to settle the issue, I have claimed that the Andi evidence speaks strongly in favour of adopting a syntactic model which does allow for this possibility. In order to do this, I have shown the following: (a) The affective-marked nominal in the Andi affective construction inflects for the gender and number of the absolutive argument of the verbal predicate, and it does so using just the same formal marking as uncontroversial clause-level agreement targets such as lexical verbs. (b) Cross-linguistically, including elsewhere in the Nakh-Daghestanian family, such nominals in experiencer constructions of this kind can often be identified as ‘quirky subjects’ (i.e. as displaying syntactic subject properties regardless of their case marking), meaning that similar findings for Andi would not be inherently implausible. (c) When submitted to common subjecthood tests, the nominal in the affective case does turn out to show numerous subject properties in Andi. (d) On the basis of the Andi evidence, we have no reason to favour an analysis in which the affective suffix is taken as an isolated, structurally deficient lexical item that merely happens to be hosted by a nominal stem. Taken together, these facts should be of considerable interest to syntacticians. They provide substantial evidence that agreement between arguments, though rarely attested, is possible in human language without any lexical restrictions on its operation; this represents a non-trivial problem for any theory of syntax which sees principled reasons to expect it not to occur. More generally, the phenomenon explored here raises both synchronic and diachronic questions about the nature of agreement. As our knowledge of the world’s languages has increased, we have encountered the possibility of agreement in an ever wider set of circumstances, and the findings presented here suggest that we should even take seriously the existence of agreement between two arguments belonging to the same predicate. When it comes to identifying the possible domains in which agreement may operate and the targets to which it can apply, we may well wonder what kind of synchronic restrictions could still remain: the fewer these restrictions turn out to be, the harder it will be to produce a syntactic theory of agreement which can be falsified by linguistic data at all. But another question

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also arises: given that agreement between arguments does appear to be syntactically ‘available’ and can clearly be acquired, why is it found to be so rare? Part of the reason may be that we have failed to identify the phenomenon where it does exist, precisely because of its perceived implausibility. But it seems reasonable to suspect that another part of the explanation is diachronic, and that the emergence of a system such as that seen in Andi is rare because it relies on an unlikely combination of historical developments—among them the emergence of agreement marking on case forms of any kind, which is already a rarity in the world’s languages. Questions like these lie beyond the scope of the present chapter. However, I believe that the Andi material which has been treated here represents some of the most convincing evidence so far that they deserve to be taken seriously.

Acknowledgements The research presented here was carried out within the framework of the Surrey Morphology Group project ‘External Agreement’, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, grant AH/R005540/1: this institutional and financial support is gratefully acknowledged. My thanks go to the members of SMG, especially my co-editors Marina Chumakina and Oliver Bond, for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter, which has also benefited from discussions with David Erschler, Bozhil Hristov, Timur Maisak, and Neige Rochant. Finally, I wish to thank my Andi consultants in the village of Zilo, in particular Aligadzˇi Magomedov, Kazbek (Umargadzˇi) Magomedov, and Batal Gadzˇiev.

3 Agreement of essive adverbials in Tanti Dargwa Nina Sumbatova

3.1 Introduction Most Nakh-Daghestanian languages show agreement in gender (noun class). An intriguing feature of gender agreement in many languages of the family is the existence of non-typical agreement targets. These include different types of adverbs and postpositions, certain pronouns, additive particles, etc. For example, in sentence (1) from Avar, the postposition cːe‹w›e ‘in front of ’ (as well as the copula w-ugoʔan) agrees in gender with the absolutive argument of the same clause, salim ‘Salim’. (1)

Avar (Saidov 1967: 551) [mašina-b-az-da cːe‹w›e] eχet-un car-PL-OBL.PL-LOC in.front‹M› stand-CVB salim Salim(M)[ABS] ‘In front of the cars stood Salim.’

w-ugo-ʔan M-be-TERM.CVB

In Tsakhur (Lezgic), there is a ‘coherence particle’ with additive and focalizing function that also agrees with the absolutive NP of the clause in which it appears (mašin ‘car’ in (2a) and parcˇe ‘cloth’ in (2b)): (2)

Tsakhur (based on Ibragimov 1990: 72) a. duχaj-s=ɨd mašin ališːu son.OBL.SG-DAT=COH.IV car(IV)[ABS] [IV]buy.PFV ‘He bought a car for his son too.’ b. duχaj-s=ɨb parcˇe ali‹w›šu son.OBL.SG-DAT=COH.III cloth(III)[ABS] ‹III›buy.PFV ‘He bought cloth for his son too.’

In Archi (Lezgic) we even observe agreement on certain case forms of personal pronouns, again with the absolutive argument of the same clause. In (3), the personal pronoun ‘we’ is attested twice: in the ergative case at the very beginning

Nina Sumbatova, Agreement of essive adverbials in Tanti Dargwa. In: Agreement beyond the Verb. Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Nina Sumbatova (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0003

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(nena‹b›u) and in the dative case (b-ela‹b›u). Both instances of the pronoun as well as the adverb ditːa‹b›u ‘quickly’ agree in gender with the absolutive NP doːˁzu-b χˁon ‘big cow’ (note that the attributive modifier ‘big’ also agrees with the head noun ‘cow’, but this is not unusual). (3) Archi (Bond, Corbett, & Chumakina 2016: 3) nena‹b›u doːˁzu-b χˁon 1PL.INCL.ERG.‹III.SG› be.big.ATTR-III.SG cow(III)[SG.ABS] b-ela‹b›u ditːa‹b›u χir a‹b›u III.SG-1PL.INCL.DAT‹III.SG› quickly‹III.SG› behind ‹III.SG›make.PFV ‘We quickly drove the big cow to us (home).’ Although the basic agreement rules for non-typical targets can be found in many descriptive works, very little has been done on the formal rules and mechanisms of agreement of adverbials and other non-typical elements. The only exception is Archi: its agreement behaviour has been described in Bond, Corbett, Chumakina, and Brown (2016), where the authors compared different formal approaches to the issue (minimalism, LFG, and HPSG). Dargwa (Nakh-Daghestanian) also has a class of non-typical agreement targets. These are what I call essive adverbials—an open class of nouns, pronouns, and locative adverbs in essive forms. In these forms, the essive meaning is encoded by the presence of a gender marker in a special morphological slot. For example, in (4), the interessive¹ form wac’acːe-d ‘in the forest’ of the noun wac’a ‘forest’ agrees in gender and number (non-human plural) with the absolutive NP bec’la q’apne ‘mushrooms’ (lit. ‘wolf ’s hats’): (4)

xːunul admi-li wac’a-cːe-d bec’-la q’ap-ne woman person-ERG forest-INTER-NPL wolf-GEN hat-PL[ABS] d-irʁ-u-le=sa-r NPL-collect.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-F ‘A woman is collecting mushrooms in the forest.’

This chapter is a description of the agreement behaviour of essive adverbials in Dargwa. I present the basic facts concerning the agreement of these adverbials and suggest (elements of ) a model that can account for the attested facts at least in part. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows: in §3.2, I provide essential information on Dargwa including the basic rules of gender agreement. In §3.3, I give a short description of the clause structure of Dargwa and introduce the model of Dargic clause structure that will be used in what follows. In §3.4, I ¹ Tanti has two localizations expressing the meaning ‘in’: the localization IN (illative, inessive, inelative) expresses the position of an element within a (hollow) container, while the localization INTER (interlative, interessive, interelative) refers to position within a continuous medium like wood or water.

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introduce the class of essive adverbials, describe their gender agreement and check to what degree it is consistent with the model suggested in §3.3. §3.5 describes the agreement options for essive adverbials in different clause types. §3.6 treats two less common types of agreement, namely long-distance agreement (LDA) and agreement on deverbal locative forms. The final section compares the results of the research with the data presented in natural texts. It also systematizes generalizations, conclusions, and loose ends of the chapter.

3.2 Grammatical information on Tanti Dargwa Dargwa forms a separate branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian language family. Dargwa is well known for internal dialectal diversity; in fact, rather than a single language with many dialects it should be considered a language group (‘Dargic’) containing about 15 languages, some of which have many dialects of their own (Koryakov 2021). This chapter is based on data from the Dargic language called South-Western Dargwa in Koryakov’s (2021) classification, specifically the South-Western Dargwa dialect known as Tanti Dargwa. The total number of speakers of Dargwa is about 500,000. Traditionally, most speakers have inhabited villages in the central and eastern parts of the Republic of Daghestan (Russian Federation). Now a substantial number of speakers live in Makhachkala (the capital of Daghestan), Izberbash, Kizlar, and some other cities in Daghestan and other regions of Russia. Tanti Dargwa is primarily spoken in Tanti, a village in the Aqusha district of Daghestan, inhabited by approximately 800 people; however, the total number of speakers of this variety is estimated to be 1,500–2,000. The variety used in Tanti is rather typical of Dargwa. Many of its features are shared by most or all Dargic languages and dialects. In this chapter, I use both elicited data and examples from oral texts that Yury Lander and I collected in the course of our fieldwork on Tanti and partly published in Sumbatova and Lander (2014).

3.2.1 Typological profile of Tanti Dargwa All dialects of Dargwa, including Tanti, have very rich and complex systems of both nominal and verbal morphology. Some information on Tanti nominal forms will be given in §3.4.1. The verbs belong to complicated paradigms with many finite and non-finite forms. Important for us is the fact that the most frequently used TAM paradigms are periphrastic: they consist of a non-finite verb form accompanied by a clitic person marker and/or the copula as illustrated in (5).

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(5)

a. irx-u-le=sa-b=da throw.IPFV²-PRS-CVB=COP-N=1/2PL ‘I/we throw’ or ‘you (PL) throw’ b. irx-u-le=sa-b=de throw.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N=2SG ‘you (SG) throw’ c. irx-u-le=sa-b³ throw.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N ‘(s)he throws’ or ‘they throw’

The copula is usually omitted in the first and second person, as in (6a) and (6b), but it can be restored in all person forms (cf. (5a) with (6a), and (5b) with (6b)). (6)

a. irx-u-l=da throw.IPFV-PRS-CVB=1/2PL ‘I/we throw’ or ‘you (PL) throw’ b. irx-u-l=de throw.IPFV-PRS-CVB=2SG ‘you (SG) throw’

Along with the periphrastic TAM forms, Tanti has a few synthetic paradigms (future, past habitual) where person is expressed by suffixes, as illustrated in (7).⁴ (7)

a. irš-i-d throw.IPFV-TH-1 ‘I/we will throw’ b. irš-i-t throw.IPFV-TH-2 ‘you will throw’ c. irx-u throw.IPFV-TH ‘(s)he/they will throw’

Like other Nakh-Daghestanian languages, Dargwa is morphologically ergative: in a transitive clause, the A-argument (agent) is encoded by the ergative case, and the P-argument (patient) by the absolutive case. There are also a few verbs that govern an absolutive P-argument along with an experiencer in the dative case (Exp). I treat the A, P, Exp, and the absolutive S-argument of intransitive verbs as core arguments of the clause.

² All verbal roots are specified for aspect, which is shown in the glosses (with a dot) and when citing verbal stems (in brackets). ³ -b is one of the gender markers possible in this verb form, see §3.2.2.1. ⁴ Example (7) does not present a full future paradigm.

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Dargwa is among the few Nakh-Daghestanian languages that have both gender and person agreement. Under the appropriate conditions, any of the core arguments can control gender and/or person agreement. In an intransitive clause, the only possible controller of both person and gender is the S-argument. In a transitive clause, there are more options. Person agreement follows the hierarchy 1, 2 > 3: if one of the core arguments is first or second person whereas the other is third person, the agreement is with the first-/second-person argument (8a–c). If both core arguments are first or second person, it is the P-argument that controls person agreement (8d–e). The third person is unmarked (8f ). (8)

a. dali hit r-uc-ib=da I:ERG that[ABS] F-catch.PFV-PRET=1 ‘I caught her.’ b. ʕaˁli hit r-uc-ib=de you.SG:ERG that[ABS] F-catch.PFV-PRET=2SG ‘You caught her.’ c. rasul-li ʕuˁ r-uc-ib=de Rasul-ERG you.SG[ABS] F-catch.PFV-PRET=2SG ‘Rasul caught you [ = female referent (F)].’ d. dali ʕuˁ r-uc-ib=de I:ERG you.SG[ABS] F-catch.PFV-PRET=2SG ‘I caught you [ = female referent (F)].’ e. ʕaˁli du r-uc-ib=da you.SG:ERG I[ABS] F-catch.PFV-PRET=1 ‘You caught me [ = female referent (F)].’ f. rasul-li hit r-uc-ib Rasul-ERG that[ABS] F-catch.PFV-PRET ‘Rasul caught her.’

Gender agreement will be discussed in the following sections.

3.2.2 Gender agreement and two classes of agreement targets Tanti Dargwa has a complex and pervasive three-gender system (§3.2.2.1) in which a wide range of agreement targets (§3.2.2.2) can be controlled by either the absolutive argument or the ergative subject (§3.2.2.3).

3.2.2.1 Gender system Most varieties of Dargwa, including Tanti, have three genders⁵ in the singular and three (sensitive to different oppositions!) in the plural. The system is shown in ⁵ I will refer to gender agreement, although it is in fact agreement in gender and number.

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Table 3.1 (the markers in the table are from Tanti; the markers are largely identical across dialects, but some minor differences are attested). A very unusual feature of the Dargic gender system is the existence of a special marker for first- and second-person plural NPs.⁶ The corresponding marker is located in the gender marking slot and regulated by the same agreement rule as the other gender markers. Person markers, which are also present in Dargwa, are syntactically different and located in other morphological positions (cf. gender encoded by prefixes and person encoded by clitics in (8a–e)); for more details, see Sumbatova (2011). Table 3.1 Gender system and gender markers

All gender markers can be prefixed, suffixed, and even infixed, depending on the target. Infixes are given in small angle brackets: =sa‹b›i (copula). Words and morphological elements with a gender marker are cited in the text using their neuter singular form, in ‹b›.

3.2.2.2 Agreement targets Gender agreement, illustrated here by the neuter singular form, is found on the following elements: (i) most verbal roots: b-ic’- ‘fill (PFV )’⁷ (ii) in compound and preverbed verbs, the additional lexical stem (‘coverb’) or preverb: b-uˁћnaˁ-b-erk’- ‘put in’ (PFV ); gu-b-b-arkː- ‘find below’ (PFV ) (iii) identificational copula =sa‹b›i and existential copulas le-b, te-b, ˇc’e-b, χe-b (iv) some roots of adjectives and non-locative adverbs: b-arx(-se) ‘straight’; b-arχ ‘together’ (v) adjectival suffix -cˇe-b: dawla-cˇe-b(-se) ‘rich’ (vi) some pronouns and quantifiers: sa‹b›i ‘self ’; li‹b›il ‘all, whole’ (vii) essive forms of nouns and locative (spatial) adverbs/postpositions: laclija ‘on(to) the wall’ (movement)—laclija-b ‘on the wall’ (position); sala ‘to the front of; forwards’—sala-b ‘in front (of )’. ⁶ Three more languages having a special marker for first- and second-person plural NPs are Archi (Chumakina et al. 2007), Chechen, and Ingush (Komen et al. 2021: 324–5). ⁷ Verbs are cited in their stem form.

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Although the proportion of agreeing words is different across parts of speech, the class of agreeing units does not coincide with any natural word class or classes. There is no part of speech all of whose words agree in gender and, surprisingly, in every part of speech at least a few words do show gender agreement. Gender agreement is characteristic of most verbs, several adjectives, some pronouns, and a few nouns, as well as all nouns, pronouns, and spatial adverbs/postpositions in the essive form (§3.4 and below). For most cases of gender agreement, we can conclude that gender agreement is a property of a given morpheme. For example, most verbal roots have a prefixal slot for gender agreement. Without exception, these roots cannot appear without a gender prefix.⁸ This prefix is present in all verbal forms and verbal derivations (Table 3.2). Conversely, if a verbal root has no agreement slot, it never expresses gender, again without exception. The same can be said about the roots of adjectives and nouns: most do not show agreement, but if they do, they do so consistently. Table 3.2 Forms of the verbs b-uc- (PFV) / b-urc- (IPFV) ‘catch’ and asː- (PFV) / isː(IPFV) ‘buy’, neuter gender singular

It is important to note that the availability of gender agreement is not ascribed to a lexeme as a whole: if a lexeme uses different stems/roots in different forms, it is quite possible for some of them to agree while others do not. For example, the reflexive pronoun sa‹b›i ‘self ’ has a gender agreement slot in the absolutive form, but all oblique case forms use the oblique stem sun- without an agreement slot: ERG sun-ni, GEN sun-na, DAT sun-ni-zˇ, etc. In some verbal lexemes, the perfective root has an agreement slot while the imperfective does not, e.g. b-elk’(PFV ) / luk’- (IPFV ) ‘write’. In many cases, an agreement slot becomes available in the presence of a particular grammatical morpheme, like the suffix -cˇe-b or the special converb marker =le‹b›alle ‘while’ (§3.5.4). ⁸ Zero allomorphs are possible; they are interpreted as markers of masculine gender.

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Since gender agreement is associated with individual morphemes, there are many words with more than one gender agreement slot. For example, some compound verbs have two roots, each bearing an agreement marker: b-eћsːur-b-arq’‘change’ (PFV ). So, the presence of gender agreement is usually triggered by a specific morpheme; this morpheme and its agreement slot form a morphological complex which functions as a single unit. The only exception is agreement on the locative (essive) forms of nouns and adverbs (discussed in §3.4–§3.6): in this case, the presence of a gender marker does not result from the presence of a specific morpheme but expresses its own grammatical meaning (essive).

3.2.2.3 Agreement controllers In all Nakh-Daghestanian languages with gender agreement, the prototypical and the most common controller is the absolutive argument of the clause, as in examples (2)–(3) in the introduction. All cases with a different type of agreement control (agreement in impersonal constructions, LDA, default agreement with a clausal argument, etc.) are rather marginal. In Dargwa, the most common controller is also the absolutive NP. In particular, the absolutive argument controls all possible cases of gender agreement in intransitive clauses. For example, in (9), the absolutive NP arc ‘money’ controls agreement in four positions: in the noun kisna-b ‘in the pocket’ (in the essive case), in the two roots of the converb b-al-ʕaˁ-b-icˇ-ib-le, and in the copula =sa-b. (9)

busːaˁt dila kisna-b arc now I:GEN pocket:LOC-N money[ABS] b-al-ʕaˁ-b-icˇ-ib-le=sa-b N-approach-NEG-N-LV.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-N ‘The money in my pocket has run out.’

At the same time, Tanti also shows a systematic pattern of agreement with the ergative A-argument, as illustrated in (10). (10)

a. rasul-li dig b-ukː-un-ne=sa-j Rasul-ERG meat[ABS] N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M b. rasul-li dig b-ukː-un-ne=sa-b Rasul-ERG meat[ABS] N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N ‘Rasul is eating meat.’ c. ∗ rasul-li dig Ø-ukː-un-ne=sa-b / =sa-j Rasul-ERG meat[ABS] M-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N / =COP-M Intended: ‘Rasul is eating meat.’

In (10a), the verb agrees with the absolutive argument dig ‘meat’ whereas the copula cross-references the ergative NP rasulli ‘Rasul’. This is not the only option: an

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analogous construction with fully absolutive control as in (10b) is also grammatical. For a verb, any type of non-absolutive control would be ungrammatical, as shown in (10c). We can state that, with respect to the control options, the agreeing words form two classes: verbs are invariably controlled by their absolutive argument, while copulas show flexible control, agreeing with either the absolutive S/P-argument or the ergative A-argument of the same clause.⁹ The same type of agreement is attested in many Dargic languages, including Standard Dargwa (van den Berg 1999, 2001; Belyaev 2016, 2017a, 2017b). A theoretical analysis based on the data of the Aqusha dialect was suggested in Ganenkov (2018). For discussion of flexible control in relation to a number of different agreement alternations, see Bond et al. (Chapter 1, this volume). Agreement on other parts of speech will not be important for the present study but, just to sketch a full picture, let us mention that adjectives agree with their nominal head, as in (11), and pronouns agree with their own referent, as in (12). (11)

(12)

a. w-arх juldaš M-right friend[ABS] ‘a good friend’ (about a man) b. b-arх juldaš b-izˇ-ib-se N-right friend[ABS] N-sit.PFV-PRET-ATTR ‘the fox who became a good friend (to him)’

kːurtːa=ra fox[ABS]=ADD

sa-j quli ag-ur-sːa-j self-M[ABS] house.LOC go.PFV-PRET-ATTR+COP-M [Mullah Nasraddin silently, with all his might, hit the qadi in the back of his head and said: “Don’t give me the abaz (= a Persian coin) that he will bring, keep it for yourself !”] ‘And he went home.’

Agreement on essive adverbials is the main topic of the present study, and will be discussed further in §3.4–§3.6. Before we turn to essive adverbials I will first provide some important information on clause structure in Tanti (§3.3).

3.3 Clause structure The description of agreement on essive adverbials given here fits into a model of Tanti Dargwa clause structure that has been presented at greatest length in Sumbatova and Lander (2014). The basics of this model are laid out in §3.3.1, while ⁹ There is also the less common phenomenon of so-called LDA, where the gender on a matrix verb is controlled by the absolutive argument of its clausal argument, see §3.6.1.

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§3.3.2 provides arguments for one of its more unusual characteristics—the prominent role ascribed to backward control—which is crucial for an understanding of Tanti agreement behaviour at the clause level.

3.3.1 Basic model The most frequently used TAM forms consist of a non-finite verbal form and a copula and/or a person clitic. Apart from the identificational copula (illustrated in examples (9) and (10)), this can be one of the existential copulas (listed in Table 3.3) or their negative counterparts. The same copulas and person clitics are used in nominal predicate clauses: (13)

a. du suqːur(=sa-j)=da I blind(=COP-M)=1 ‘I [ = male referent (M)] am blind.’ b. ʕuˁ suqːur(=sa-j)=de you.SG blind(=COP-M)=2SG ‘You [ = male referent (M)] are blind.’ c. hit suqːur=sa-j that blind=COP-M ‘He is blind.’

In fact, non-finite verb forms and non-verbal predicates can be followed by at most three clitic slots: the leftmost slot is designated for the copula; the second slot can be filled by first-/second-person markers or by the past marker =de; the final slot hosts the interrogative clitics and the particle =q’ale ‘but’. The full structure is shown in Table 3.3. Table 3.3 Three clitic slots SLOT 1 identificational copula =sa‹b›i ∗

existential copulas: le-b ‘exist (near speaker/addressee)’, te-b ‘exist (far from speaker and addressee)’, ˇc’e-b ‘exist (higher than speaker)’, χe-b ‘exist (lower than speaker)’ ∗

SLOT 2

SLOT 3

past clitic =de

particle =q’ale ‘but’

person clitics: =da (1SG/1PL/2PL) =de (2SG)

question markers: =i/=j (polar question) =a (constituent question) =wara (rhetorical question) =anne (indirect question)

The existential copulas are not clitics but phonetically autonomous words. However, their syntactic position is analogous to that of the identificational copula.

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Those clauses that include a copula (potentially together with other elements of the clitic chain shown in Table 3.3) I label copular clauses. Tanti also has clauses headed by finite verbal forms that do not attach copulas and express person by suffixes. I return to finite verbal clauses in §3.5.1; before that, I will only discuss independent copular clauses. In Sumbatova and Lander (2014: 429–535), I suggested a model of the clause that is designed to explain flexible gender agreement in Tanti. I suggested that the verb and the copula project two different constituents, VP and CopP, respectively.¹⁰ The clitics in the two slots following the copulas head the TP and CP projections, schematized in (14). (14)

[CP [TP [CopP [VP ] COP] Person/Past] Interrogation/‘but’]

The sentence in (15) is an example where all three clitic slots are filled by a nonzero marker. (15)

[CP [TP [CopP [VP ʕaˁli rursːi quli-r you.SG:ERG girl[ABS] house.LOC-F r-alt-un-ne] =sa-j] =d] =i]¹¹ F-leave.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M=2SG=PQ ‘Are you leaving your daughter at home?’

The main clause in example (16), from an oral text, also contains a full clitic chain (copula + past marker + particle ‘but’). (16)

kak.raz cˇ’u-zˇ-il-la beri exactly two-ORD-ATTR.CONTR-GEN day tːura-ka-d-uq-un-ne, OUT-DOWN-1PL/2PL-move.PFV-PRET-CVB cˇ’a-l azir-la haq’=sa-b=de=q’ale two-CARD thousand-GEN flock[ABS]=COP-N=PST=but ‘Exactly when we hit the road on the second day, there were two thousand sheep in the flock.’ (lit. ‘(it) was a flock of two thousand’)

In fact, examples like (15) and (16), where all clitic slots are overtly filled, are relatively rare. Slot 2 is empty in all non-past sentences with a third-person predicate

¹⁰ The clitic chain is used to mark the position of the focused constituent (see Sumbatova 2020 for more details), which is only possible in sentences where an identificational copula is overtly present or restorable. We can say that the constituent that is labelled here CopP is the place where focus (or information structure) is marked (= Focus phrase, FocP). However, since this problem is not discussed in this chapter, I shall adhere to the neutral label CopP. ¹¹ Second-person clitic =de + interrogative particle =i >di.

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((17), among many others); slot 3 is empty in all indicative sentences without the particle =q’ale ((18) and others). (17)

buk’un se ʡaˁjib-la w-eʡ=sa-j=a? shepherd[ABS] what fault-GEN M-owner[ABS]=COP-M=CQ ‘What is the shepherd’s fault?’ (lit. ‘The shepherd is the owner of what fault?’) (Slot 1 + Slot 3)

(18)

beˁla=ra se-k’al waˁ-jil ʕaˁ-b-irq’-an most=ADD what-INDEF bad-ATTR.CONTR NEG-N-do.IPFV-POT maˁmmu=sa-j=de Mammu[ABS]=COP-M=PST ‘Mammu was the one who never did any harm.’ (Slot 1 + Slot 2)

The copula in Slot 1 is usually omitted if there is a clitic in either of the two final slots. So, most usually, instead of (15), a speaker would produce (15′). (15′)

[CP [TP [CopP [VP ʕaˁli rursːi quli-r you.SG:ERG girl[ABS] house.LOC-F r-alt-un-ne] =sa-j] =d] =i] F-leave.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M=2SG =PQ ‘Are you leaving your daughter at home?’

In (19) the copula is omitted before the first-person clitic =da (Slot 2), and in (20) before the polar question marker =j (Slot 3). (19)

li‹b›il buk’n-e b-aˁħ-ib-le all‹HPL› shepherd-PL[ABS] HPL-fight.IPFV-PRET-CVB b-arcˇː-ib=da hiltːu-b HPL-find.PFV-PRET=1 here-HPL ‘I found all the shepherds there at loggerheads.’

(20)

hat’i sa-d-it’-aj-te then HITHER-NPL-separate.PFV-AGN-ATTR.PL[ABS] ʕaˁ-d-it’-aj-te NEG-NPL-separate.PFV-AGN-ATTR.PL[ABS] ʕaˁ-d-ucˇː-u-le=j qːacˇ-n-a-li? NEG-NPL-drink.IPFV-PRS-CVB=PQ calf -PL-OBL.PL-ERG ‘Is it that the calves don’t drink unskimmed milk?’

I shall treat clauses like (19)–(20), where the copula is absent in the presence of another predicative clitic, as cases involving an ellipted copula where the syntactic layer CopP is nonetheless present (as shown in (15′)).

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The constituent projected by the copula has its own specifier, which can be filled by an absolutive NP. This is quite obvious in a nominal predicate clause such as (21). (21)

[CopP rasul [miskin-se]=sa-j] Rasul[ABS] poor-ATTR=COP-M ‘Rasul is poor.’

In a verbal clause, the gender on the verb is controlled by the absolutive within the VP, whereas the gender on the copula is expected to be controlled by the absolutive NP in the CopP. However, in most verbal constructions, we do not see a second absolutive. To explain the gender marking on the copula, I suggest that the absolutive position in the CopP can be filled by a zero NP that is normally coreferential with a core argument of the verbal predication (S, A, P, experiential dative). In other words, I suggest that in Tanti (and probably some other Dargic languages too) we are dealing with the typologically unusual phenomenon of backward control. Backward control presupposes that in a syntactic configuration with two coreferential NPs ‘the lower argument position is pronounced and the higher one is not’ (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002: 246). In our case, it is the absolutive argument of the copula that remains silent whereas the arguments of the verb are pronounced. (22)

Backward control hypothesis [CopP Δi/j ABS [VP NPi ERG NPj ABS V ]

COP]

For example, example (10) from §3.2.2.3 can be presented as follows: (10′) a. [CopP Δi ABS [rasul-lii Rasul-ERG b. [CopP Δj ABS [rasul-lii Rasul-ERG ‘Rasul is eating meat.’

digj meat[ABS] digj meat[ABS]

b-ukː-un-ne]=sa-ji ] N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M b-ukː-un-ne]=sa-bj ] N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N

In both cases, the copula is controlled by the zero absolutive, which is coreferential with the ergative NP in (10′a) and with the absolutive in (10′b). The phenomenon of backward control has been described in detail for the Nakh-Daghestanian language of Tsez, where it is observed in some constructions with clausal arguments (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002, 2006; Potsdam & Polinsky 2012). The case of backward control that I introduce here is typologically unusual but, as far as I can see, well supported by the Tanti data. In §3.3.2.1 and §3.3.2.2, I list some arguments in support of this analysis, without taking into account the agreement on the essive adverbials. In §3.4–§3.6, I will analyse agreement on essive adverbials and show that their behaviour is compatible with the backward control hypothesis and, hence, can be viewed as an additional argument supporting it. Although the backward control hypothesis suggests that

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gender agreement is always controlled by an absolutive NP, in what follows I still refer to ‘ergative’ or ‘dative’ control of gender agreement: within my approach, this means ‘gender agreement controlled by a zero NP in the absolutive case that is coreferential with the ergative or dative core argument’.

3.3.2 Arguments in favour of the backward control hypothesis Two different types of data that support the backward control hypothesis are presented in §3.3.2.1 and §3.3.2.2. An analysis of all possible arguments for and against is not within the goals of this chapter. A detailed discussion can be found in Sumbatova and Lander (2014: 429–535).

3.3.2.1 Quantifier domain In a transitive clause, if one of the core arguments is a quantified DP, the quantifier domain depends on the controller of the copula agreement. These effects are easily explained by the analysis suggested in the previous section. (23)

a. har student-li zˇuzˇ b-elcˇ’-un-ne=sa-j each student-ERG book[ABS] N-read.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-M ‘Every student has read a book.’ (= different students have read different books) b. har student-li zˇuzˇ b-elcˇ’-un-ne=sa-b each student-ERG book[ABS] N-read.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-N ‘Every student has read a book.’ (= one specific book has been read by all students)

(24) a. har student-li cˇ’-al ekzamen lukː-un-ne=sa-j each student-ERG two-CARD exam[ABS] give.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M ‘Every student takes two exams.’ (= different students may take different exams) b. har student-li cˇ’-al ekzamen lukː-un-ne=sa-b each student-ERG two-CARD exam[ABS] give.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N ‘Every student takes two exams.’ (= there are two exams that are taken by all students) In (23) and (24), the quantifier is located within the ergative DP, but its scope can be different. In (23a) and (24a), the quantified ergative overtly controls the gender of the copula. In both sentences, the rest of the clause including the absolutive NP lies within the quantifier scope as shown in (23′). This can be explained by the higher syntactic position of the ‘real’ controller of the gender on the copulas, i.e. the zero absolutive within the CopP:

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a. [Δ--∀ i [[har student-li]--∀ i zˇuzˇj b-elcˇ’-un-ne]=sa-ji ] each student-ERG book[ABS] N-read.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-M ‘Every student has read a book.’ (= different students have read different books) b. [Δj [[har student-li]--∀ i zˇuzˇj b-elcˇ’-un-ne]=sa-bj ] each student-ERG book[ABS] N-read.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-N ‘Every student has read a book.’ (= one specific book has been read by all students)

The same effects are observed in the affective construction with a quantified experiencer: (25)

qaruk’]i a. [Δ--∀ j [[har rursːi-li-zˇ]--∀ j [qːuʁa-se each girl-OBL-DAT beautiful-ATTR dress[ABS] b-ikː-u-le]=sa-rj ] N-want.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-F ‘Every girl wants a beautiful dress.’ (= different girls want different dresses) b. [Δi [[har rursːi-li-zˇ]--∀ j [qːuʁa-se qaruk’]i each girl-OBL-DAT beautiful-ATTR dress[ABS] b-ikː-u-le]=sa-bi ] N-want.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N ‘Every girl wants a beautiful dress.’ (= there is one beautiful dress that all girls want)

Analogous variations in meaning are observed when the quantifier modifies the absolutive argument: if the gender of the copula is controlled by the quantified DP, as shown in (26b) and (27b), the ergative/dative DP lies within the quantifier domain. (26)

a. [Δi [ucˇitel-lii [har rursːi]--∀ j gap-r-irq’-u-le]=sa-ji ] teacher-ERG each girl[ABS] praise-F-LV.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M ‘A teacher praises every girl.’ (= there is a teacher who praises all the girls) b. [Δ--∀ j [[har rursːi]--∀ j ucˇitel-lii gap-r-irq’-u-le]=sa-rj ] each girl[ABS] teacher-ERG praise-F-LV.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-F ‘Every girl is praised by a teacher.’ (= different teachers may praise different girls)

(27) a. [Δ i [[har rursːi]--∀ j ca durħa-li-zˇi r-ikː-u-le]=sa-ji ] each girl[ABS] one boy-OBL-DAT F-want.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M ‘A boy loves every girl.’ (= there is a boy who is in love with all the girls)

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The problem of quantifier scope requires more thorough investigation: the interpretation of the relevant sentences is not conditioned exclusively by the copula agreement, as other factors such as word order are also to be taken into account, but in the simplest cases like those provided in this section the opposition is very consistent.¹²

3.3.2.2 Biabsolutive construction Tanti has a construction in which our provisional zero controller position is occupied by an overt NP. As a result, these constructions have two absolutive NPs, where the higher NP in most cases refers to the possessor of the lower absolutive NP, cf. (28a), (29a) on one hand, and (28b), (29b), (30) on the other: in the first case the possessors are encoded by genitive modifiers, while in the second case we observe external possessors expressed by absolutive NPs. (28)

a. [ʡaˁħmaˁd-la qali]j bj -ikː-ub-le=sa-bj Ahmed-GEN house[ABS] N-burn.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-N b. ʡaˁħmaˁdi [qalij bj -ikː-ub-le]=sa-ji Ahmed[ABS] house[ABS] N-burn.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-M ‘A hmed’s house burnt down.’

(29)

a. [dila bek’]j I:GEN head[ABS] b. dui [bek’j I[ABS] head[ABS] ‘I have a headache.’

icː-u-le=sa-bj hurt.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N icː-u-le]=sa-ji =da hurt.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M=1

The biabsolutive construction is less acceptable with transitive and affective verbs; I have elicited a couple of acceptable examples (such as (30)) but must admit that the factors determining their acceptability require more thorough study. ¹² Ganenkov (2018), analysing gender agreement in Aqusha Dargwa, adopts my analysis for sentences with ergative control; but for cases of absolutive control, he suggests a monoclausal analysis where the copula does not project its own subject and is controlled by the same absolutive argument as the verb. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to provide a detailed discussion of this issue within the present chapter. I must admit that the case of backward control as presented in (22) and (10′) is unusual and that some of the related phenomena (see below) still need thorough study. Many facts can be explained by both variants of the description. However, the interpretation of the quantifiers and the scope of adverbials (§3.4.2) are strong arguments in favour of my analysis. In Aqusha, Ganenkov did not observe any phenomena similar to those presented in this section; it is quite probable that the two varieties of Dargwa are different in this respect. I also regret that the presentation of my analysis in Ganenkov (2018) is incorrect.

AGREEMENT OF ESSIVE ADVERBIALS IN TANTI DARGWA (30)

duk [kurta-lii ʡerʡʷaˁj I[ABS] fox-ERG hen[ABS] ‘A fox has stolen my hen.’

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b-iʡ-uˤn-ne]=sa-jk =da N-steal.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-M=1

The biabsolutive construction in Tanti is essentially different from what are usually called biabsolutive constructions in other Nakh-Daghestanian languages, where the two absolutive NPs encode the two core arguments of a transitive predicate, the A-argument and the P-argument (see for example Ganenkov 2021: 793–6, and Bond et al., Chapter 1, this volume). In the Tanti biabsolutive construction, the copula agrees with the possessor, as in (28b), (29b), (30). This external possessor is situated in the position of the absolutive governed by the copula, i.e. in the position that we reserved for the absolutive controller. (31) [NP1ABS [(. . .) NP2ABS V ] COP] Having established some of the evidence in support of the backward control hypothesis, we now turn to the role it plays in accounting for the agreement behaviour of Tanti essives.

3.4 The agreement of essive adverbials Gender agreement in Tanti Dargwa is characteristic of a subclass of essive adverbials. This subclass comprises the essive forms of nouns and pronouns, the essive forms of locative (spatial) adverbs and a small class of directional adverbs. Here I discuss the morphology of locative adverbials (§3.4.1) before outlining the basic facts about gender agreement on essive adverbials (§3.4.2).

3.4.1 Morphology of locative adverbials Nouns in Dargwa have two classes of forms which differ in their morphological structure: (1) non-locative case forms (absolutive, ergative, dative, genitive, etc.), and (2) locative forms. The non-locative case forms consist of the lexical stem of the noun, the oblique stem marker, and a case marker (the oblique stem marker can be absent, and the absolutive case is unmarked): (32)

a. Absolutive:

b. Genitive:

kːumi bridge ‘the bridge’ kːumi-la bridge-GEN ‘of the bridge’

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NINA SUMBATOVA c. Dative:

kːumi-li-s bridge-OBL-DAT ‘to the bridge’

The locative forms in Tanti contain three slots for locative markers modifying the stem: (i) localization marker, which specifies a localization with respect to a reference point (in the object, on the surface of the object, in front of the object, etc.), (ii) orientation (= locative case) marker, which expresses motion to/from the place specified by the localization marker, or location in this place, (iii) direction marker, which orients the motion with respect to the speaker (motion to/from the speaker) or along the vertical axis (downwards/upwards). Locative markers from each slot can be combined to form complex locative expressions, as illustrated in (33). (33)

a. Localization: SUP ‘on the surface’ (-ja), Orientation: lative ‘to the object’ (zero marker), Direction: ‘downwards’ (-kale) kːumi-li-ja(-Ø)-kale bridge-OBL-SUP(-LAT)-DOWN ‘(down) onto the bridge’ b. Localization: SUB ‘under the object’ (-gu) Orientation: elative ‘from the object’ (-r) Direction: ‘to the speaker’ (-sele) kːumi-li-gu-r-sele bridge-OBL-SUB-EL-HITHER ‘from under the bridge (here)’

For us, the relevant spatial category is orientation, and, more concretely, the essive form: the essive meaning is expressed by the presence of a gender marker immediately after the localization marker, as illustrated in (34). (34)

Localization: SUP ‘on the surface’ Orientation: essive (marked by the presence of a gender suffix)¹³ a. kːumi-li-ja-w bridge-OBL-SUP-M ‘on the bridge’ (masculine)

¹³ In the essive forms, the expression of direction is semantically impossible.

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b. kːumi-li-ja-r bridge-OBL-SUP-F ‘on the bridge’ (feminine) c. kːumi-li-ja-b bridge-OBL-SUP-N/HPL ‘on the bridge’ (neuter singular or human plural) d. kːumi-li-ja-d bridge-OBL-SUP-NPL/1PL/2PL ‘on the bridge’ (non-human plural or first-/second-person plural) The category of locative case (orientation) is also expressed on locative adverbs, such as sala ‘in front’: (35)

a. Lative (inflects for direction) sala(-Ø)-kale / sala(-Ø)-hale / sala(-Ø)-dele / sala(-Ø)-sele in.front(-LAT)-DOWN / -UP / -THITHER / -HITHER ‘forwards down/up/thither/hither’ b. Elative (inflects for direction) sala-r-kale / sala-r-hale / sala-r-dele / sala-r-sele in.front-EL-DOWN / -UP / -THITHER / -HITHER ‘from in front down/up/thither/hither’ c. Essive (does not inflect for direction, agrees in gender) sala-w ~ sala-r ~ sala-b ~ sala-d in.front-M ~ in.front-F ~ in.front-N/HPL ~ in.front-NPL/1PL/2PL ‘in front’

Locative adverbs can be used as postpositions with a dependent NP in the genitive (35b). (36)

a. [sala-b] cˇ’aˤk’-le diriхʷ=sa-b in.front-N empty-ADVR fog[ABS]=COP-N ‘There is only fog ahead.’ b. [uškul-la sala-b] plašj at’ka cˇ’e-b school-GEN in.front-N sports.field[ABS] EXST.COP-N ‘There is a sports field in front of the school.’

Since the classes of postpositions and locative adverbs mainly contain the same lexemes, I regard them as a single class (= locatives). The locatives inflect for orientation and direction. They either have no dependents or dominate an NP (usually in the genitive case). The locative forms of nouns, which also inflect for orientation and direction and function as adjuncts, can be viewed as denominal locatives. In this chapter, I discuss the agreement found on the essive forms of these locatives. The essive adverbials express spatial meaning, but, depending on the lexical meaning of the noun, they can also bear temporal meaning (ijun baclicːe-b ‘in

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June’; see also examples (50) and (66)) and, less frequently, have other interpretations, as in χat’alija-b ‘by mistake’ (superessive). Additionally, there is a small group of adverbs that also bear a gender marker and are derived from essive adverbs with the suffix -aˁћ, but their meaning is directional: ˇce-b-aˁћ ‘upwards’; gu-b-aˁћ ‘downwards’; ћaˁ-b-aˁћ ‘backwards’; sala-b-aˁћ ‘forwards’, etc. An example with ћaˁ-b-aˁћ ‘backwards’ is shown in (37). (37)

talqan-ni sun-ni-la rursːi=ra padishah-ERG self-OBL-GEN girl[ABS]=ADD r-ucˇ-ib-le=sa-j F-lead.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-M ‘The padishah brought his daughter back.’

ħaˁ-r-aˁħ behind-F-ADVR.LOC

Agreement on directional adverbs generally follows the same rules as agreement on essive adverbials. When speaking of essive adverbials in this chapter, I take into account directional adverbs too, even when they are not mentioned specifically.

3.4.2 Gender agreement on essive adverbials: basic facts The essive adverbials are normally used as adjuncts of a VP or a clause; another possible position is that of a non-verbal predicate. In the latter case, the adverbials are accompanied by a copula and/or another predicative marker. When used as part of the predicate, they always agree with the absolutive subject. In (38), the adverbial hištːub ‘here’ agrees with the subject xazj ajstwo ‘household’. (38)

hat’i Ø-ʡuˁħna-w-ak’-ar-le, imc’a-se cˇu-la then M-inside-M-come.PFV-TH-COND most-ATTR self.PL-GEN li‹d›il=ra xazj ajstwo hištːu-b=sa-b whole‹NPL›=ADD household[ABS] here-N=COP-N ‘If you get inside, (you will see that) most of the whole household is here.’

In an adjunct position, the essive adverbials show flexible gender agreement: their gender can be controlled by the absolutive or by the ergative argument of the same clause. They share this property with the copulas, although for the adverbials ergative control seems to be less common. (39)

a. maˁħaˁmmad-li-šːu-w rasul-li Magomed-OBL-AD-M Rasul-ERG b-ukː-un-ne=sa-j N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M

dig meat[ABS]

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b. maˁħaˁmmad-li-šːu-b rasul-li dig Magomed-OBL-AD-N Rasul-ERG meat[ABS] b-ukː-un-ne=sa-b N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N ‘Rasul is eating meat at Magomed’s.’ There is a correlation between control of agreement on the copula and control of agreement on the essive adverbials. If we confine ourselves to copular clauses (for now), we can formulate two generalizations concerning essives: (40)

a. Absolutive control is possible in all sentences; b. Ergative control is grammatical when the following conditions are both met: (i) the copula is also controlled by the ergative NP, (ii) the adverbial is located on the clause periphery (in the leftmost position or after the predicate).

These two generalizations are illustrated in (41a–h). (41)

Adverbial in the middle of the predication (after the ergative argument and before the predicate): absolutive control is the only option regardless of the gender on the copula a. patiška-li sun-na durs-re quli-d Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN class-PL[ABS] house.LOC-NPL d-irq’-u-le=sa-d NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-NPL ‘Patishka is doing her assignments at home.’ b. patiška-li sun-na durs-re quli-d Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN class-PL[ABS] house.LOC-NPL d-irq’-u-le=sa-r NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-F ‘Patishka is doing her assignments at home.’ c. ∗ patiška-li sun-na durs-re quli-r Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN class-PL[ABS] house.LOC-F d-irq’-u-le=sa-d / =sa-r NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-NPL/=COP-F ‘Patishka is doing her assignments at home.’ Adverbial on the left periphery: ergative and absolutive control possible d. quli-r patiška-li sun-na house.LOC-F Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN d-irq’-u-le=sa-r NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-F ‘Patishka is doing her assignments at home.’

durs-re class-PL[ABS]

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NINA SUMBATOVA e. ? quli-d patiška-li sun-na house.LOC-NPL Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN d-irq’-u-le=sa-d NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-NPL ‘Patishka is doing her assignments at home.’

durs-re class-PL[ABS]

Adverbial on the right periphery: ergative and absolutive control possible f. patiška-li sun-na durs-re Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN class-PL[ABS] d-irq’-u-le=sa-r quli-r NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-F house.LOC-F g. patiška-li sun-na durs-re Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN class-PL[ABS] d-irq’-u-le=sa-r quli-d NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-F house.LOC-NPL h. patiška-li sun-na durs-re Patishka-ERG self.OBL-GEN class-PL[ABS] d-irq’-u-le=sa-d quli-d NPL-do.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-NPL house.LOC-NPL ‘Patishka is doing her assignments at home.’ If an adverbial is situated within the verbal predication (from now on such adverbials will be referred to as low adverbials), it agrees with the absolutive argument of the verb. If an adverbial is in the CopP (= high adverbial), it agrees with the absolutive of the copula, which is in many cases zero. Since the same absolutive NP controls the copula, the agreement marker on a high adverbial coincides with that on the copula, see (41d–h). These facts show that the agreement of essive adverbials fits into the model suggested in §3.3.1: (42) a. [CopP Δj ABS [VP rasul-lii digj maˁħaˁmmad-li-šːu-bj Rasul-ERG meat[ABS] Magomed-OBL-AD-N b-ukː-un-ne]=sa-j] N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M b. [CopP maˁħaˁmmad-li-šːu-wi Δi ABS [VP Magomed-OBL-AD-M b-ukː-un-ne]=sa-j] N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M c. [CopP maˁħaˁmmad-li-šːu-bj Δj ABS [VP Magomed-OBL-AD-N b-ukː-un-ne]=sa-b] N-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-N ‘Rasul is eating meat at Magomed’s.’

rasul-lii digj Rasul-ERG meat[ABS]

rasul-lii digj Rasul-ERG meat[ABS]

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More problematic are those sentences where the adverbial is on the right edge of the sentence and agrees with the absolutive while the copula agrees with the ergative (41g). I explain them in terms of the mechanism of right-dislocation, which is very common in Dargwa including Tanti. The right-dislocated constituents end up in a special position outside the clause while retaining the gender feature that they would have in their original position, as in sentence (43) from an oral text. (43) [CopP [VP

[ca xːunul]j r-arcˇː-ib-le]=sa-j] hiltːu-rj one woman F-find.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-M here-F ‘There he found a woman.’ thiltːu-r

Our model is supported by some interesting cases where the interpretation of a sentence depends on the position and agreement of an essive adverbial. For example, in both (44a) and (44b), the copula agrees with the ergative; this means that the zero absolutive of the CopP, which controls agreement on the copula, is coreferential with the ergative NP pat’imat-li ‘Patimat’. In (44a), the essive adverbial surrat-li-cːe-b ‘in the picture’ is located within the verbal predication and has narrow scope: it refers to a photo of Patimat’s cat. In (44b), the adverbial surrat-li-cːe-r ‘in the picture’ is located in the CopP, agrees with the zero absolutive of the CopP, and hence c-commands the absolutive argument of the verb. That is why it has broad scope, which comprises the whole verbal predication. (44) a. [CopP [VP pat’imat-li Patimat-ERG

arslan-ni-zˇ surrat-li-cːe-b Arslan-OBL-DAT picture-OBL-INTER-N

sun-na kːata cˇe-b-izˇ-aq-u-le]=sa-r] self:OBL-GEN cat[ABS] ON-N-see.IPFV-CAUS-PRS-CVB=COP-F ‘Patimat is showing Arslan her cat in the photo.’ (= a photo of the cat) b. [CopP surrat-li-cːe-r Δi ABS [VP pat’imat-lii arslan-ni-zˇ picture-OBL-INTER-F Patimat-ERG Arslan-OBL-DAT sun-na kːata cˇe-b-izˇ-aq-u-le]=sa-r] self:OBL-GEN cat[ABS] ON-N-see.IPFV-CAUS-PRS-CVB=COP-F ‘In the photo, Patimat is showing Arslan her cat.’ (= the photo presents Patimat showing her cat to Arslan) In (45a), the adverbial qulir ‘at home’ has narrow scope and refers to the Pargument rursːi ‘girl’. In (45b), with ergative control, the adverbial locates the ergative argument, which means that its scope even covers the absolutive of the CopP. (45) a. [CopP [VP dali rursːi quli-r I:ERG girl[ABS] house.LOC-F r-alt-un-ne]=sa-j]=da F-leave.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M=1 ‘I leave the girl at home (when going out).’

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NINA SUMBATOVA b. [CopP quli-w Δi ABS [VP dalii rursːi house.LOC-M I:ERG girl[ABS] r-alt-un-ne]=sa-j]=da F-leave.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M=1 ‘When I am at home, I leave the girl alone.’

At any rate, in both (44) and (45), the difference in the adverbial scope shows that the scope of low adverbials tends to be narrow, whereas the scope of high adverbials can be broad.

3.5 Gender agreement of essive adverbials in different clause types In §3.2.2.3 and §3.4.2, I showed that flexible agreement is a property of the copula and essive adverbials. In all the examples analysed up to this point, we have only observed essive adverbials in independent clauses with a copula, to which I attributed the structure shown in (22). I repeat it here as (46), adding the possible locations of the essive adverbials: (46) Backward control hypothesis [CopP (Adv) Δi/j ABS [VP (Adv) NPi ERG (Adv) NPj ABS V ] COP] (Adv) This model predicts that flexible agreement will be ungrammatical in any structure where the CopP layer is not projected. If we accept the structure presented in (46), this will, in particular, imply that the agreement of the essive adverbials can be used as a test for the presence of the CopP layer. On the other hand, the agreement of the essive adverbials in different clause types can serve as an argument for or against the backward control hypothesis. In the following sections (§3.5.1–§3.5.5), I will examine the clause types that have not been presented in the examples above and check whether the possibility of flexible agreement can be explained by the presence of the CopP layer. The full range of possible clause types in Tanti comprises the following classes: (A) independent copular clauses;¹⁴ (B) independent clauses headed by a finite verbal form: these clauses cannot have a copula; (C) ‘unmarked’ independent clauses without a restorable copula; (D) non-finite dependent clauses without a copula; ¹⁴ Tanti also has finite dependent clauses (reported speech); their internal structure and hence their gender agreement do not differ from those of independent clauses (copular and finite verbal clauses), so I will not mention them in subsequent sections.

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(E) dependent clauses headed by a non-finite form of the copula; (F) dependent clauses headed by a morphologically finite conditional or concessive form. So far, we have only seen examples of type (A) clauses. Types (B)–(F) will be described in §3.5.1–§3.5.5.

3.5.1 Independent finite clauses without a copula (B) Many independent clauses are headed by finite verbal forms. These forms (such as the future and past habitual tenses) express person morphologically by means of a suffix. They cannot attach a copula, so their overt structure does not show whether the CopP layer is projected. Tanti has indicative finite forms (future, past habitual) and non-indicative finite forms (imperative, prohibitive, optative). The former project TPs and can be combined with predicative markers belonging to the third clitic slot (see Table 3.3). For example, in (47), the second-person future form is modified by the polar question marker. (47)

[nišːi-cːele le-w-q’-aˁ-tː]=i ? we-COM HITHER-M-go.IPFV-TH-2=PQ ‘Are you going with us?—(No,) I won’t.’

—

ʕaˁ-q’-aˁ-d NEG-go.IPFV-TH-1

Non-indicative finite forms project whole CPs and are not compatible with predicative markers of any kind (48). (48)

w-aš-e M-walk.IPFV-IMP ‘Go to the qadi!’

q’adi-šːu qadi-AD

We can postulate the following basic clause structure (see also Sumbatova 2020): (49)

a. finite clause: [CP (. . .) Vfin IMP/OPT ] b. finite clause: [CP [TP (. . .) Vfin IND ]=PM3 ]

However, (49) does not show whether the CopP projection is present in sentences headed by finite verbal forms. The agreement of essive adverbials in the clauses of this type is analogous to that in independent copular clauses: flexible agreement of the essive adverbials is allowed in the same linear positions (see (50)–(52)). If we adopted the backward control hypothesis, this would mean that a CopP and the absolutive controller are present in the syntactic structure of the type B clauses. However, we have no direct data supporting this approach. I will return to this question in §3.5.6.

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FUTURE (50) dars-li-ja-w / dars-li-ja-b musa-li gezet class-OBL-SUP-M / class-OBL-SUP-N Musa-ERG newspaper[ABS] b-ucˇ’-a N-read.IPFV-TH ‘During the class, Musa will be reading a newspaper.’ (50′) [CopP ΔABS dars-li-ja-w [VP musa-li gezet class-OBL-SUP-M Musa-ERG newspaper[ABS] b-ucˇ’-a]]] N-read.IPFV-TH ‘During the class, Musa will be reading a newspaper.’ OPTATIVE (51) dars-li-ja-w / dars-li-ja-b musa-li gezet class-OBL-SUP-M / class-OBL-SUP-N Musa-ERG newspaper[ABS] ma-b-ucˇ’-ab PROH-N-read.IPFV-OPT ‘During the class, Musa is not to read a newspaper.’ (lit. ‘let Musa not read a newspaper’) IMPERATIVE (52) dars-li-ja-w / dars-li-ja-b class-OBL-SUP-M / class-OBL-SUP-N ‘During the class, read a book!’

zˇuzˇ book[ABS]

b-ucˇ’-en! N-read.IPFV-IMP

3.5.2 ‘Unmarked’ independent clauses (C) A relatively rare but important type of independent clauses are called here unmarked clauses: these are several minor groups of independent clauses where the lexical predicate is a non-verbal item or a non-finite verbal form, but the copula is nonetheless absent (for more details see Sumbatova 2020). Unmarked independent clauses are heterogeneous: a relatively common case involves mirative sentences (which indicate that their contents are new to the speaker); another group comprises biclausal constructions that consist of two unmarked clauses and express a contrast between the two parts. Essive adverbials are not typically found in unmarked clauses (most unmarked clauses are very short), but some elicited examples can be provided. In the constructions expressing contrast, the only gender agreement option available to the adverbial is absolutive control: (53)

a. patːimat-li qʷaj-te ʕuˤnel-li-gu Patimat-ERG large-ATTR.PL[ABS] pillow-OBL-SUB

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ka-d-irxː-u-le — ʕuˤnel-li-gu-d DOWN-NPL-put.IPFV-PRS-CVB pillow-OBL-SUB-NPL dimʡaˤn-te d-urkː-u-le small-ATTR.PL[ABS] NPL-find.IPFV-PRS-CVB b.

∗

patːimat-li qʷaj-te ʕuˤnel-li-gu Patimat-ERG large-ATTR.PL[ABS] pillow-OBL-SUB ka-d-irxː-u-le — ʕuˤnel-li-gu-r DOWN-NPL-put.IPFV-PRS-CVB pillow-OBL-SUB-F dimʡaˤn-te d-urkː-u-le small-ATTR.PL[ABS] NPL-find.IPFV-PRS-CVB ‘Patimat puts large [banknotes] under the pillow—[and then,] under the pillow, she finds small [banknotes].’

The essive adverbial ʕuˤnelligud ‘under the pillow’ in the second clause of the construction agrees with the absolutive NP dimʡaˤnte (arc) ‘small (money)’, whereas agreement with the ergative would be ungrammatical, as shown in (53b). A similar example is (54), where the only possible agreement type in the first clause is with the absolutive controller (the second clause is intransitive). (54)

a. dars-li-ja-b musa-li gezet b-ucˇ’-un-ne — class-ERG-SUP-N Musa-ERG newspaper[ABS] N-read.IPFV-PRS-CVB quli-w televizor-li-ja ʕeˤr-urk’-u-le house.LOC-M television-OBL-SUP watch-(M)LV.IPFV-PRS-CVB ‘During the class, Musa reads newspapers—at home, he watches TV.’ b. ∗ dars-li-ja-w musa-li gezet b-ucˇ’-un-ne (. . .) class-ERG-SUP-M Musa-ERG newspaper[ABS] N-read.IPFV-PRS-CVB Intended: ‘During the class, Musa reads newspapers . . .’

At the same time, for the mirative constructions, I elicited a couple of examples with flexible controlː in (55a) the essive adverbial azbarleћed ‘in the yard’ agrees with the plural absolutive dila qibre ‘my flatbreads’; while in (55b) the controller of the essive azbarleћeb is the ergative NP χːʷeli ‘dog’: (55)

a. azbar-le-ħe-d χːʷe-li dila qib-re yard-OBL-IN-NPL dog-ERG I:GEN bread-PL[ABS] d-ukː-un-ne! NPL-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB ‘In the yard, a dog is eating my flatbreads!’ b. azbar-le-ħe-b ħaˤna χːʷe-li dila qib-re yard-OBL-IN-N now dog-ERG I:GEN bread-PL[ABS] d-ukː-un-ne! NPL-eat.IPFV-PRS-CVB ‘In the yard, a dog is now eating my flatbreads!’

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Since the number of relevant examples is very small, we cannot be sure that the two types of unmarked clauses are really different with respect to flexible agreement control. It is quite possible that we are simply dealing with fluctuation in the data. The unmarked clauses are not structured as fully fledged independent clauses: they do not project all the layers characteristic of a full independent clause. In particular, they never express person and tense and, hence, do not project TPs. They also cannot be transformed into questions and cannot take any predicative particles belonging to the third clitic slot, meaning that they cannot be analysed as full CPs. As far as the CopP is concerned, the data are not very consistent.

3.5.3 Non-finite dependent clauses (D) Most dependent clauses of all types (clausal arguments, relative and adverbial clauses), with the exception of reported speech constructions and conditional/concessive clauses, are headed by non-finite verbal derivatives, i.e. infinitives, deverbal nouns (= masdars), participles, and different types of converbs. Normally, they do not contain copulas or the CopP layer. It is not surprising that in all these clause types, gender markers on the essive adverbials cannot cross-reference their A-arguments or core experiencers: (56)

a. [VP rasul-li wac’a-cːe-d urculi Rasul-ERG forest-INTER-NPL wood[ABS] ha-d-irq-u-le], aminat quli-r UP-NPL-chop.IPFV-PRS-CVB Aminat[ABS] house.LOC-F ka-r-izˇ-ib-le=sa-r DOWN-F-sit.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-F ‘While Rasul is chopping wood in the forest, Aminat is sitting at home.’ b. ∗ [wac’a-cːe-w rasul-li urculi ha-d-irq-u-le] forest-INTER-M Rasul-ERG wood[ABS] UP-NPL-chop.IPFV-PRS-CVB

(57) a. [wac’a-cːe-d urculi ha-d-irq-u-se] forest-INTER-NPL wood[ABS] UP-NPL-chop.IPFV-PRS-ATTR ‘the man who is chopping wood in the forest’ b. ∗ [wac’a-cːe-w urculi ha-d-irq-u-se] forest-INTER-M wood[ABS] UP-NPL-chop.IPFV-PRS-ATTR (58)

a. [VP rasul-li wac’a-cːe-d Rasul-ERG forest-INTER-NPL ha-d-aˤq-ib=xːar], UP-NPL-chop.PFV-PRET=although

admi man[ABS] admi man[ABS]

d-aqal urculi NPL-much wood[ABS] dam hat’i=ra urculi I:DAT then=ADD wood[ABS]

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asː-izˇ cˇe-b-icˇ-ib buy.PFV-INF ON-N-fall.PFV-PRET ‘A lthough Rasul had chopped a lot of wood in the forest, I still had to buy some more.’ b. ∗ [wac’a-cːe-w rasul-li d-aqal urculi forest-INTER-M Rasul-ERG NPL-much wood[ABS] ha-d-aˤq-ib=xːar], dam hat’i=ra urculi UP-NPL-chop.PFV-PRET=although I:DAT then=ADD wood[ABS] asː-izˇ cˇe-b-icˇ-ib buy.PFV-INF ON-N-fall.PFV-PRET Intended: ‘A lthough Rasul had chopped a lot of wood in the forest, I still had to buy some more.’ A non-finite dependent clause presents a bare VP,¹⁵ with no CopP and, hence, no absolutive NP governed by the copula. All cases of gender agreement in a VP are controlled by the absolutive argument of the same predication, as shown in (56)–(58).

3.5.4 Dependent clauses headed by non-finite forms of the copula (E) Some types of dependent clauses can be headed by a non-finite form of a copula. There are converbs (=sa-b-le, le-b-le), deverbal nouns (sa-b-ni, le-b-ni), and participles (=sa-b-se, le-b-se) derived from the copulas. All of these can appear as heads of dependent clauses. This phenomenon seems to be uncommon: I have a number of elicited examples, but not a single example appears in the texts. For the converbs and deverbal nouns derived from the copulas, the elicited data are very clear: in the dependent clauses headed by these words, the agreement rules are exactly as in the independent copular clauses. That is, agreement on the copula can be controlled by either the absolutive or the ergative NP, cf. examples (59a–b) with converbial heads: (59)

a. [[CopP bazar-li-ja-b [gul-a-li igruška-be market-OBL-SUP-HPL child-OBL.PL-ERG toy-PL[ABS] isː-u-le] le-b]-le], maˤmmu-li buy.IPFV-PRS-CVB EXST.COP-HPL-CVB Mammu-ERG cˇe-b-azˇ-ib ON-HPL-see.PFV-PRET

¹⁵ Or AP or NP, if we are dealing with a dependent clause headed by a participle or deverbal noun.

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NINA SUMBATOVA b. [[CopP bazar-li-ja-d [gul-a-li igruška-be market-OBL-SUP-NPL child-OBL.PL-ERG toy-PL[ABS] isː-u-le] le-d]-le]. . . buy.IPFV-PRS-CVB EXST.COP-NPL-CVB ‘When the children were buying toys at the market, Mammu saw them.’

One more dependent clause type that can be added to class (E) comprises adverbial clauses headed by the complex marker le‹b›alle ‘while’, which contains the existential copula le-b. The gender on the marker le‹b›alle ‘while’ obeys the same rule: (60)

a. rasul-li wac’a-cːe-d urculi Rasul-ERG forest-INTER-NPL wood ha-d-irq-u-le=le‹w›alle / =le‹d›alle, aminat UP-NPL-chop.IPFV-PRS-CVB=while‹M› / =while‹NPL› Aminat quli-r ka-r-izˇ-ib-le=sa-r house.LOC-F DOWN-F-sit.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-F b. wac’a-cːe-d rasul-li urculi forest-INTER-NPL Rasul-ERG wood ha-d-irq-u-le=le‹d›alle, UP-NPL-chop.IPFV-PRS-CVB=while‹NPL› c. wac’a-cːe-w rasul-li urculi forest-INTER-M Rasul-ERG wood ha-d-irq-u-le=le‹w›alle, UP-NPL-chop.IPFV-PRS-CVB=while‹M› ‘While Rasul is chopping wood in the forest, Aminat is staying at home.’

We can state that the dependent clauses in (59) and (60) contain the CopP projection, as made explicit by the glossing in (59). The most complicated case concerns relative clauses that are headed by participles derived from a copula (sa-b-se or le-b-se / ˇc’e-b-se / χe-b-se / te-b-se). For transitive clauses of this type, there are three potential controllers: the nominal head of the relative construction, but also the ergative and the absolutive NP of the dependent relative clause. Although the factors conditioning the choice of any particular option are not yet clear, we can state that ergative control of the copula and an essive adverbial is entirely possible, exactly as in all other copular clauses. In (61), the participle of the copula agrees with the phonetically zero A-argument of the relative clause, which in this case is coreferential with the nominal head gule ‘children’.

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[AP [CopP bazar-li-ja-b [igruška-be isː-u-le] market-OBL-SUP-HPL toy-PL[ABS] buy.IPFV-PRS-CVB le-b]-se] gul-e EXST.COP-HPL-ATTR child-PL[ABS] ‘the children who were buying toys at the market’

3.5.5 Conditional and concessive clauses (F) Conditional and concessive dependent clauses are headed by morphologically finite verb forms, which express person by means of suffixes. As in most dependent clauses, flexible agreement is ungrammatical in this case. (62)

a. [dila qu-ja-d ʕaˤli mura I:GEN field-SUP-NPL you.SG:ERG grass[ABS] d-ertː-a-t-le=ra] ʕaˤt ʕaˤ-d-iʁ-ar NPL-sow.PFV-TH-2-COND=ADD you.SG:DAT NEG-NPL-suffice.IPFV-TH ‘Even if you sow the grass in my field, it won’t suffice you.’ b. ∗ [dila qu-ja-w ʕaˤli mura I:GEN field-SUP-M you.SG:ERG grass[ABS] d-ertː-a-t-le=ra] NPL-sow.PFV-TH-2-COND=ADD

(63)

a. [sunni-šːu-b xːunul-li ʕaˤpːasi b-at-an-ne] self:OBL-AD-N woman-ERG abaz[ABS] N-leave.PFV-TH-COND cˇe-r-ig-u ON-EL-spend.PFV-TH ‘If the woman keeps the abaz [with her], she will spend it.’ b. ∗ [sunni-šːu-r xːunul-li ʕaˤpːasi b-at-an-ne] self:OBL-AD-F woman-ERG abaz[ABS] N-leave.PFV-TH-COND cˇe-r-ig-u ON-EL-spend.PFV-TH

3.5.6 Generalizations concerning clause types The data provided in §3.5.1–§3.5.5 show that flexible agreement control is found in all clause types where a copula is overtly present or restorable, as well as in independent clauses with a finite verbal predicate. The data are summarized in Table 3.4. The white cells correspond to the common clause types. The two grey cells present marginal clause types, either bearing a special meaning and grammatical properties (C) or apparently not very natural (E). The bold line shows the zone within which flexible agreement is possible on copulas and essive adverbials; the double line marks a fluctuation zone.

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Table 3.4 Flexible agreement in different clause types

If we temporarily leave aside the two marginal clause types, we see that the possibility of flexible control is conditioned by the syntactic position of the clause rather than by the presence of the copula. Flexible control is allowed in independent clauses. Formally, independent clauses are presented as CPs, which probably dominate other clause-level constituents. We can postulate that in Tanti, both copular clauses and finite verbal clauses contain all three clause-level constituents that were introduced in §3.3.1—CopPs, TPs, and CPs. This will explain why finite verbal clauses without copulas (type B) show flexible agreement control on essive adverbials. This suggestion is in keeping with the basic functional properties of independent clauses: the CopP encodes information structure, TPs are for person and tense, and the CP level is mainly geared towards the expression of illocutionary force. The situation with ‘unmarked’ sentences, which are rare and special both semantically and syntactically, is not clear. It seems that at least some of them do not project a CopP. At any rate, data on this clause type are rather scarce; unmarked clauses obviously require more detailed study. For the dependent clauses, the situation is the reverse: in the standard case, the CopP is not projected and ergative agreement is impossible. However, if we intentionally introduce a copula (or, to be more precise, a non-finite form of a copula) into a dependent clause, the CopP appears and ergative agreement becomes possible. In such sentences, the CopP is dominated by another type of constituent (VP, AP, or NP), as shown in (59) and (61) in §3.5.4. This distribution is quite understandable within the backward control hypothesis; in turn, it can be viewed as an argument supporting it.

3.6 Additional agreement options In certain constructions, there exist additional agreement options for the essive adverbials—options that have not been introduced in the previous sections. I refer here to so-called LDA (§3.6.1) and agreement on deverbal locatives (§3.6.2).

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3.6.1 Long-distance agreement LDA is a typologically rare phenomenon which is, however, quite common in the Nakh-Daghestanian family. In this family, LDA is always agreement in gender between a matrix predicate and the absolutive argument of its clausal argument. It has been attested in Tsez (Polinsky & Comrie 1999; Polinsky & Potsdam 2001), Godoberi (Haspelmath 1999), Khwarshi (Khalilova 2007), and elsewhere. In Tanti, LDA is only possible with a few matrix predicates (b-ikː- ‘want’, qarb-arq’- ‘order’, qumkart- ‘forget’, b-alt- ‘leave, allow’, iχtijar-b-ikː- ‘allow’, ʡaˤʡnile ‘necessary’). All these predicates take an infinitival clause as their complement (in the absolutive position). The most standard agreement option in such cases is for the neutral (default) agreement marker to appear on the matrix verb; for Dargwa, this is the neuter singular marker ‹b›. The other possibility is LDA: the gender of the main clause is controlled by the absolutive NP of the dependent clause. Compare (64a) with default agreement and (64b) with LDA, where the absolutive NP q’amk’uc’ul ‘dishes’ of the dependent clause triggers a non-human plural agreement marker. (64) a. neš-li rursːi-li-cːe [q’amk’uc’ul d-irc-aq-izˇ] mother-ERG girl-OBL-INTER dishes[ABS] NPL-wash.IPFV-CAUS-INF qar-b-arq’-ib order-N-LV.PFV-PRET b. neš-li rursːi-li-cːe [q’amk’uc’ul d-irc-aq-izˇ] mother-ERG girl-OBL-INTER dishes[ABS] NPL-wash.IPFV-CAUS-INF qar-d-arq’-ib order-NPL-LV.PFV-PRET ‘The mother told her daughter to wash the dishes.’ If the matrix clause contains a copula, LDA can also be seen in its gender agreement slot, as in (65b), where the matrix predicate ʡaˤʡnile ‘necessary’ has no gender agreement slot, but the copula agrees with the inner absolutive qume ‘fields’. (65)

a. [ʕaˤli hištːi qu-me you.SG:ERG this:PL field-PL[ABS] ʡaˤʡni-le=sa-b necessary-ADVR=COP-N b. [ʕaˤli hištːi qu-me you.SG:ERG this:PL field-PL[ABS] ʡaˤʡni-le=sa-d necessary-ADVR=COP-NPL ‘You have to dig these fields.’

d-urqː-izˇ] NPL-dig.PFV-INF

d-urqː-izˇ] NPL-dig.PFV-INF

We need to check whether essive adverbials also allow LDA. Our prediction is that they should, since, as we suggested in (46), their controller coincides with that of the copula. Unfortunately, essive adverbials are semantically hardly compatible,

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or totally incompatible, with most matrix predicates. Still, to the extent that we can find semantically acceptable examples, LDA on essive adverbials turns out to be possible, as in (66b) where the matrix verb d-ikːul=de ‘wanted’ agrees with the absolutive of the clausal argument sakːase tːuplibe ‘new shoes’: (66)

a. sala-b [dam sakːa-se tːupli-be asː-izˇ] before-N I:DAT new-ATTR shoe-PL[ABS] buy.PFV-INF b-ikː-u-l=de, ħaˤna ʕaˤ-b-ikː-u-l=da N-want.IPFV-PRS-CVB=PST now NEG-N-want.IPFV-PRS-CVB=1 b. sala-d [dam sakːa-se tːupli-be asː-izˇ] before-NPL I:DAT new-ATTR shoe-PL[ABS] buy.PFV-INF d-ikː-u-l=de, ħaˤna ʕaˤ-d-ikː-u-l=da NPL-want.IPFV-PRS-CVB=PST now NEG-NPL-want.IPFV-PRS-CVB=1 ‘Earlier, I wanted to buy new shoes, but now I don’t want to.’

I refrain from attempting a syntactic analysis of Tanti LDA constructions here; they obviously need more detailed research.

3.6.2 Agreement of deverbal locatives Another complicated case concerns the agreement behaviour of the essive forms of participles and deverbal nouns. The gender marker in the essive slot of these forms is part of a verbal form, and, hence, it is expected to agree with the absolutive argument of this form. At the same time, the whole deverbal essive belongs to a matrix clause where it is expected to agree with a core argument of that clause. Theoretically, this suffix can signal agreement with any of the NPs marked by the indices i, j, and k. In fact, all three options sketched in (67a) are grammatical: the essive marker can be triggered by the absolutive (but not the ergative) argument of the dependent predication or by any core argument of the main clause. Sentence (67b) illustrates control from the embedded absolutive, (67c) from the ergative of the main clause, and (67d) from the absolutive of the main clause. (67)

a. [patimat-li]i [sun-na q’ʷaˁl]j b-arcˇː-ib-le=sa-r Patimat-ERG self-GEN cow[ABS] N-find.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-F dali [q’irq’ik’ʷ-ne]k d-irʁ-n-a-ri /-bj /-dk I:ERG caraway-PL[ABS] NPL-collect.IPFV-POT-LOC-F/-N/-NPL ‘Patimat found her cow [in the place] where I usually collect caraway.’ b. patimat-lii sun-na q’ʷaˁlj b-arcˇː-ib-le=sa-r Patimat-ERG self-GEN cow[ABS] N-find.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-F dali q’irq’ik’ʷ-nek d-irʁ-n-a-dk I:ERG caraway-PL[ABS] NPL-collect.IPFV-POT-LOC-NPL

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c. patimat-lii sun-na q’ʷaˁlj b-arcˇː-ib-le=sa-r Patimat-ERG self-GEN cow[ABS] N-find.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-F dali q’irq’ik’ʷ-nek d-irʁ-n-a-ri I:ERG caraway-PL[ABS] NPL-collect.IPFV-POT-LOC-F d. patːimat-lii sun-na q’ʷaˁlj b-arcˇː-ib-le=sa-b Patimat-ERG self-GEN cow[ABS] N-find.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-N dali q’irq’ik’ʷ-nek d-irʁ-n-a-bj I:ERG caraway-PL[ABS] NPL-collect.IPFV-POT-LOC-N ‘Patimat found her cow (in the place) where I usually collect caraway.’ The external control seen in (67c–d) is easily explained by our model: we postulate that the grammatical markers within the deverbal essive form are syntactic heads, meaning that the essive gender marker is not within the dependent VP. The essive marker, as usual, heads an adverbial, and it agrees like all other adverbials. (67′)

d. [CopP Δi[ABS] [VP patːimat-li sun-na q’ʷaˤl Patimat-ERG self-GEN cow[ABS] b-arcˇː-ib-le=sa-b N-find.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-N [LocP [AP [VP dali q’irq’ik’ʷ-ne d-irʁ]-n]-a-b]]] I:ERG caraway-PL[ABS] NPL-collect.IPFV-POT-LOC-N

Examples like (67b), with internal control, presuppose that the deverbal essive acts as a whole unit: (67′)

b. [CopP

Δi[ABS]

[VP

patimat-lii Patimat-ERG

sun-na q’ʷaˁlj self-GEN cow[ABS]

b-arcˇː-ib-le=sa-r N-find.PFV-PRET-CVB=COP-F [dali q’irq’ik’ʷ-nek d-irʁ-n-a-dk ]]] I:ERG caraway-PL[ABS] NPL-collect.IPFV-POT-LOC-NPL It is not clear if the three control options correspond to any differences in meaning. Since we do not yet have any data on the factors that determine the choice between external and internal controllers, I will leave this problem for further research.

3.7 Conclusions In this chapter I have described gender agreement on essive adverbials in Tanti Dargwa. In transitive clauses, essive adverbials allow flexible control: from either the ergative or the absolutive argument of the clause (§3.3.1). They share this property with the copulas. In §3.4.2, I showed that there is an important correlation between the agreement of copulas and that of essive adverbials: ergative control of

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agreement on essive adverbials is only possible if the copula is also controlled by the ergative NP. To summarize and explain the observed facts, I suggested a model of Tanti clause structure that I called the backward control hypothesis ((22) and (46)). This model is supported by several independent arguments (§3.3.2). In this chapter, I checked whether it is consistent with the properties of the essive adverbials and found that although some phenomena (for example, agreement on deverbal locatives and agreement in unmarked clauses) are in need of more detailed investigation, there are no facts that would refute this hypothesis. The model suggested in this chapter is to a large extent based on elicited examples (including negative data). Some of these examples illustrate rare constructions and unusual phenomena. The standard question that arises in this situation is to what degree the model is compatible with real sentences from natural texts. In this section I will try to answer this question, at least partially. Unfortunately, the corpus of oral texts in Tanti is relatively small. I used the texts from Sumbatova and Lander (2014) as well as some unpublished texts (all of them were recorded and translated by Yury Lander and Nina Sumbatova in 2008–13). The volume of the text collection used is about 5,000 words. The total number of essive adverbials in the texts is 144. Table 3.5, which summarizes their properties, takes into account 133 of them; 11 examples were excluded from the summary for various reasons. In two sentences, the essive adverbials are in predicative position, where they agree with the absolutive subject as expected (one of those two sentences is given as example (38)). Three essive adverbials are deverbal locatives; in all of them the main clause is intransitive and its S-argument is coreferential with the absolutive (S/P) argument of the dependent clause. As a result, there is no opposition between potential controllers. For example, in (68), both the verb of the dependent clause ‘lie down’ and the verb of the main clause ‘fall asleep’ are intransitive and share the S-argument ‘I [ = male referent (M)]’, with the result that it is not clear whether the pronoun du ‘I’ belongs to the main or the dependent clause. This S-argument controls the gender agreement slot in the essive form kːerhawqajlija-w ‘when I [= male referent (M)] lay down’. (68) du=ra kːer-ha-wq-aj-li-ja-w us-w-it-ag-un=da I=ADD fall-UP-LV.PFV-AGN-OBL-SUP-M sleep-M-THITHER-LV.PFV-PRET=1 ‘I [ = male referent (M)] lay down and fell asleep.’ Six more sentences that are not presented in Table 3.5 contain obvious mistakes: when analysing them, the consultants either had difficulties with their interpretation or (in two cases) judged the agreement markers to be incorrect. For example, in (69), the existential copula agrees with the non-human plural P-argument, whereas the essive adverbial bazarlija-b ‘in the market’ agrees with the human

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plural ergative NP; this does not meet our expectations, even though the adverbial is left-dislocated: (69)

bazar-li-ja-b hiš-tː-a-li sesatːenne¹⁶ market-OBL-SUP-HPL this-PL-OBL.PL-ERG something(PL) asː-ib-le letːe¹⁷ take.PFV-PRET-CVB EXST.COP+NPL+PST ‘They were buying something in the market.’

When analysing and translating the text, the language consultant found this agreement marker ungrammatical and said that the form in question should be bazarlija-d (showing agreement with the P-argument sesatːenne ‘something (PL)’). The rest of the data (133 instances of essive adverbials) is presented in Table 3.5, which shows the distribution of the adverbials across clause types and the control options attested. Table 3.5 Distribution of essive adverbials in the oral texts

∗

A/P means that the A- and P-arguments either have the same gender or belong to two different genders with homonymous gender markers; as a result, we cannot determine which is the controller.

¹⁶ Morphonologically, se=sa-d=de=anne what=COP-NPL=PST=IQ ‘something (PL)’. ¹⁷ Morphonologically, le-d=de EXST.COP-NPL=PST.

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Column 2 shows the number of essive adverbials in each particular clause type. Column 3 shows the number found in intransitive and nominal predicate clauses; column 4 presents transitive clauses. Unfortunately, the texts do not contain any examples of essive adverbials in affective (experiencer) constructions, but there is an example of an impersonal construction (with the default agreement marker, column 5). Columns 6–9 show the controllers of gender agreement in the corresponding adverbials. We expect that in all intransitive clauses of all types, the essive adverbials will be controlled by the S-argument. As seen from column 6, this is indeed the case. We also expect that there will be no A-control in unmarked independent clauses, or in non-finite or conditional/concessive dependent clauses. This again proves to be the case, although the number of examples for the unmarked and conditional/concessive clauses is too small for us to draw any serious conclusions. We can at least state that the data do not contradict our expectations. In the elicitation process, high adverbials readily agree with the ergative, especially when they are situated clause-initially. However, there are not so many cases of ergative control in natural texts. The three clause types where we expect to see an opposition of A- vs P-control are types (A), (B), and (F). Type F (dependent clauses headed by non-finite forms of the copulas) is not found in the texts. As a result, there are only 31 clauses where flexible agreement is theoretically possible (marked by bold lines in Table 3.5). Unfortunately, 13 of these are not informative: the A- and P-arguments in those clauses either have the same gender (e.g. masculine singular) or belong to two different genders with identical markers (for example, the A-argument is human plural and the P-argument neuter singular, either of which would trigger the marker ‹b›). All that remain are 18 clauses with different gender markers for the ergative and the absolutive. For those 18 clauses, Table 3.6 shows how the choice of marker on the essive correlates with that found on the copula. An overt copula is found in only seven clauses (in six more clauses of type (A) the copula is ellipted). Table 3.6 Control of essive adverbials and copulas in transitive independent clauses

According to the backward control hypothesis, an adverbial cannot be controlled by the ergative NP when the copula has absolutive control, which explains

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the zero in column 2. All other combinations are allowed by the model and attested in the texts. An essive adverbial can show ergative control only if (i) the copula is also controlled by the ergative and (ii) the adverbial is outside the VP. In our texts, we only have three examples of this kind, provided here as (70), (71), and (72). All of them fit into our model: the adverbials are situated clause-initially (in (72), after the dependent infinitival clause but on the left periphery of the main clause), and the copula, if present, shows ergative control. In all three sentences, the adverbials have a broad semantic scope that includes at least the whole VP. (70)

surrat-li-cːe-w [t’ut’i d-urcˇ-u-le]=sa-j picture-OBL-INTER-M grape[ABS] NPL-pick.IPFV-PRS-CVB=COP-M uqna-li old.man-ERG ‘In the picture, an old man is picking grapes.’

(71)

daʁistan-ni-cːe-b [b-alχ-an-t-a-li Daghestan-OBL-INTER-HPL HPL-know.IPFV-POT-PL-OBL.PL-ERG d-urcˇ-u, d-irʁ-u], amma NPL-pick.IPFV-TH NPL-collect.IPFV-TH but har-il-i-zˇ dik’-d-arq’-izˇ each-ATTR.CONTR-OBL-DAT separate-NPL-LV.IPFV-INF ʕaˤ-b-alχ-a NEG-N-know.IPFV-TH ‘In Daghestan, those who understand (mushrooms) pick them, collect them, but not everyone knows how to distinguish (mushrooms).’

(72)

χːure-w-it-išː-izˇ sarsar, χːur-b-aˁ-hira-b bury-M-THITHER-(M)LV.PFV-INF foremost grave-PL-OBL.PL-APUD-HPL zˇanaza-lla kuk-re d-irq’-u, imam-li-hitːi deceased-GEN prayer-PL[ABS] NPL-do.IPFV-TH imam-OBL-POST hitːi ka-b-icː-ur-le behind DOWN-HPL-stand.PFV-PRET-CVB ‘Before (they) bury (him), near the cemetery they perform a prayer for the deceased, standing behind the imam.’

The backward control hypothesis assumes that adverbials controlled by the absolutive can be either high or low; as a result, they allow different linear positions and can have narrow or broad scope. The natural sentences where the essive adverbials are controlled by the absolutive are heterogeneous: the adverbial can be situated clause-initially, embedded in the VP or right-dislocated. Some of the adverbials in these sentences have low scope, although generally high scope is more frequent.

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For example, in (37) in §3.4.1 we have a directional adverbial ћaˁ-r-aˁћ ‘behind’ which is situated in the VP and refers to the P-argument (rursːi ‘girl’). It is obviously a low adverb, as is confirmed by the fact that the copula agrees with the ergative NP talqanni ‘padishah’. In (73), by contrast, we are most probably dealing with a high adverbial wec’nu ˇc’ura sːaˁtlija-w ‘at 12 o’clock’, where the temporal meaning of the adverbial characterizes the whole event; the adverbial is located at the left periphery of the clause. The controller is the masculine P-argument hizˇ ‘this’. (73)

haj-harq’-ib-le, [wec’-nu cˇ’u-ra go.together-UP+(M)LV.PFV-PRET-CVB ten-NUM.ADD two-ADD sːaˁt-li-ja-w] ucˇ-ib-sa=da hizˇ dali nig hour-OBL-SUP-M (M)lead.PFV-PRET-ATTR=1 this I:ERG milk[ABS] d-aˁq-aˁq-izˇ NPL-hit.IPFV-CAUS-INF ‘With difficulty, at 12 o’clock, I [ = female referent (F)] took him to skim milk.’

Summarizing the data from the texts, we can state that the properties of the essive adverbials attested there (agreement control, linear position, semantic scope) completely fit into the model suggested in this chapter. At the same time, they do not provide very strong support for it, simply because our textual data are not very rich. The uncommon clause types are absent or underrepresented in the texts, and even in the most common clause types the number of transitive clauses is not enough for representative statistics. In the texts, absolutive control is much more common than ergative control. This is consistent with our approach, because absolutive control is the only option available to low adverbials and also one of the possible options for high adverbials. Ergative control is only attested in three sentences, but since the total number of sentences where it is theoretically possible (as one of the options) is only 15, this is not discouraging. Moreover, in a number of examples the opposition between the genders of the A-argument and P-argument is neutralized. In all examples with ergative control, we have clause-initial essive adverbials with a broad semantic domain—exactly as predicted by the model. However, even if we adopt the backward control hypothesis as a starting point, many facts still remain that need further research and explanation. First and foremost these include word order tendencies, only some of which have been touched on here; there are also constructions for which the exact control rules still require more detailed study (for example, the agreement of deverbal locatives).

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Finally, as this last section makes clear, for a more comprehensive understanding of agreement behaviour in Tanti Dargwa we are badly in need of a larger text collection.

Acknowledgements This research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, grant No. 2228-01648. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks are due to the speakers of Tanti Dargwa, especially Magomed Mamaev, for sharing their knowledge of the language. Thanks go to Gilles Authier, Oliver Bond, Marina Chumakina, Dmitry Ganenkov, Steven Kaye, Yury Lander, and Yakov Testelets for helpful comments on various drafts of the chapter.

4 Agreeing adverbs in Enets Marina Chumakina

4.1 Introduction The languages belonging to the Samoyedic branch of the Uralic family present a number of adverbs which show agreement in person and number with one of the arguments of the main clause. This chapter focuses on agreeing adverbs in the critically endangered variety of Forest Enets (FE), with a comparison of the available data from three other living Samoyedic languages.¹ Until very recently, descriptions of Enets did not mention agreeing adverbs. They were first discussed in the description of Khanina and Shluinsky (2023). Example (1) illustrates agreement on the adverb barimagu-nʲiʔ ‘barely’. With the suffix -nʲiʔ this adverb agrees in person and number (first-person dual) with the covert subject ‘we two’. The predicate of the clause, dʲipra-jʔ ‘untied’, also agrees with the first-person dual subject, but here the agreement is realized by a different suffix, -jʔ: (1)

barimagu-nʲiʔ dʲipra-jʔ ɔdu mi-n barely-OBL.SG.1DU untie(PFV)-1DU.SOsg boat into-LOC ‘We (two) untangled it in the boat with difficulty.’

Adverbs are unusual as agreement targets, although there is a growing body of research showing that agreeing adverbs do appear in a range of languages displaying wide typological variation (e.g. Ledgeway 2011; Butt et al. 2016; Chumakina & Bond 2016; Kaye, forthcoming; and various chapters in this volume). The Samoyedic adverbs stand out in this family of unusual agreement targets by (i) displaying agreement in person and number (rather than gender and number as many other agreeing adverbs do), (ii) being nominal in origin (rather than adjectival or verbal), and (iii) showing interesting syntactic behaviour in the clause in terms of agreement controller choice. All this makes Samoyedic an important

¹ Olesya Khanina actively participated in the creation of an early version of this chapter, and unless noted otherwise, she is the source of the FE examples presented here; I am very grateful for the data and analysis she has provided, and for her comments on the chapter as a whole. All mistakes are my responsibility.

Marina Chumakina, Agreeing adverbs in Enets. In: Agreement beyond the Verb. Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Marina Chumakina (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0004

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addition to the typological picture of the morphosyntactic behaviour of unusual agreement targets. Enets is a critically endangered language for which elicitation can no longer be considered a reliable data collection method, but there are enough instances of agreeing adverbs appearing in texts to allow for morphosyntactic analysis and for proposals regarding the diachronic origins of adverbial agreement. We are also in a position to carry out a contrastive analysis of adverbial agreement with Tundra Nenets, the closest relative of Enets in the Samoyedic group, which shows that these two languages differ in the way agreement on adverbs works in different clause types. We show that in Enets the agreement behaviour of adverbs is not simply a copy of the agreement shown on the predicate; adverbs retain the possibility of agreement even in non-finite clauses where verbal agreement is not attested. This behaviour differs from that described by Nikolaeva (2014) for Tundra Nenets, where adverbs can only host agreement in the presence of agreement on the verb; in Tundra Nenets, agreeing adverbs are impossible in dependent clauses headed by converbs or other non-finite forms which do not show agreement themselves. We also provide examples of unusual agreement targets in two other Samoyedic languages, Nganasan and Selkup. Data from these languages show that while this phenomenon is marginal in terms of frequency and the number of lexical items involved in some languages, it is nevertheless stable enough across Samoyedic to be identified as a characteristic of the branch as a whole. The chapter is structured as follows. First, §4.2 provides the context necessary to understand adverb agreement in Enets through a morphosyntactic profile of the language. In order to account for the morphological and syntactic properties of its adverbial agreement behaviour, it is important to draw parallels with the morphosyntactic properties of more familiar agreement targets. Consequently, §4.2.1 introduces the inflectional behaviour of nouns, which can host person and number features in order to mark possession. §4.2.2 outlines the morphosyntactic properties of Enets verbs in general and verbal agreement in particular. §4.3 describes adverbial agreement in Enets in detail. It begins in §4.3.1 with an overview of how adverbs have been treated as a word class (or classes) in previous descriptions, then §4.3.2 provides an inventory of agreeing adverbs across the two Enets varieties and discusses their diachronic sources. §4.3.3 and §4.3.4 discuss the morphological and syntactic properties of agreeing adverbs respectively, while §4.3.5 presents deviations from agreement with the subject. §4.4 presents a contrastive analysis of the behaviour of agreeing adverbs in the closely related language Tundra Nenets. §4.5 presents examples from the other two living Samoyedic languages, Nganasan and Selkup, to support our claim that the presence of unusual agreeing targets is a property common to all Samoyedic languages, even though not all languages in the branch show evidence of having agreeing adverbs. §4.6 concludes the chapter.

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4.2 Morphosyntactic profile of Enets Enets is a highly endangered Uralic language of the Samoyedic branch spoken on the Taimyr peninsula, Russian Federation. There are two dialects of Enets— FE and Tundra Enets (TE); they are mutually intelligible, but exhibit a number of differences in lexicon, phonology, and morphology, see Khanina and Shluinsky (2022). Our claims about agreeing adverbs are valid for both varieties, but the examples presented here mostly come from FE. Members of the two language communities do not consider themselves as belonging to the same ethnic group. FE has about 30 speakers, and TE is spoken by about 15 people; all speakers are over 50 years old and bilingual in Russian, or trilingual in Russian and Tundra Nenets. Enets has no written tradition and no conventional writing system (Khanina & Shluinsky 2023). The main grammatical descriptions of Enets include Castrén (1854), Terešcˇenko (1966), Sorokina (2010), and Siegl (2013). Here we also make use of a recent grammatical sketch by Khanina and Shluinsky (2023), and an unpublished FE text collection created by Khanina and Shluinsky.² Distinguishing the parts of speech in Enets is not entirely straightforward. Sorokina (2010) establishes the lexical classes of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals, verbs, and adverbs, and the functional classes of postpositions, particles, modal words, and interjections. Khanina and Shluinsky (2023) follow this distinction in general, but they begin by dividing the lexical classes into verbs and nominals, the latter comprising nouns, pronouns, adjectives (with an additional category of adjectival quantifiers), numerals, and adverbs. Siegl (2013) distinguishes between nominals, verbs, adverbs, interjections, and particles (taken together as a single class) and clitics. The class of nominals includes nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, demonstratives, postpositions, participles, converbs, and inflectable adverbs (manner and temporal adverbs), whereas all uninflectable adverbs are assigned to their own word class distinct from the nominals. We will return to the question of adverbial classes in §4.3. In Enets, lexical verbs, auxiliaries, and the copula agree with the subject in person and number. Nouns and adjectives in predicative function (i.e. as complement of a copula) also take person and number agreement marking; again, the subject controls agreement on both the predicative adjective or noun and the copula.³ While agreement on predicative adjectives is commonly attested cross-linguistically, nominal complements of copulas generally do not agree, making predicative nouns another unusual agreement target in the language (see Chapter 1, this volume, for discussion). Inside the ² We are also aware of a further set of texts (Sorokina & Bolina 2005), but since they are unglossed, we have not made use of these in the current analysis. ³ See Siegl (2013: 72–3) for examples of agreeing predicative adjectives. Agreeing predicative nouns are also illustrated by Siegl (2013: 77).

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NP, attributive adjectives occasionally agree with their head noun in number; however, the conditions determining the presence of agreement in this context are currently unclear. Attributive adjectives are unlike nouns in that they never inflect for case or possession (Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 812). In addition to these targets, certain adverbs can also agree (§4.3), but do so with morphological exponents that are historically possessive affixes. Postpositions in Enets can also agree, phrase-internally, by means of the possessive suffixes (Siegl 2013: 142).

4.2.1 Morphosyntactic features of nouns Nouns inflect for number and case, mark possession inflectionally, have predicative forms, and feature a special ‘predestinative’ category.⁴ Nominal inflection is especially complex, involving the cumulative expression of values by means of stem alternation and suffixes (see Khanina & Shluinsky 2023 for details). The number feature distinguishes three values: singular, dual, and plural. In Khanina and Shluinsky’s (2023) description, noun cases are divided into core (nominative and oblique) and local (dative, locative, ablative, and prolative). Siegl (2013) identifies a different set of cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, lative, locative, and ablative. Khanina and Shluinsky do not distinguish between genitive and accusative, combining them into a single oblique case on the basis that on the synchronic level they never have distinct morphological realizations. Siegl’s lative case corresponds to Khanina and Shluinsky’s dative case. He excludes the prolative from his discussion of the nominal cases, saying that it is ‘almost extinct but occurs reasonably frequently with a handful of postpositions and adverbs’ (Siegl 2013: 148). In Table 4.1 we use Khanina and Shluinsky’s inventory of case values (excluding the prolative). Table 4.1 Nominal paradigm of mɛʔ ‘house’

∗

The glottal stop in this cell is very rarely audible and is probably disappearing.

⁴ See Khanina and Shluinsky (2023: 804) for a discussion of predestinatives.

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Possessed nouns mark the person (1/2/3) and number (SG/DU/PL) of the possessor in addition to their own number and case. In the nominative and oblique cases, possession is expressed cumulatively by a single suffix (shown in Table 4.2). The dative and locative cases use special possessive suffixes which then add the oblique possessive suffixes as shown in Table 4.2. Some possessed forms of ‘house’ in the nominative case are provided in (2). Some examples of possessed nouns in the oblique and dative cases can be seen in (3) and (4). (2)

a. mɛ-miʔ mɛ-l mɛ-t house-NOM.SG.1SG house-NOM.SG.2SG house-NOM.SG.3SG ‘my house’ ‘your house’ ‘his house’ b. mɛ-maʔ mɛ-laʔ mɛ-tuʔ house-NOM.SG.1PL house-NOM.SG.2PL house-NOM.SG.3PL ‘our house’ ‘your (PL) house’ ‘their house’ (based on Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 803, with thanks to Olesya Khanina)

(3)

a. ɛɛ-dʲiʔ mother-OBL.SG.3DU ‘(behind) their mother (the mother of those two)’ b. ŋɔ-tʃiʔ leg-OBL.PL.3DU ‘(of ) their legs (the legs of those two)’

(4)

kasa-xi-tuʔ man-DAT.POSS.PL-OBL.PL.3PL ‘to their mates’

The morphological realization of possession is complex. For our purposes, it is important to demonstrate that there is a formal contrast between the suffixes used by nouns to mark possession and those used by verbs for agreement; as we will show in §4.3.3, agreeing adverbs in Enets employ a simplified version of the nominal possessive system. Table 4.2 shows the possessive suffixes used in the nominative and oblique cases. Slashes indicate allomorphy conditioned by different inflectional classes. There are three classes, which show varying degrees of syncretism. Phonologically conditioned allomorphs are indicated in parentheses after the main allomorph they are related to. When two forms are separated by a comma, they are in free variation.

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Table 4.2 Possessive suffixes (based on Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 803)

4.2.2 Morphosyntactic features of verbs Agreement on the verb is realized by person–number suffixes. Finite verbs agree with their subject in person (1/2/3) and number (SG/DU/PL); subject indexes on transitive verbs may also simultaneously index the number of the object (SG/NSG). Under certain pragmatic conditions third-person objects can also control agreement in number (SG/DU/PL) through a distinct series of object suffixes. The morphological realization of verbal agreement comprises four indexation series (Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 815) which index the subject: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

Subject (S) Subject–Object with Singular objects (SOsg) Subject–Object with Non-singular objects (SOnsg) Middle (MD).⁵

The S-series and the MD-series index only the subject, as in (5)–(7), while the SOsg-series and the SOnsg-series simultaneously index the person and number of the subject and the number of the object, as in (8)–(10). The morphological exponence of the suffixes in the series in (i)–(iv) varies across four tense–mood paradigms: basic (which is unmarked in glosses), past (PST), contrastive (CONTR), and jussive (JUSS) (adapted from Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 814–27). The examples provided here are all from the basic paradigm (see Table 4.3). ⁵ Middle indexation is a lexical feature, valid for intransitive verbs only; inchoatives and passives are always marked with middle indexation.

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(5)

Intransitive verb: agreement with the subject, subject indexation series dʲɔriŋa-d speak(IPFV)-2SG.S ‘you (SG) speak’

(6)

Intransitive verb: agreement with the subject, middle indexation series sɔŋ-e-dʲ come.back(PFV)-MD-2SG.MD ‘you (SG) came back’

(7)

Transitive verb: agreement with the subject, subject indexation series pɔnʲiŋa-d use(IPFV)-2SG.S ‘you (SG) use (it)’

(8)

Transitive verb: agreement with the subject and the object, singular object pɔnʲiŋa-r use(IPFV)-2SG.SOsg ‘you (SG) use it’

(9)

Transitive verb: agreement with the subject and the object, dual object: pɔnʲiŋa-xuu-z use(IPFV)-O3DU-2SG.SOnsg ‘you (SG) use them (DU)’

(10)

Transitive verb: subject–object indexation series, plural object pɔnʲiŋ-e-z use(IPFV)-O3PL-2SG.SOnsg ‘you (SG) use them (PL)’

Number agreement with the object is realized by the combination of the SOsg or SOnsg agreement series, which indexes the person–number of the subject and the number of the object, and the object agreement suffixes, which appear immediately before the SO affixes, as in (9) and (10). Only third-person objects can control agreement in number. A singular object is unmarked, as in (8), while -xuu/-kuu/ -guu is used for dual objects, as in (9), and -e is employed for plural objects, shown in (10). A suffix with the same form occurs next to the stem in middle indexation, as illustrated in (6). Agreement with the object in number reflects the discourse properties of the object: ‘instances with formal indicators of clausal topic or focus strongly suggest that only topical objects can be cross-referenced on the verb: there are no cases of cross-referencing of focal objects, and topical objects are crossreferenced in most cases’ (Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 837). When the object NP is not expressed overtly, object agreement is nearly always attested.

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Table 4.3 shows the basic series of person–number affixes used to realize verbal agreement. There are some formal similarities with the person–number possessive affixes shown in Table 4.2, but this is clearly a distinct paradigm. Phonologically conditioned allomorphs are indicated in parentheses after the main allomorph they are related to. Commas indicate free variants. Table 4.3 Basic series of agreement affixes (based on Khanina & Shluinsky 2023: 820)

We will see in §4.3 that the agreeing adverbs in Enets have their own agreement paradigm, which has formal similarities to the paradigm of possessive suffixes used by nouns; the adverbial paradigm is much less complex than that employed by nouns, yet the connection is obvious. While we might have expected adverbs to use an agreement paradigm similar to that employed by verbs, this is not the case; the adverbs, having nominal diachronic origins, use possessive suffixes rather than verbal agreement suffixes to realize agreement, as the next section shows.

4.3 Adverbial agreement in Enets We begin by outlining the treatment of adverbs as a lexical class in existing grammatical descriptions; then we provide a list of agreeing adverbs and discuss the morphological and syntactic properties of adverbial agreement. It is important to remember that Enets is a critically endangered language and at this point it is very hard to rely even on grammaticality judgements given by speakers, whereas elicitation is practically impossible. Our only reliable sources (besides the existing descriptions) are those texts that have been collected previously, and therefore some controversies and insoluble problems are inevitable.

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4.3.1 Agreeing adverbs in existing grammatical descriptions The three recent descriptions of Enets present three different accounts of adverbs and adverbial agreement. In her account of Enets adverbs, Sorokina (2010) does not mention adverbial agreement at all. The only inflectional possibility for adverbs she discusses is the ability of some place and manner adverbs to take certain case suffixes, namely the dative case and three spatial cases—the locative, ablative, and prosecutive (labelled ‘prolative’ in Siegl 2013 and Khanina & Shluinsky 2023). Sorokina points out that this inflection is irregular: in general, adverbs tend to take archaic (short) variants of the case suffixes, as illustrated by tonin ‘there’ in Table 4.4 (compare with the modern suffixes borne by the adverb ekon ‘here’ in the same table). Some adverbs can take both archaic and modern case exponents, and for some adverbs these differences align with a stem alternation, as shown for eznuju/ezɨ ‘above’ in Table 4.5. Note that these examples reflect Sorokina’s (2010) transcription. Table 4.4 Case inflection of the adverbs ekon ‘here’ and tonɨn ‘there’ (based on Sorokina 2010: 361–3)

Table 4.5 Case inflection of the adverb eznuju/ezɨ ‘above’ (based on Sorokina 2010: 361–5)

An agreeing temporal adverb ‘then’, registered in the texts⁶ in the forms tɔnaneda [then.OBL.SG-3SG] and tɔnane-naʔ [then.OBL.SG-1PL], is historically related to the adverb tonin ‘there’, as both reflect the common Proto-Uralic proximal deictic root ∗ to. Siegl’s description (2013) effectively proposes that adverbs do not inflect at all. What he calls ‘inflectable adverbs’ in fact present instances of derivation, rather than inflection: he states that manner adverbs are produced from adjectives by ⁶ All mentions of ‘texts’ in the sections on FE refer to texts collected, translated, and glossed by Olesya Khanina and Andrey Shluinsky during their work on FE (Khanina & Shluinsky 2023).

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adding the prolative case suffix. For example, adding this suffix to the adjective aga ‘big’ results in an adverb aga-an ‘loudly’. The second type of inflectable adverb identified by Siegl comprises the temporal adverbs produced by the adverbializing suffix -nuju, as in kiuđnuju ‘in the morning’ from kiuđu ‘morning’ (Siegl 2013: 143). The wordforms in Table 4.4, which Sorokina (2010: 361–3) analyses as adverbs, are treated by Siegl (2013) as demonstratives, while he classifies those in Table 4.5 as postpositions. He notes that postpositions can take the possessive suffixes, but does not analyse this as an instance of agreement. He also states that ‘the border line between postpositions and adverbs is fuzzy’ (Siegl 2013: 142). In Siegl’s description there are several examples of adverbs ending in -da (the 3SG oblique possessive suffix, see Table 4.3) which are glossed as words without any internal structure, as in (11) and (12). We retain Siegl’s (2013) transcription and glossing here.⁷ (11)

tak tonida kunida na¨a¨cˇi-ku dˈiri-bi so somewhere sometimes girl.youngster-DIM live-PRF.3SG ‘So somewhere, sometimes there lived a girl.’ (Siegl 2013: 236)

(12)

na¨a¨ku-ju-xo other-TOP-INDEF

minxuda ocˇik liđi-ru-ku-je suddenly bad bone-LIM-DIM-PEJ

minxuda suddenly

ođi-ma pe-d go.out-RES.3SG outside-LAT.SG ‘The other one, suddenly, the little bad bony guy came out.’ (Siegl 2013: 217) While Siegl does not explicitly discuss tonida ‘somewhere’ and kunida ‘sometimes’ in (11) and simply treats them as uninflecting lexical items, he mentions that minxuda ‘suddenly’ in (12) can be segmented at least at a diachronic level: ‘one of its components is the Proto-Samoyed verb ∗ min- (Janhunen 1977: 94), the etymological cognate of Finnish menna¨ ‘to go’. As an independent verb, this verb is absent in Forest Enets’ (2013: 217). It is not surprising that Siegl failed to recognize the agreement component -da in these forms: the subject in narratives most frequently takes the form of a third-person singular, and indeed we see that the predicates in (11) and (12) both show third-person singular agreement. As a result, these adverbs, which have the same agreement controller as the predicate, appear in the third-person singular form in -da so often that it is easy to interpret this form as uninflected.

⁷ /đ/ stands for a voiced dental fricative; note that Khanina and Shluinsky (2023) render it as /z/.

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Finally, Khanina and Shluinsky establish a group of inflecting agreeing adverbs within the larger class of adverbs, stating that ‘some adverbs are always used with oblique possessive suffixes that are coreferential with the subject of the clause’ (2023: 838). This is also the point of view adopted here. However, we note that textual examples show that the actual situation is not quite so straightforward: agreement is not obligatory, so these adverbs are not always used with the oblique possessive affixes and their agreement controller can vary to some extent. §4.3.5 discusses these complications.

4.3.2 Adverbial agreement: lexicon and diachronic sources Khanina and Shluinsky (2023: 838) distinguish seven agreeing adverbs altogether, of which five are found in both FE and TE and two in FE only: (13)

a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

barimagu- (FE), bariɔxo- (TE) ‘barely, hardly’ keraxa- (FE, TE) ‘on one’s own, independently’ ɔzaxu- (FE), ɔzeɔxo- (TE) ‘that is why’ tɔmini- (FE), tɔmino- (TE) ‘just, then, while’ tɔnane- (FE, TE) ‘once upon a time, formerly’ ʃemini- (FE) ‘self ’ minxu- (FE) ‘immediately’

As (13) shows, these adverbs do not form a semantically coherent group, so we cannot say that the phenomenon of agreement involves adverbs with specific semantics. Four of the adverbs from the list above (barimagu- ‘hardly’, keraxa- ‘independently’, ɔzaxu- ‘that is why’, and minxu- ‘immediately’) most likely originated from possessive forms in the dative case (recall the affixes -xo/-ko/-go shown in Table 4.2), and the locative case suffix -n is apparent in the structure of the other agreeing adverbs. It is not surprising therefore that agreement is expressed by possessive suffixes drawn from the oblique sub-paradigm, as §4.3.3 illustrates. The adverb keraxa- ‘independently’ is historically related to the root kere- ‘self ’, which is used as an intensifier of the reflexive pronoun, as in (14): (14)

kere-tuʔ puzi-zuʔ bɔɔ-da-goɔ-ʔ self-OBL.SG.3PL oneself-NOM.PL.3PL bad.INCH-CAUS-DUR-3PL.S ‘They spoil themselves.’

These are the only adverbs in Enets that have been observed to bear agreement. As far as we know, no other adverbs can take agreement suffixes.

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4.3.3 Adverbial agreement: morphology Agreeing adverbs mark person and number features. The suffixes originate in the nominal paradigm: the adverbs appear to originate from the nominal oblique case possessive suffixes. This is indicated by the presence of the 1PL form in -naʔ, which is only attested in the oblique paradigm, and by the fact that the set of suffixes attested in the third person are only attested in this combination in the oblique paradigm (with both singular possessed nouns and non-singular possessed nouns). The suffixes observed in texts are shown in Table 4.6 (cf. the second and fifth columns of Table 4.2). A question mark indicates information gaps. Table 4.6 Possessive suffixes used in adverbs (based on their distribution in texts)

As often happens with unusual targets, Enets demonstrates simplification of the original paradigm used to express agreement: compared to the paradigm of the possessive affixes used by nouns (Table 4.2), the paradigm shown in Table 4.6 displays less complexity. First, the distinction between singular and non-singular possessed nouns is neutralized. This is to be expected, as the adverbs and presumably their diachronic sources (demonstratives, pronominals, and possibly a converb in the case of minxu- ‘immediately’) do not denote referents and therefore cannot distinguish inherent number. Second, the adverbs do not display as much morphonological variation as nouns do; there are no different stems and inflection classes which would require different sets of suffixes. This can be explained easily by the limited number of agreeing adverbs that are found: as the majority of Enets nouns belong to the inflectional class represented by the first allomorph shown in Table 4.2, it is unsurprising that adverbs also belong to this class. Although the adverbs use the possessive suffixes, it is clear that they do not convey any possessive meaning and are used on adverbs as pure agreement markers. Consider (15), where the only possessive meaning in the clause is expressed by the subject entʃeunaʔ ‘our people’, marked for a first-person plural possessor, whereas the adverb tɔnaneduʔ ‘once’ agrees with the subject in third-person plural: (15)

tɔnane-duʔ entʃeu-naʔ dʲiri-a once-OBL.SG.3PL person-PL.1PL live(IPFV)-NMLZ1 ‘how our people once lived’

ŋob tɔr likewise so

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The fact that these forms share a distinctive agreement paradigm despite their potentially varied origins indicates that they are being treated as a distinct agreement target class within Enets grammar.

4.3.4 Adverbial agreement: syntax Following Corbett (2006), we describe the agreement of adverbs in Enets in terms of the targets, controllers, domain of agreement and agreement features involved. Of these, we have already discussed targets (a closed list of adverbs) and features (person and number). The relevant domain is the clause. Finally, the controller of the adverbial agreement is usually the (nominative) subject of the clause, and the adverb therefore has the same controller as the predicate of the clause. For the majority of instances of adverbial agreement found in the texts this is indeed the case. We start in §4.3.4.1 by discussing adverbial agreement in the finite clause, before moving to non-finite clauses in §4.3.4.2.

4.3.4.1 Agreement in the finite clause The most frequent situation in finite clauses found in narratives is for the subject to be in the third person, most often singular: this feature combination is the one most frequently observed on agreement targets. In (16) the controller is the pronominal subject tʃiker ‘this’, which controls third-person singular agreement on both the predicate kautezʔ ‘will fall’ and the intensifier kereta ‘by itself ’: (16)

kere-ta kau-t-e-zʔ self -OBL.SG.3SG fall(PFV)-FUT-MD-3SG.MD tʃike-r this-NOM.SG.2SG ‘This will fall down on the ground by itself.’

dʲa earth

nʲi-ʔ on-DAT

Note that the pronominal subject tʃiker ‘this’ here is very likely to be the topical or at least the pragmatically prominent argument: its position on the right periphery of the clause and the specific usage of the second-person singular possessive marker (see Siegl 2013: 371 on the pragmatic usage of the possessive suffixes) both point to this interpretation. This is important because all other textual attestations of third-person singular adverbial agreement in the finite clause lack an overt subject. We may consequently hypothesize that overt subjects tend to be pragmatically marked, but this assumption needs further investigation. In (17) both the verb kanʲe ‘left’ and the adverb tɔminida ‘just, then, while’ agree in person (3) and number (SG) with the covert subject ‘she’; the verbal agreement is realized by zero whereas agreement on the adverb is marked overtly by the affix -da:

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samaʔa ʃe min-xon tɔmini-da kanʲe-Ø flue hole into-LOC.SG just-OBL.SG.3SG leave(PFV)-3SG.S ‘And she just flew away through the smoke hole.’

In (18) we see the same verb kanʲe ‘left’ and the adverb tɔnaneda ‘then’ agreeing with the covert subject ‘he’: (18)

kanʲe-Ø kanʲe-Ø tɔnane-da leave(PFV)-3SG.S leave(PFV)-3SG.S once-OBL.SG.3SG ‘He left, he left then.’

In (19) the clausal adverb ɔzaxuda ‘that is why’ agrees with the covert impersonal subject ‘one’. Note that two different interpretations of the sentence are possible. If it is a generic statement, then the 2SG possessive marker on ‘poles’ is a topic marker, as discussed for (16). Alternatively, the 2SG possessive marker indexes the addressee. (19)

ɔzaxu-da ŋuzu-z saliuta-ʃ that.is.why-OBL.SG.3SG pole-NOM.PL.2SG polish(PFV)-CVB tara-ʔ nj i-uʔ be.necessary(IPFV)-CONN NEG-3SG.S.CONTR ‘That’s why one has to make the poles smooth / That’s why you should make your poles smooth.’

In (20) the adverb tɔnaneda ‘once, formerly’ agrees with the covert subject ‘he’ of the nominal predicate entʃeʔ ɛbi ‘was a man’: (20)

tɔnane-da iɡarka-xon dʲiri-j once-OBL.SG.3SG Igarka-LOC.SG live(IPFV)-PTCP.ANT ɛ-bi-Ø be(IPFV)-PRF-3SG.S ‘He was a man who formerly lived in Igarka.’

entʃeʔ person

It is worth noting that in examples (18)–(20) the adverb seems to modify the whole clause rather than just the verb. In (19) it is a causal adverb modifying the whole clause, and in (18) and (20) it is a temporal adverb. Enets adverb semantics requires further investigation, but at first glance, at least the adverbs in (18) and (20) look like high adverbs in Cinque’s terminology (1999). The literature on agreeing adverbs is not extensive, but one assumption put forward within the minimalist approach is that high adverbs should not have the ability to agree (Polinsky 2016: 207–13). Third-person singular subjects are particularly frequent in the texts, but subjects bearing other morphosyntactic features are also observed. The next three examples demonstrate other sets of feature values that the agreeing adverbs can realize. We start with the only instance we could find that involves an overt subject. In (21) the first-person plural subject modʲinaʔ triggers first-person plural agreement on

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the adverb tɔnanenaʔ ‘formerly’ (note the formal similarity between the agreement suffix and the pronoun): (21)

modʲinaʔ anʲ tɔnane-naʔ dʲɔxara-ʔ we and once-OBL.SG.1PL not.know(IPFV)-CONN i-si-bamʔ NEG-Q-1PL.SOsg.CONTR ‘After all, we did not know it formerly.’

The predicate in (21) agrees with both the subject and the (covert) object. Again, as is often found with unusual targets, the adverb has a narrower set of agreement features than the predicate (Bond et al. 2022b); in Enets, the formal exponence used by the adverb to express agreement means that it cannot agree with both subject and object as the verb does. In (22), repeated from (1), the adverb barimagunʲiʔ ‘barely’ agrees in person and number with the covert subject ‘we two’, just like the predicate dʲiprajʔ ‘untied’: (22)

barimagu-nʲiʔ dʲipra-jʔ ɔdu mi-n barely-OBL.SG.1DU untie(PFV)-1DU.SOsg boat into-LOC ‘We (two) untangled it in the boat with difficulty.’

In all the previous examples the subject of the clause was also the agentive argument, and it was therefore possible to assume that agreement is controlled by the semantic agent rather than the syntactic subject. The next example demonstrates that this is not the case: in passive constructions the subject of the passive, i.e. the logical object, controls agreement on both the predicate ɛztaraezʔ ‘was sent’ and the adverb minxuda ‘immediately’: (23)

minxu-da stada-d ɛzta-ra-e-zʔ immediately-OBL.SG.3SG herd-DAT.SG send(PFV)-PASS-MD-3SG.MD ‘He was sent to the herd immediately.’

This provides a noteworthy contrast to phenomena observed for Tundra Nenets by Nikolaeva (2014), discussed in §4.4.

4.3.4.2 Agreement in the non-finite clause In the examples we have seen so far, the adverb has displayed agreement in a clause that also features an agreeing verb. However, in Enets it is possible for the adverb to agree even when it is used in a non-finite clause. Non-finite clauses in Enets are headed by nominalizations, participles, and converbs (for more details, see Shluinsky & Wagner-Nagy, forthcoming). The converbs can be either non-inflecting, such as the connegative, the infinitive (or general converb), the supine, and the anterior converb, or can have both inflecting and non-inflecting variants. The conditional converb, the simultaneous converb, and the negative jussive converb (the latter found in FE only) behave in this way. The inflecting converbs attach nominal

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oblique possessive markers to cross-reference the subject. Nominalizations heading non-finite clauses also use the possessive markers for agreement, and so do participles. This behaviour links non-finite clause heads with agreeing adverbs: both adverbs and the inflecting converbs, nominalizations, and participles use the oblique possessive markers for agreement. In (24) the adverb tɔminida ‘just, then, while’ agrees with the covert thirdperson singular subject ‘he’ in the context of the predicate kanʲeaxozda ‘left’, a nominalized form: (24)

tɔz kanʲe-a-xazu-da tɔmini-da so leave(PFV)-NMLZ1-ABL.SG-OBL.SG.3SG then-OBL.SG.3SG ‘as he left then’ (= ‘because he left then’)

In (25), the non-finite clause headed by kajibuʔduʔ ‘stay behind’ likewise contains an agreeing adverb: (25)

tɔmini-duʔ kaji-bu-tuʔ knʲeʃnɔ just-OBL.SG.3PL stay.behind(PFV)-CVB.COND-OBL.SG.3PL of.course sɔjza good ‘If they just stay as they are (lit. just so), that’s good, of course.’

In both examples the non-finite form of the predicate attaches a possessive suffix which bears the same features as the subject: in (24) this is the third-person singular oblique suffix -da and in (25) it is the third-person plural oblique suffix -tuʔ. On the basis of these two examples it would be possible to assume that the adverbs just copy the suffixes of the predicates. Consider, however, the following two examples: (26)

tʃike ʃize kasa ɛdʲuku-r tɔmini-dʲiʔ tɔ this two man child-NOM.SG.2SG while-OBL.SG.3DU that ɛɛ-dʲiʔ nɔlʲkutʃ mother-OBL.SG.3DU pursue(IPFV).CVB ‘while these two boys were running after their mother . . .’

(27)

tɔnane-duʔ entʃeu-naʔ dʲiri-a once-OBL.SG.3PL person-PL.1PL live(IPFV)-NMLZ1 ‘how our people once lived’

ŋob tɔr likewise so

In (26) the adverb tɔminidʲiʔ ‘just, then, while’ agrees in person (3) and number (DU) with the overt subject ʃize kasa ɛdʲukur ‘two boys’ while the predicate nɔlʲkutʃ ‘pursue’ is a non-inflecting converb and therefore does not mark any person–number features. It is worth noting here that the subject has a ‘pragmatic’ second-person singular possessive suffix, and therefore as both a subject and a

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pragmatically prominent argument it must be the only controller of agreement here. In (27), repeated from (15), the predicate is the nominalization dʲiria ‘lived’, used in its non-inflecting version. The adverb tɔnaneduʔ ‘once’, however, has an overt agreement suffix -duʔ agreeing for third-person plural value with the overt subject entʃeunaʔ ‘our people’. Examples (26) and (27) demonstrate that the adverbial agreement behaviour in Enets may differ from that seen in its close relative, Nenets, where agreement on adverbs is only allowed in clauses where the finite or non-finite predicate has overt agreement features (Nikolaeva 2014: 180, see §4.4 for details). Our limitation here is that we have only two examples to suggest that the adverbs in the two languages can differ in their agreement behaviour, but such limitations are inevitable in the analysis of a critically endangered language with a relatively small corpus. The examples discussed in this section demonstrate that Enets adverbs show agreement with the subject of the clause in both finite and non-finite clauses. However, as we will see in §4.3.5, there are examples showing that the situation is not always that straightforward.

4.3.5 Deviations in the agreement behaviour of adverbs There are two ways in which adverbs in Enets deviate from the pattern presented above. Sometimes the agreeing adverbs are used without the agreement markers, i.e. as ‘normal’ non-agreeing adverbs; and there are instances where the adverb has the agreement morphology but the features on the adverb do not conform with the features of the subject. The next two sections discuss these deviations.

4.3.5.1 No agreement There are at least two instances in the texts where the normally agreeing adverb tɔnane- ‘once’ appears in a non-agreeing form. In (28) it shows up in a non-finite clause headed by the nominalized predicate dʲirianaʔ ‘lived’: (28)

tɔnane kudaxaa-j tɔr dʲiri-a-naʔ once for.a.long.time-ADJ so live(IPFV)-NMLZ1-OBL.SG.1PL tʃubu-xon timespan-LOC.SG ‘Formerly, when we lived like that . . .’

Example (29) shows the same adverb being used in the non-agreeing form in a finite clause headed by the predicate madkoda ‘would say’: (29)

ʃee-aʔ ma-dkoda-Ø tɔnane who-NOM.SG.1PL say(PFV)-HYPOT-3SG.S once ‘Who would say (that) to us then?’

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Since there are so few examples, we must not rule out the possibility that these are simply production errors. The other possibility is that agreement on adverbs is an unstable feature and what we see here is a sign of its gradual loss from the system: agreeing adverbs make up only a small subset of adverbs in Enets, and it is possible that here we are observing a change of behaviour which would bring agreeing adverbs in line with the rest of the adverbs in the language. Yet another possibility lies in the morphological similarity between adverbs and converbs when it comes to agreement: both use possessive affixes to express agreement, and the converbs which mark agreement do so only optionally as they all have non-agreeing variants alongside the agreeing ones.

4.3.5.2 Different controller or lexicalization of agreeing adverbs? One possible pathway for the loss of agreement on adverbs is through paradigm levelling, and the subsequent loss of any distinction encoded by erstwhile agreement morphology. By way of example, consider (30)–(32), which all come from the same speaker of the TE variety. As we have said earlier, in TE agreement in general and agreeing adverbs in particular behave exactly as they do in FE, so these examples present a deviation from what we expect. In both (30) and (31) the adverb ɔzeɔxɔ- ‘that is why’ has the same agreement suffix, the third-person singular suffix -da, whereas the predicate agrees with the third-person plural subject. (30)

ɔzeɔxɔ-da xamij-ʔa that.is.why-OBL.SG.3SG Khamaj-TRNS ‘That is why they called him Khamaj.’

nʲide-bi-zuʔ name(PFV)-PRF-3PL.SOsg

(31)

ɔzeɔxɔ-da navernɔe tʃike-ʔ i-ʔ that.is.why-OBL.SG.3SG maybe this-PL NEG-3PL.S tira-ʔ get.dry(PFV)-CONN ‘Maybe that is why they did not get dry.’

The predicate in example (30) agrees with subject and object, and one might in principle allow for the possibility that the adverb is agreeing with the object as well. However, in TE example (32) the adverb tɔminɔda ‘just, then, while’ also attaches the third-person singular agreement affix, whereas the predicate dʲiɡuɔʔ agrees only with the third-person plural subject: (32)

tɔminɔ-da dʲiɡu-ɔ-ʔ just-OBL.SG.3SG die-INCH-3PL.S ‘So they died like this.’

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These three examples present a different possible route for the attrition of agreeing adverbs: the ability to agree can be lost, with the most frequent agreement affix remaining fossilized on the lexical items involved.

4.4 Agreeing adverbs in Tundra Nenets Agreeing adverbs in Nenets, a close relative of Enets, form a closed subclass of about 20 items. Historically they go back to frozen possessive case forms of nouns, adjectives, and the demonstrative tˈuku∘ ‘this’, but they have lost all grammatical properties of nominals, and their etymology is not always transparent. Nenets agreeing adverbs are divided into two types: agent-oriented (those that have an agent-like argument as the agreement controller) and non-agentive (those that can have an agent (subject) but also a non-agent (typically an object) as their controller (Nikolaeva 2014: 180)). Nikolaeva (2014: 178–80) lists the following agreeing adverbs: (33)

a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j.

mˈin∘ xə- ‘quickly’ ŋeso(xə)- ‘by itself, without reason, unexpectedly’ warˈeq- / warˈexə- ‘with difficulty’ sˈenˈa(na)- ‘earlier, in the past’ ŋaw∘ na- ‘earlier, in the past’ (also used as a non-agreeing adverb) xuna(na)- ‘some time, in the future’ tˈike(xə)na- ‘that is why, therefore’ (related to demonstrative ‘this’) ŋədˈ ∘ bˈa(na)- ‘that is why, therefore’ tamˈi- ‘immediately’ yaq∘ l- ‘alone, only, lonely’

Of these, only the last three in (33)h–j are non-agentive. Three of the adverbs listed are clearly cognate with agreeing adverbs found in Enets: mˈin∘ xə- ‘quickly’ (cf. FE minxu- ‘immediately’), warˈeq- / warˈexə- ‘with difficulty’ (cf. barimagu(FE) / bariɔxo- (TE) ‘barely, hardly’) and the non-agentive tamˈi- ‘immediately’ (cf. tɔmini- (FE), tɔmino- (TE) ‘just, then, while’). Example (34) illustrates the use of an agentive adverb. In (34a) the adverb mˈin∘ xənˈi ‘quickly’ agrees in person and number with the subject mənˈ∘ , and this is the only kind of agreement available to it, cf. the ungrammatical (34b): (34)

a. mənˈ∘ sˈit∘ mˈin∘ xə-nˈi xanaə-dəm-sˈ∘ I you.ACC quickly-1SG take-1SG-PST ‘I quickly took you away.’ b. ∗ mənˈ∘ sˈit∘ mˈin∘ xə-nt∘ xanaə-dəm-sˈ∘ I you.ACC quickly-2SG take-1SG-PST Intended: ‘I quickly took you away.’ (Tundra Nenets; Nikolaeva 2014: 179)

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In (35a), however, the adverb mˈin∘ xənt∘ ‘quickly’ agrees with the passive agent ‘you’, cf. the ungrammatical (35b): (35)

a. mˈin∘ xə-nt∘ xada-wer∘ quickly-2SG kill-PFV.PTCP.2SG ‘He was quickly killed by you.’ b. ∗ mˈin∘ xə-nta xada-wer∘ quickly-3SG kill-PFV.PTCP.2SG Intended: ‘He was quickly killed by you.’ (Tundra Nenets; Nikolaeva 2014: 179)

Agreement rules in the Tundra Nenets passive clause are rather complicated and involve differences in the syntactic behaviour of nouns and pronominal arguments (see Nikolaeva 2014: 239–45), but on the basis of Nikolaeva’s description, it is possible to state that Nenets differs from Enets: in the Enets passive construction, agreement on both the predicate and the adverb is controlled exclusively by the syntactic subject, as was shown in (23). Agent-oriented adverbs can only host agreement in the presence of agreement on the verb (in both finite and non-finite clauses) or—in the case of a relative clause—on the relativized head nominal. In the absence of such agreement, adverbs cannot agree. This allowed Nikolaeva (2014: 180) to analyse this behaviour as concord. For instance, in (36a) the adverb ‘earlier, in the past’ can only be located in the main clause and agree with the main clause subject; it cannot be placed in the dependent clause and cannot target the object controlling the dependent subject, as shown in (36b): (36)

a. [ti-m (∗ sˈenˈana-nˈi) xada-∘ ] sˈenˈana-nt∘ sˈiqmˈi reindeer-ACC earlier-1SG kill-MOD earlier-2SG I.ACC tabˈida-nə-sˈ∘ force-2SG-PST ‘In the past you ordered me to kill the reindeer.’ b. ∗ [ti-m (sˈenˈana-nˈi) xada-∘ ] sˈenˈana-nˈi sˈiqmˈi reindeer-ACC earlier-1SG kill-MOD earlier-1SG I.ACC tabˈida-nə-sˈ∘ force-2SG-PST Intended: ‘In the past you ordered me to kill the reindeer.’ (Tundra Nenets; Nikolaeva 2014: 180)

The second, smaller group of agreeing adverbs can agree with the agent (subject) or with a non-agentive argument (typically the object). The origins of these adverbs are harder to establish: ‘There are no nouns etymologically related to these adverbs in modern Tundra Nenets’ (Nikolaeva 2014: 180). There is also a difference in meaning: the agreeing adverb highlights the semantico-pragmatic link between the event denoted by the clause and the argument which controls the

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agreement. Thus, the choice of the agreement controller, first-person singular in (37a) or second-person singular in (37b), depends on which referent has been established as topical in the previous discourse: (37)

a. ŋədˈ∘ bˈa-nˈi sˈit∘ xamcəə-d∘ m therefore-1SG you.ACC love-1SG ‘That is why I love you.’ b. ŋədˈ∘ bˈa-t∘ sˈit∘ xamcəə-d∘ m therefore-2SG you.ACC love-1SG ‘That is why I love you.’ (Tundra Nenets; Nikolaeva 2014: 181)

In (38) the choice is more semantic than pragmatic: the switch in agreement on the adverb tamˈi- ‘immediately’ creates a difference in the meaning of the whole sentence. The adverb agreeing with the second-person singular in (38a) has scope over the addressee of the imperative, whereas the adverb agreeing with the firstperson singular in (38b) has scope over the argument ‘I’: (38)

a. sˈiqmˈi tamˈi-nt∘ lˈekarə-n∘ h xana-q I.ACC immediately-2SG doctor-DAT take-IMP.2SG ‘Take me to the doctor immediately (after you come).’ b. sˈiqmˈi tamˈi-nˈi lˈekarə-n∘ h xana-q I.ACC immediately-1SG doctor-DAT take-IMP.2SG ‘Take me to the doctor immediately (after I come).’ (Tundra Nenets; based on Nikolaeva 2014: 181)

The non-agentive adverbs in Nenets do not have the same sensitivity to the finiteness of the clause as the agentive ones; they agree independently of the form of the predicate. This leads Nikolaeva (2014: 182) to conclude that ‘nonagentive agreeing adverbs do not require that the controller of agreement should be cross-referenced elsewhere, that is, agreement does not originate as concord’. Although it should be noted that one of the Enets adverbs that shows agreement in the non-finite clause headed by an uninflecting converb, namely tɔmini‘just, then, while’, is cognate with the Nenets non-agentive adverb tamˈi- ‘immediately’, there is no evidence that Enets also has an agentive–non-agentive division in its adverbs. As a result it is possible to conclude that adverb agreement in Enets is considerably less complex than the system described for Nenets by Nikolaeva (2014), since it displays no variability in terms of the controller, a lack of sensitivity to the finiteness of the clause, and fewer agreeing adverbs in general. We must also allow for the possibility that these differences are due to the fact that elicitation, which is a possible method of data collection for Nenets, is no longer available for FE.

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4.5 Agreeing adverbs in Nganasan and Selkup Besides Enets and Nenets, there are two other living languages in the Samoyedic group, Nganasan and Selkup. There is no mention of agreeing adverbs in the existing descriptions of either language, but several agreeing adverbs are attested in Nganasan texts (Brykina et al. 2018). At present we can merely list these agreeing adverbs; proper analysis of their morphosyntactic behaviour is a task for the future. The agreeing adverbs that have been observed for Nganasan are listed in (39).⁸ (39)

a. b. c. d. e. f.

kərutə- ‘just so’ ŋɨɨtə- ‘still’ manu(nu)- ‘earlier’ təgətə ‘then’ ŋuəlɨ ‘certainly’ batə ‘properly, as should be done’ (Marina Brykina and Valentin Gusev, p.c.)

Their tendency to agree varies considerably: (39a–b) and (39f ) always show agreement;⁹ (39c) does not agree when used without the locative suffix -nu-, but normally agrees when used with it; (39d–e) rarely agree. For instance, out of some 400 examples in texts, only one instance of ŋuəlɨ ‘certainly’ is in an agreeing form. In Selkup, no agreeing adverbs have been identified. However, there are postpositions which inflect for possessive suffixes functioning as agreement markers:¹⁰ (40)

mat qo¨-ɣek waše-mba ńep I near-LOC.1SG fly-PST.NAR.3SG.S duck ‘A duck flew near me.’ (Selkup; Kim 1986: 111, glosses added)

(41)

ti qo¨-ɣendo kɨba ńa¨tcˇala kocˇcˇek e-wa-tə you.DU near-LOC.2DU small child.PL many be-PRS-3PL ‘There were many small children near you two.’ (Selkup; Kim 1986: 111, glosses added)

As is clear from the examples, these postpositions in Selkup agree with their complements rather than showing clausal agreement, and therefore are not external agreement targets.

⁸ Note that ŋonə- ‘self ’—which always agrees—might also be considered an adverb, but we treat it as belonging to a separate class of intensifiers. ⁹ There is one usage of ŋɨɨtə- ‘still’ (out of a total of 66 tokens in texts) where it is used without the agreement (Maria Brykina, p.c.). ¹⁰ Thanks to Maria Brykina for help with glossing these examples.

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4.6 Conclusions Agreeing adverbs in the Samoyedic languages represent an instance of agreement featuring on unusual targets. Despite the scarcity of the data and the endangered status of the languages involved, Samoyedic makes a substantial contribution to the typological picture of agreeing adverbs. The phenomenon of agreeing adverbs is by no means marginal in Samoyedic: three out of the four extant languages have a reasonable number of agreeing adverbs, of which less than half are cognates. This indicates that agreeing adverbs are a stable phenomenon, but at the same time one which allows innovations, as every language has some agreeing adverbs not shared with any other languages of the Samoyedic branch. The diachronic origins of adverbial agreement are clearly nominal across the whole branch, as is evident both from the roots themselves and from the use of locative suffixes and oblique possessive agreement suffixes. Significantly, agreeing adverbs are not the only items in the system which redeploy possessive morphology to realize agreement: converbs, participles, and nominalizations heading non-finite clauses do the same. The two closely related Samoyedic languages whose grammatical descriptions contain data on the syntax and usage of agreeing adverbs show different synchronic pictures as regards the controller of agreement on adverbs: while agreeing adverbs in Enets agree with the syntactic subject and the observed deviations have nothing to do with semantics or pragmatics, the adverbs in Nenets are divided into two types (agentive and non-agentive), are sensitive to the semantic rather than syntactic roles of their controllers, and show more freedom in being able to agree with different controllers depending on semantic and pragmatic factors. On the other hand, the agreeing adverbs in Enets can agree even in a clause where the predicate does not show agreement, thus demonstrating that agreement on adverbs is not dependent on the presence of agreement morphology on the verb. The textual data from Enets and Nganasan show noticeable variation in the use of agreeing forms: some adverbs show agreement every time they are used, and some (albeit a very small minority) can switch between agreeing and non-agreeing variants. Again, this has an analogy in the verbal system in that the heads of the dependent clauses also show the same variation. Finally, the availability of third-person singular marking in all agreement contexts observed in Enets may indicate the decline of the system or at least presage the loss of some of the agreeing adverbs. This process is to be expected, since adverbs are an atypical agreement target and as such an exceptional morphosyntactic phenomenon. As with all such exceptions, their existence is a fragile balance between the pressure of levelling and the support provided by properties found elsewhere in the morphosyntactic system—in the case of Samoyedic, the properties of non-finite verbal forms.

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Acknowledgements This research was carried out as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘External Agreement’ (AH/R005540/1); the AHRC’s institutional and financial support is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks are due to Olesya Khanina for sharing her Enets data and analysis, and for her considerable input to the early drafts of this chapter. I am also grateful to Marina Brykina and Valentin Gusev for providing the Nganasan data and to Maria Brykina for help with glossing the Selkup examples. Thanks go to Oliver Bond, Steven Kaye, and Olesya Khanina for helpful comments on various drafts of the chapter. All mistakes are my responsibility.

5 Unusual agreement targets in Ripano Tania Paciaroni

5.1 Introduction Italo-Romance varieties are well known for having typologically interesting and often rare agreement phenomena (see Loporcaro 1986, 1998, 2018; Ledgeway 2011, 2017; D’A lessandro 2017; Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018a; Bond et al. 2022b). Among these varieties, Ripano, the Italo-Romance variety spoken in Ripatransone (Italy, southern Marche), has received particular attention because its agreement system is highly pervasive (see, among others, Egidi 1965; Parrino 1967; Lu¨dtke 1976; Harder 1988; Mancini 1993; Ledgeway 2012: 299–310; Burroni et al. 2016; D’A lessandro 2017, 2020; Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018a). The range of agreement targets is unexpectedly wide, including not only verbs, determiners, adjectives, and adverbs, but also wh-words, prepositions, complementizers, and even nouns. Moreover, Ripano is exceptional (at least within Romance) concerning the distribution of agreement features: gender is found across all agreement target types, including finite and non-finite verb forms. Insight into both the pervasive nature of agreement across targets and gender agreement on verbs is provided by (1)–(2).¹ (1)

nən ˈdɔrm-u ˈmaŋg-u l-a ˈnɔtː-u NEG sleep.PRS-M.SG not_even-M.SG DEF-F.SG night(F)-M.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] can’t even sleep at night.’ (AnIa, RIP20_32)²

(2)

nən ˈdɔrm-a ˈmaŋg-a l-a ˈnɔtː-a NEG sleep.PRS-F.SG not_even-F.SG DEF-F.SG night(F)-F.SG ‘I [ = female referent (F)] can’t even sleep at night.’ (AnIa, RIP20_32a)

¹ The data, which stem from both my own fieldwork and fieldwork within the DAI project as well as from publications by native speakers (checked with the authors themselves), are given in IPA notation. The glosses are morphosyntactic: the value of syncretic forms is assigned considering the disambiguating syntactic context (see Corbett 2006: 33–4). ² Letters and numbers in parentheses after example translations refer to the codes in the online DAI database (Loporcaro et al. 2020). These identifiers consist of four letters for the speaker (e.g. AnIa), followed by three letters for the datapoint (e.g. RIP for Ripatransone), and two digits for the type of source (e.g. 20). The first number of the code distinguishes questionnaires (1 = morphology; 2 = syntax) from spontaneous speech (3 = ethnotext; 7 = picture story); the second number specifies the topic of the questionnaire (e.g. 0 = prepositional phrases), the subject of the ethnotext or the title of the picture story. More detailed information is available in the metadata section of the DAI project website (www. dai.uzh.ch/new/#/public/metadata). Tania Paciaroni, Unusual agreement targets in Ripano. In: Agreement beyond the Verb. Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Tania Paciaroni (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0005

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In these examples, agreement is evident in both the nominal and clausal domains. In the nominal domain, the definite article la is feminine singular to match the lexical gender and number values of the head noun ‘night’, which is inherently feminine. In the clausal domain, not only the lexical verb ‘sleep’, but also the adverb ‘not even’ and the noun ‘night’ in adjunct position co-vary in form in order to match the gender and number of the subject referent, taking the masculine singular suffix ending in -u if the subject is masculine, as in (1), but the feminine singular suffix ending in -a if the subject is feminine, as in (2). Two further elements of unexpected agreement behaviour are evident here. First, the lexical verb agrees with the subject in gender and number, whereas suffixal person marking in the singular is entirely neutralized. Second, the noun ‘night’ has both a lexically valued gender (feminine, in parentheses) and a contextually valued one. Agreement on unusual targets is subject to restrictions of a different nature. First, among the parts of speech that are unusual agreement targets, agreement is never found on all lexical items (e.g. the adverb ˈmaŋgǝ ‘not even’ can agree, but ɱˈveːtʃǝ ‘instead, however’ and ˈbːɛ ‘well’ cannot). Second, acceptability of this sort of agreement is subject to variation depending both on formal linguistic (e.g. morphosyntactic) conditions and on conditions relating to sociolinguistic variation. Both kinds of restrictions are shared with more usual agreement targets. The aim of the present study is to discuss the properties of unusual agreement targets in Ripano, drawing on elicited and semi-spontaneous data in the Zurich Database of Agreement in Italo-Romance (DAI) (Loporcaro et al. 2020). §5.2 describes the methodology used to gather data during the fieldwork as well as the major additional data sources. §5.3 introduces the properties of Ripano relevant for understanding the features and morphological exponents involved in agreement. §5.4 provides a brief account of agreement as encountered in the nominal domain and the clausal domain on the familiar targets, i.e. verbs, past participles, and predicative adjectives. §5.5 provides a detailed description of the range of unusual targets involved in phrasal and clausal agreement domains, organized according to part of speech. §5.6 summarizes the main findings.

5.2 Data and methodology The Ripano data studied in this chapter were gathered during several dedicated fieldwork trips that took place between 2012 and 2019. They were organized by Michele Loporcaro and Tania Paciaroni, mainly in the context of the DAI research project, which also involved other participants, both staff members and students, from the University of Zurich. The objects of study were unusual agreement phenomena, more precisely overt gender, participial agreement, agreement with non-canonical controllers such as complex noun phrases, resolution rules, and

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‘external agreement’ (for a definition and discussion, see Bond et al., Chapter 1, this volume). These phenomena were investigated by means of elicitation (questionnaires) and semi-spontaneous speech (picture stories). The vocabulary used in the questionnaires and the clarity of the questions were checked by native speakers. The questionnaires were taken by 10 native speakers, who also provided relevant sociolinguistic information, such as age, sex, education, the place of origin of their parents, and their exposure to other languages—apart from Standard Italian (henceforth StIt), since all informants are bilingual, with full proficiency in both StIt and the local dialect. Table 5.1 contains the list of codes identifying the speakers recorded with their years of birth; speakers are further distinguished by their use of the urban or the rural variety.³ Table 5.1 Speakers recorded VARIETY

SPEAKER AND BIRTH YEAR

Urban Ripano

AlRo (1927), LuCa (1944), ReBr (1949), FiPi (1953), ArCa (1953), GiCa (1961), FaCa (1990), NiLu (1996)

Rural Ripano

AnIa (1937), PaVe (1961)

The questionnaires consisted of 670 sentences and the participants were asked to translate these sentences from Italian to their variety of Ripano. Three picture stories were developed to elicit the lexemes and constructions of interest. Moreover, we systematically asked for judgements on the acceptability of competing forms that could conceivably exist in a given system or that do exist in other varieties of Ripano or in the contact languages, i.e. StIt and Abruzzese dialects. All sessions were recorded, transcribed, and checked by native speakers, translated into English, and partially annotated within the DAI database. The volume of annotated data is 18,577 tokens. For the purposes of this work, transcribed but non-annotated data have also been considered. I also verified and integrated DAI data and analyses by checking reference works, dictionaries, and folk texts written by native speakers (see Rossi 1999, 2001, 2007; Lambertelli 2003; Cardarelli 2010). Another major source is the dictionary by Alfredo Rossi (2008), a local scholar and native speaker. It contains approximately 4,200 lemmas and has proved to be very useful whenever the information in the structured sources was insufficient. ³ For relevant information about speakers, see the metadata page of the DAI project website (www. dai.uzh.ch/new/#/public/metadata).

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5.3 Feature specifications and exponence To demonstrate the extraordinary pervasiveness of agreement in Ripano, it is first necessary to outline the general properties of the system. §5.3.1 gives a synopsis of the inflectional agreement features and values, i.e. those features for which there is systematic co-variance between a controller and a target, §5.3.2 presents the proportion of lexemes which can agree, and §5.3.3 presents the morphological resources employed to realize agreement across parts of speech. Finally, §5.3.4 provides the background in historical phonetics necessary to understand the rise of this peculiar system.

5.3.1 Inflectional and agreement features Overall, the inflectional system of Ripano can be analysed in terms of seven morphosyntactic and morphosemantic features (i.e. inflectional features), listed in Table 5.2. Table 5.2 Inflectional features and possible values FEATURE

POSSIBLE VALUES

NUMBER

singular (SG), plural (PL)

PERSON

1, 2, 3

GENDER

masculine (M), feminine (F), mass neuter (N), non-autonomous neuter (NAN)

CASE

subject (SBJ), direct object (DO), indirect object (IO)

TENSE / ASPECT

present (PRS), imperfect (IMPF), perfect (PRF), future (FUT), compound perfect (CPRF), pluperfect (PPRF), compound future (CFUT)

MODE

indicative (IND), subjunctive (SBJV), conditional (COND), imperative (IMP), participle (PTCP), gerund (GER), infinitive (INF)

There are three agreement features: number, person, and gender. The number feature has two values: singular and plural. The person feature has three values: first, second, and third. The gender system, which differs from the binary system of StIt but is fairly typical for a central-southern non-standard Italo-Romance variety, has four controller genders, i.e. four agreement classes of the controllers—masculine, feminine, mass neuter, and non-autonomous neuter—and three target genders, i.e. a three-way contrast on agreement targets

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(according to Loporcaro & Paciaroni’s 2011 analysis), illustrated in Table 5.3 by gender agreement on definite articles.⁴

Table 5.3 Gender system in Ripano

∗

In urban Ripano the feminine singular cell of the definite article (as well as of the third-person direct object clitic) shows overabundance, as the original form le is being replaced by innovative la due to contact with StIt (for a definition of overabundance, see Thornton 2011). In rural Ripano the feminine determiner (as well as the direct object clitic) is always la.

The definite article displays a three-way inflectional contrast in the singular (lə ˈpa ‘the bread’ vs lu ˈka/ˈvratːʃa ‘the dog/arm’ vs le/la ˈma ‘the hand’), but just a twoway distinction in the plural (li ˈka ‘the dogs’ vs lə ˈvratːʃa/ˈma ‘the arms/hands’). So-called mass neuter nouns, like ˈpa ‘bread’, are all [–COUNT], and thus lack a plural form. Non-autonomous neuter nouns like ˈvratːʃa ‘arm’ trigger a fully syncretic agreement pattern, selecting the same article form as the masculine ˈka ‘dog’ in the singular and as the feminine ˈma ‘hand’ in the plural. This agreement class is similar to the Romanian neuter, which is also a ‘non-autonomous’ gender value (Corbett 2011: 459–60; see Loporcaro 2018: 92–110 for a detailed analysis of the three-gender system in Romanian). Variation across generations within the speech community at times shows the reassignment of noun lexemes from the mass neuter to the masculine: while the four-way contrast is categorical for elderly urban speakers (born up to the early 1950s), younger speakers have a double gender assignment (N and M) for [–COUNT] nouns, and tend to prefer masculine agreement forms, such as lu ˈsalə ‘DEF.M.SG salt’, over mass neuter forms, such as lə ˈsalə ‘DEF.N.SG salt’.

⁴ I follow Corbett (1991: 151) in assuming a distinction between controller and target genders: ‘controller genders, the genders into which nouns are divided’ vs ‘target genders, the genders which are marked on adjectives, verbs and so on’.

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Table 5.4 indicates the features that each part of speech can inflect for in Ripano. Grey cells indicate where there is a difference between agreement in Ripano and typical central-southern Italo-Romance varieties. Such varieties do not show agreement for the combinations of features and target types marked in grey, whereas Ripano does. The brackets indicate that in the verb paradigm the feature of person has a less systematic realization in Ripano than in other (Italo-)Romance varieties.

Table 5.4 Morphosyntactic features and values (based on Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018b: 86)

Unusual targets, such as adverbs and nouns, inflect for the same agreement features and values as the more familiar targets. Moreover, there is an unusual distribution of agreement features, as finite verbs realize gender agreement to a larger extent than person agreement, as seen in examples (1)–(2), and non-finite verbs can also agree for gender and number (§5.5.3).

5.3.2 Agreement potential: agreeing vs non-agreeing unusual targets Items belonging to almost any part of speech can be agreement targets in Ripano. However, while all determiners and verbs realize agreement, there is no other word class where every member of the class has the potential to agree, indicating that this is lexically specified for each lexeme. Within the adjective class almost all items agree, while within wh-words the majority agree. By contrast, a minority of all prepositions and complementizers, a handful of adverbs, and very few nouns have agreement potential in Ripano. This is demonstrated by the data in

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Table 5.5, from the spontaneous DAI corpus, which comprises about 3,500 tokens in total.⁵ Table 5.5 Lexical items with agreement potential, based on DAI spontaneous data

For categorical vs optional agreement, geo-socio-stylistic variation is important. Sociolinguistic factors, particularly age and urban or rural origin, allow for some predictions on the likelihood of agreement potential. However, they are not categorical predictions, as substantial inter- and intra-speaker variation is observed. This is not unexpected, as the system is rapidly changing and on the way to losing its agreement peculiarities as a consequence of two contact situations: (i) Italianization, i.e. the influence of StIt, and (ii) convergence towards the main characteristics of the Abruzzese dialect, to whose diasystem Ripano also belongs (see Pellegrini 1977; Ferrari-Bridgers 2010; D’A lessandro 2017; Paciaroni 2020). There are various prerequisites operational at different levels of the grammatical system that must be met for inflection to be possible at all: phonological, morphological, and morphosyntactic. At the phonological level, we find the specification that word forms require a final unstressed vowel to be able to inflect. If a word form ends in a stressed vowel or a consonant, it is uninflected. This is illustrated in Table 5.6 with different types of adverb. While adverbs in Ripano can agree, conditions on their phonological shape restrict the realization of agreement on this word

⁵ The corpus consists of six stories representative of all three types developed in the project, narrated by four speakers. Three of them are speakers of urban Ripano: FaCa (561 tokens), LuCa (644 tokens), ReBr (715 tokens), and one is a speaker of rural Ripano: PaVe (1,583 tokens).

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class. If an adverb ends in a stressed vowel (whatever semantic and syntactic characteristics it has), there is always just one non-agreeing form, which can end in any vowel, as illustrated by the contrast between agreeing adverbs and non-agreeing adverbs in Table 5.6. Table 5.6 Phonological constraint on inflection AGREEING ADVERBS

NON-AGREEING ADVERBS

deictic: ˈɛk-ə/-u/-i/-e/-ə ‘here-N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL/-F.SG/-F.PL’

deictic: ˈkwa ‘here’ ˈlːa ‘there’ laˈjːo ‘there’

non-deictic: vǝˈtʃiːn-ǝ/-u/-i/-e/-ǝ ‘nearby-N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL/-F.SG/-F.PL’

non-deictic: ˈsu ‘up’ ˈjo ‘down’

TEMPORAL

ˈprɛʃt-ǝ/-u/-i/-e/-ǝ ‘early-N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL/-F.SG/-F.PL’

əˈmo ‘then’ mandǝˈma ‘this morning’

MANNER

ˈmaːl-ǝ/-u/-i/-e/-ǝ ‘badly-N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL/-F.SG/-F.PL’

deictic: kːuˈʃi ‘so’ lːuˈʃi ‘so’ sːuˈʃi ‘so’

SPATIAL

non-deictic: ˈbɛ ‘well’ QUANTITY

ˈtand-ǝ/-u/-i/-e/-ǝ ‘much-N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL/-F.SG/-F.PL’

ˈpju ‘more’

FOCUS

ˈsoːl-ǝ/-u/-i/-e/-ǝ ‘only-N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL/-F.SG/-F.PL’

—

This phonological predictor affects the parts of speech differently. For instance, in the spontaneous DAI corpus, it is relevant for 10 of 34 adverbs, but for none of the 51 adjectives. Having established a phonological condition on agreement potential, we now turn to morphological and morphosyntactic constraints.

5.3.3 Exponents of agreement In Ripano, agreement can be realized by a suffix and/or by stem allomorphy (SA), involving vowel and consonantal alternations (as exemplified in Tables 5.7–5.9).⁶ ⁶ The DAI data show a tendency for speakers to eliminate SA in the paradigm, extending or substituting the stem found in the corresponding StIt form (cf. ˈpanːi ‘clothes’ in (17), compared to ˈpaɲːə in

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The morphologically unmarked inflectional form, deployed whenever agreement is precluded, is the third-person singular neuter form for both familiar targets (i.e. adjectives and verbs) as well as typologically unusual targets.⁷ The use of the morphological default is illustrated in examples (3), (7), and (8). In (3) the controller is the clause mə ˈðeːvu maˈɲːa ðə ˈmeːnə ‘I must eat less’. The verb ‘say’ and the adverb ‘always’ both occur in the neuter singular form. The clitic pronoun also takes the neuter singular form in lə.⁸ (3)

[mə= ˈðeːvu maˈɲːa ðə ˈmeːn-ə] ˈmoːj-ə REFL.1SG= must.PRS.1SG.M eat.INF of less-N.SG wife(F)-SG =m-a mə= l-ə/∗ -u= ˈðiːtʃ-ə ˈsɛmpr-ə =POSS.1SG-F.SG IO1SG= DO3-N.SG/-M.SG= say.PRS-3SG.N always-N.SG ‘I must eat less: my wife keeps telling me.’ (GiCa, RIP14_58)

The neuter clitic lə is the same as that selected by mass neuter controller nouns, as in (4), contrasting with the masculine and feminine values in (5) and (6) respectively. (4)

l-ǝ ˈpeːp-ǝ l-ǝ= ˈpijː-ǝ ˈiǝ DEF-N.SG pepper(N)-SG DO3-N.SG= take.PRS-3SG.N 1SG ‘I will get the pepper.’ (PaVe, RIP14_13.2)

(5)

ʃt ˈɔːm-a⁹ nə l-u= suˈpːɔrte DEM.PROX man(M)-SG NEG DO3-M.SG= bear.PRS.RED_AGR¹⁰ ‘I [ = male referent (M)] cannot bear this man.’ (LuCa, RIP11_18)

(29)). The tables in this overview reflect mainly the most conservative variety and are intended as a reference point. ⁷ The neuter form of the definite article is for instance used with nominalizations: (i)

ʃt alˈbɛrg-ə tʃa ðə l-ə ˈbːɛlː-ə DEM.PROX hotel(M)-SG have.PRS.3 of DEF-F.PL beautiful\F-F.PL ma nə mːə= ˈpjaːtʃ-ə l-ə maˈɲːa but NEG IO1SG= like.PRS.IND-3SG.N DEF-N.SG eat(N).SG ‘This hotel has nice rooms, but I don’t like its food.’ (NiLu, RIP14_33.1)

ˈkamːər-ə, room(F)-PL

⁸ Younger speakers like NiLu, born in 1996, use both masculine and neuter forms in such cases. (i)

nə l-ə=/-u= saˈpje [kə rːəˈvjeːvu NEG DO3-N.SG=/-M.SG= know.IMPF.1SG COMP arrive.IMPF.M.SG ‘I didn’t know you would arrive today.’ (NiLu, RIP14_34.2)

ˈodːʒə] today

⁹ In the reduced inflection of masculine and non-autonomous neuter nouns, the default suffix -[a] occurs in both the singular and plural forms, contrasting with the M.SG -[u] and M.PL -[i]. In the glosses, I do not insert the information RED(UCED)_INFL(ECTION) after the number, for reasons of readability. ¹⁰ The previously feminine form suˈpːɔrte (Table 5.14) has been extended to the default form (ex. (8)) and to all reduced agreement verb forms (§5.4.2.1, Tables 5.17 and 5.18) except second-person singular, which would have a different stem /suˈpːwort/. I consider the second-person singular form with a different stem and ending in -/ə/ as evidence of reduced agreement, as distinct from neuter default agreement.

UNUSUAL AGREEMENT TARGETS IN RIPANO (6)

l-e ˈamː-e l-e= ˌso DEF-F.SG leg(F)-SG DO3-F.SG= be.PRS.1SG ‘The leg, I have seen it.’ (AlRo, RIP11_27)

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ˈviʃt-e see:PTCP-F.SG

When a viable relation between a target and a would-be controller cannot be established, targets with multiple agreement forms occur in their third-person singular neuter form. This is exemplified in (7), where for the periphrasis ˈfa ˈnɛ:ve ‘to do snow’ there is no possibility of an overt subject being realized (the absence of an overt subject is usual with ‘weather verbs’ in most Italo-Romance varieties). (7)

ŋgə lː ˈanː-ə k ˌɛ ˈnːat-u in DEF year(M)-SG REL be.PRS.3 be_born:PTCP-M.SG ˈfìjːə =m-u fiˈtʃiː-a ˈtand-e ˈnɛːv-e son(M).SG POSS.1SG-M.SG do.IMPF-3SG.N much-F.SG snow(F)-SG ‘In the year when my son was born, much snow fell.’ (AlRo, RIP11_91)

Similarly, in Unspecified Human Subject (UHS) constructions, where the subject is also unrealized, the verb surfaces in the default form preceded by the clitic particle sə, as exemplified in (8). (8)

ŋgə ˌʃt-a ˈkaːsə sə= ˈmaɲː-e ˈbːɛ in DEM.PROX-F.SG house(F).SG UHS eat.PRS-3SG.N well ‘In this house the food is good.’ (ArCa, RIP14_9)

Another typologically distinctive property of Ripano is that members belonging to almost every lexical part of speech can have two sets of inflections, i.e. two ways of realizing a particular feature specification: a full and a reduced one. Which paradigm is used depends on different types of condition.¹¹ Further morphological and morphosyntactic prerequisites determine whether full inflection is possible at all. At the morphological level, the inflectional class (IC) to which a lexeme belongs can be a prerequisite for reduced inflection. For instance, within adjectives, for which we distinguish four ICs and whose paradigm consists of five cells, the opposition of two series of forms is restricted to adjectives belonging to IC I (Table 5.9), whereas ICs II, III, and IV have only one set of forms (Loporcaro & Paciaroni 2021: 223–7). Nevertheless, although restricted to a single inflection class, it is very stable as IC I contains almost all adjectives (circa 95%, i.e. 279/285 adjectives extracted from Rossi’s 2008 dictionary).

¹¹ Following Corbett (2006: 93–6) I use ‘full’ and ‘reduced’ to identify two sets of inflected forms of a lexeme which, while realizing the same feature specification, differ in that one (‘full’) makes more distinctions than the other (‘reduced’). In dialectological studies of Ripano, the terms traditionally employed are ‘strong’ and ‘weak’. As will become clear in §5.3.4, Table 5.13, the full/strong series is the (innovative) one, with a distinction of final vowels due to contact with the dialects of ‘Area Mediana’, whereas the reduced/weak system is the conservative series, with neutralization in -ə of all final vowels except etymological -a.

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Not surprisingly for a non-standard variety, there is extreme diatopic microvariation, and we must distinguish an urban and a rural variety. Tables 5.7 and 5.8 illustrate the agreement suffixes for gender and number values in both full and reduced inflection in urban and rural varieties of Ripano. Here, and in the rest of this chapter, grey cells signal syncretism. Stem alternations are signalled by [+SA]. Table 5.7a Urban Ripano, full inflection

Table 5.7b Urban Ripano, reduced inflection

Table 5.8a Rural Ripano, full inflection

Table 5.8b Rural Ripano, reduced inflection

Neuter and feminine each have just one way of realizing their feature specifications. Masculine forms, on the other hand, are different. We can distinguish two series of inflectional forms: they show no syncretism either affixally or internally in the full paradigm, but have an affixally syncretic form in the reduced paradigm. Suffixes occur as exponents of agreement on (some members of ) every part of speech, except interjections, which do not agree. SA occurs as an exponent of agreement of gender, number, and person on (some members of ) all usual agreeing targets apart from articles. Both types of exponence are illustrated by the full (Table 5.9a) and reduced (Table 5.9b) paradigms of the adjective ‘big’, which belongs to IC I in urban Ripano. Table 5.9a Urban Ripano, adjective ˈgrwosːu ‘big’, full inflection (IC I)

Table 5.9b Urban Ripano, adjective ˈgrwosːə ‘big’, reduced inflection (IC I)

The full inflection paradigm (Table 5.9a) has four different suffixes (-ə, -u, -i, -e) and syncretism between two cells (N.SG = F.PL); in the reduced inflection paradigm (Table 5.9b) there is more syncretism (N.SG = F.PL = M.SG/PL) and only two different suffixes are found, -e for the F.SG form and -ə for all other forms. In

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addition, we find two types of SA associated with gender and number, respectively. First, the diphthong [wo] distinguishes the masculine from the feminine and neuter stems, which have [ɔ].¹² Second, the palatalizing effect of -i distinguishes the masculine plural stem ˈgrwoʃː- from the other stems, ˈgrwosː- for masculine singular and ˈgrɔsː- for feminine. Unusual agreeing targets such as nouns and prepositions partly share the same pattern. Here gender–number agreement is normally expressed morphologically only by suffixes that attach to an invariable stem. Members of these classes exhibit either full inflection or uninflectedness. Examples of the agreement paradigms of a noun are given in Tables 5.10 and 5.11, with bːəˈswoɲːu ‘need’ and ˈfaːme ‘hunger’, which are inherently specified as masculine and feminine, but take contextual gender–number marking if they occur in specific syntactic constructions (see §5.5.7). Table 5.10 Urban Ripano, noun bːəˈswoɲːu ‘need’ (M)

Table 5.11 Urban Ripano, noun ˈfaːme ‘hunger’ (F)

In the paradigms of both nouns bːəˈswoɲːu ‘need’ (Table 5.10) and ˈfaːme ‘hunger’ (Table 5.11) the same suffixes (-/ə u i e/) surface. In bːəˈswoɲːu the stem maintains the metaphonic diphthong [wo] also in non-metaphonic contexts like those in the N.SG and F.SG and F.PL forms, whose suffixes -ə and -e are not (and have never been) high segments. This is evidence that metaphony was no longer active when the reintroduction of different final vowels applied. ˈfaːme ‘hunger’ (Table 5.11) contains a tonic [a], which in this dialect is not subject to any alteration triggered by a following high segment. In Table 5.12 the paradigm of the preposition ‘towards’ shows the same affixal distinctions as adjectives like ‘big’. However, unlike agreeing adjectives, it has no SA. ¹² Historically, the pattern showing an alternation between [wo] and [ɔ] is the result of the so-called Neapolitan metaphonic diphthongization of low mid vowels. For an analysis of metaphony (alteration of stressed mid vowels triggered by a following high segment), see for example Maiden (1991) and Loporcaro (2011: 125–34, 2016a).

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TANIA PACIARONI Table 5.12 Urban Ripano, preposition ˈvɛrsu ‘towards’, full inflection

Having discussed agreement features and inflectional exponence, we now turn to the historical origins of the system.

5.3.4 The inventory of final vowels The peculiar system of full and reduced inflection observed in Modern Ripano arose due to a phonetic change that can be explained by reference to the particular geographical position of Ripatransone, immediately south of the isogloss between the two dialectal groups of ‘Area Mediana’ (central Italy, to the north and west) and the upper south (to the south, from Ascoli Piceno down to Apulia and Northern Calabria; see Pellegrini (1977)). ‘Area Mediana’ (Table 5.13, c) has retained the distinction of the original five final unstressed vowels /i e a o u/, whereas in StIt (b) /u/ and /o/ merged as /o/. Upper South (d) has moved towards merging all final vowels as /ə/. Old Ripano (e) neutralized its mid and high final vowels to [ə] but retained /a/ (as in Ascoli Piceno, Jaberg and Jud 1928–40 pt 578; see Gaspari 1971–2). It then restored the word-final contrasts as /i e ə u/, respecting the etymological distribution only partially (see Parrino 1967: 156–9; Lu¨dtke 1976: 82; Harder 1988: 35–42, 100–1; Loporcaro & Vigolo 2002–3: 9–10). In urban Ripano, /ə/ is realized either as [ə], which is preferred utteranceinternally, or as [a], which is preferred in prepausal position. Speakers of Table 5.13 Final vowels from Latin to Ripano, compared with StIt and other IR varieties

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rural Ripano tend to generalize the [ə] variant to prepausal position too. New instances of final unstressed /a/ which were never realized as [ə] have also been (re)introduced. These occur in the feminine singular of determiners (see Table 5.3 and its note marked ∗ ), quantifiers and place names (but not in nouns and adjectives).

5.4 Familiar agreement domains and targets From the perspective of Italo-Romance, Ripano exhibits some unusual patterns of agreement even on more familiar agreement targets such as verbs, participles, and predicative adjectives. This section provides a description of these more familiar targets in terms of syntactic domains, distinguishing between agreement in the noun phrase (§5.4.1) and agreement in the clause (§5.4.2).

5.4.1 Agreement in the noun phrase Within the domain of the noun phrase, the lexical head of the phrase (the controller) is a noun or pronoun and the element modifying it (the target) can be a definite or indefinite article, a demonstrative, a possessive, an adjective, a numeral, a quantifier, a wh-word, or a relative clause. The various modifiers within the noun phrase differ in their agreement potential; whenever they agree, they do so in gender and number with the head of the noun phrase. Determiners (articles, demonstratives, and possessives) always select the agreement suffixes of the full paradigm, as do attributive adjectives in postnominal position (see §5.3.3, Tables 5.7a, 5.8a, and 5.9a). When used in prenominal position with a determiner or another agreeing target, attributive adjectives agree with the nominal head in gender and number, but they do so by selecting the reduced set of inflectional forms (see §5.3.3, Tables 5.7b, 5.8b, and 5.9b). The reduced and full forms of the attributive adjective are exemplified in (9) by ˈbːrutːə ‘bad’, a reduced form in prenominal position preceded by the determiner lu, and ˈbːjelːu ‘good’, a full form in postnominal position. (9)

ˈdɔːp-ə/∗ -u after-N.SG/-M.SG

l-u DEF-M.SG

ˈbːrutː-ə bad-M.SG.RED_AGR

ˈtjemb-ə weather(M)-SG

ˈvɛ l-u ˈtjemb-ə ˈbːjelː-u come.PRS.3 DEF-M.SG weather(M)-SG good\M.SG-M.SG ‘Good weather will come after bad weather.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_21) See Paciaroni and Loporcaro (2018a) for a detailed analysis of this behaviour.

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5.4.2 Agreement in the clause In the clausal domain, familiar targets can agree either with the subject or with the object. In some syntactic constructions, default agreement forms (as in (3), (7), and (8)) or reduced agreement forms (as in (5)) are employed. Here I outline the behaviour of finite verb forms (§5.4.2.1), predicative adjectives (§5.4.2.2), and participles (§5.4.2.3).

5.4.2.1 Finite verb forms In the paradigm of finite forms of the verb, the feature of gender receives more systematic marking than that of person. Table 5.14 illustrates the full paradigm of the verb ‘eat’, as described in the literature (Lu¨dtke 1976; Harder 1988: 191–7), with a three-way gender distinction—masculine, feminine, and (mass) neuter— and dedicated suffixes for each of them. In our surveys, we found this paradigm structure in the speech of just a single speaker, born in 1927, who had already served as a consultant for previous researchers. Table 5.14 Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection (variant 1)

The most common system of full agreement forms among our speakers follows the pattern in Table 5.15, with extension of the feminine singular -e to the thirdperson feminine plural and neuter. Table 5.15 Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection (variant 2)

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Among the youngest speakers, even if not very young, the alternation between -e and -ə has also reached the F.SG cell, as seen in Table 5.16. Table 5.16 Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection (variant 3)

In the reduced paradigms, the more conservative speakers maintain a distinction between F.SG, with -e, and all the other combinations, which show free variation between -ə and -e. This is illustrated in Table 5.17. Table 5.17 Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, reduced inflection (variant 1)

The most widespread set of reduced agreement forms displays total neutralization, with free variation between -ə and -e, as shown in Table 5.18. Table 5.18 Urban Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, reduced inflection (variant 2)

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In rural Ripano, although the suffixes are different, under full inflection, illustrated in Table 5.19, the three-way gender distinction remains. Table 5.19 Rural Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, full inflection

Under reduced inflection -ə is found everywhere, as seen in Table 5.20. Table 5.20 Rural Ripano, PRS.IND of maˈɲːa ‘eat’, reduced inflection

The conditions that determine the presence of the full or reduced form are various (Ledgeway 2012: 302–8; D’A lessandro 2017, 2020; Paciaroni 2017). Among these, some conditions are syntactic and concern the type of construction, the nature of the direct object, the feature specifications of the arguments, and the polarity of the clause. The verb takes full agreement in all unaccusative, reflexive, and unergative constructions with topical subjects and unmarked word order. In transitive constructions with a lexical direct object, the clausal subject can control reduced agreement on the verb, as with ˈgwarde ‘look at’ in (10a), or full agreement, as with ˈgwardu in (10b). (10)

a. ˈgward-e l-ə albiˈkɔkː-a e look_at.PRS-RED_AGR DEF-F.PL apricot(F)-PL and l-ə tʃəˈljeːdʒ-a DEF-F.PL cherry(F)-PL ‘He looks at the apricots and the cherries.’ (LuCa, RIP74_12)

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b. e nˈdanda ˈgward-u l-ə tʃəˈrjeːʃ-a and in_the_meantime look_at.PRS-M.SG DEF-F.PL cherry(F)-PL e l-ə bːriˈkɔkː-a and DEF-F.PL apricot(F)-PL ‘In the meantime, he looks at the cherries and the apricots.’ (LuCa, RIP74_18) It should be underlined that the two examples come from the same speaker and semi-spontaneous text, at a distance of six sentences from each other. In (10a), with reduced verb form, the conjoined noun phrases are the relevant Italian lexemes adapted to Ripano morphophonology. In (10b), on the other hand, with a full form of the verb, the conjoined noun phrases are proper to the Ripano dialect. Moreover, the clausal subject controls reduced agreement on the verb in sentences with negative polarity, as illustrated in (11). (11)

kwilː ˈɔːm-a nən tsuˈpːɔrt-e lu kuˈdʒiːn-ə DEM.DIST man(M)-SG NEG bear.PRS-RED_AGR DEF.M.SG cousin(M)-SG ˈmje POSS.1SG ‘That man cannot bear my cousin.’ (LuCa, RIP11_22)

If the direct object is a clitic, as in (12), the verb can either show full agreement with its controller (12b) or reduced agreement (12a). (12)

a. alːoːra and

l-u DO3-M.SG=

b. e l-u and DEF-M.SG

ˈpiʝː-ə take.PRS-RED_AGR

ˈpɔrt-u bring.PRS-M.SG

l ambulandz-a DEF ambulance(F)-SG

su lː to DEF

ospəˈða hospital(M).SG

ˈko ˈtutːə ˈdːo l-ə jəˈnɔcː-ə ˈrɔtː-ə with all.F.PL two DEF-F.PL knee(NAN)\PL-PL broken-F.PL ‘Then the ambulance takes him and brings him to the hospital with both knees broken.’ (LuCa, RIP74_18) Elicitation data confirms that in the presence of a clitic direct object, the selection of the full form of the verb is the preferred option in sentences with positive polarity, as in (13), whereas the reduced form is the only one accepted in sentences with negative polarity, as in (14). (13)

ˌe ˌtːre ˈoːre ˌke vːə= ˈspɛtː-i be.PRS.3 three hour(F).PL REL DO2PL= wait.PRS-M.PL ‘I [ = female referent (F)] have been waiting three hours for you [ = male referents (M.PL)].’ (FiPi, RIP22_93.1)

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(14)

ˈi nə vːə= ˈsɛnd-e/∗ -i 1SG NEG DO2PL= hear.PRS-RED_AGR/-M.PL ‘I [ = female referent (F)] cannot hear you [ = male referents (M.PL)].’ (FiPi, RIP22_97.3)

This confirms that it is important to distinguish between nominal and pronominal direct object controllers of agreement. In sentences with positive polarity, we find nominative–accusative alignment if the object is nominal, but ergative–absolutive alignment if the direct object is a third-person clitic. In sentences with negative polarity, the nature of the direct object is not relevant and only the reduced form of the verb is accepted. In ditransitive constructions, the verb normally selects the reduced form (Ledgeway 2012: 308), as illustrated in (15), whereas the full form is optionally selected when all arguments have the same feature specifications. (15)

viadːʒeˈra ˈntsjeːm-ǝ a ˈisːu tǝ= l-u= travel.FUT.2SG together-N.SG to 3SG.M IO2SG= DO3-M.SG= preˈsɛnd-e introduce.PRS-RED_AGR ‘You will travel with him, let me introduce you.’ (ArCa, RIP27_5.1)

Focus also determines when there is full and when there is reduced agreement in Ripano.¹³ In (16a), focus is on the wh-word ki ‘who’, while in (16b) it is on the postverbal subject ˈdːʒanːi, which expresses new information. In both cases, full agreement is ungrammatical, and we find reduced agreement on the verb. (16b′) illustrates the unmarked word order with full agreement on the verb.¹⁴ (16)

a. ki ˈriːð-ə/∗ -u? who laugh.PRS-RED_AGR/-M.SG ‘Who’s laughing?’ (ReBr, RIP21_57.3) b. ˈriːð-ə/∗ -u ˈdːʒanːi laugh.PRS-RED_AGR/-M.SG Gianni(M).SG ‘Gianni laughs.’ (ReBr, RIP21_57.2)

¹³ The wh-constituent in direct object position co-occurs with full agreement on the verb: (i)

ndoˈndɔ, ˈke ˌsi ˈkɔtː-u? Antonio(M).SG what be.PRS.2SG cook:PTCP-M.SG ‘Antonio, what did you cook?’ (ArCa, RIP14_9)

¹⁴ The facts presented here illustrate a key feature of some Italo-Romance non-standard varieties, i.e. that morphological means are used to mark categories of information structure which in European languages typically have phonological (intonation) or syntactic (constituent position, left/right dislocation) marking. For instance, Forner (1976) shows how, in Genoese, the agreement of the obligatory subject clitic with the nominal referential element varies according to the focal or topical value of the latter.

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b′. ˈdːʒanːi ˈriːð-u Gianni(M).SG laugh.PRS-M.SG ‘Gianni laughs.’ (ReBr, RIP21_57.3) While atypical for Romance languages, gender agreement on finite verb forms also occurs in the nearby village of Cossignano (Harder 1988: 352–75; Ciabattoni 2017: 31–2) and was documented (but not confirmed by fieldwork in 2017) for two further minor centres, Carassai (Harder 1988: 378–9) and Montefiore dell’A so (Harder 1988: 379–81). Moreover, it occurs in isolated verb forms rather than in the entire verbal paradigm, in a few (Italo-)Romance dialects, spoken in the eastern Alpine area, the Emilian Apennines, in Friulian, and in some dialects of Trentino (see Loporcaro & Vigolo 2002–3).

5.4.2.2 Predicative adjectives When used as predicative complements—as well as in postnominal position within the noun phrase—adjectives combine with the copula ˈɛsːe ‘be’ and agree in gender and number with the subject of the clause, as (17) shows. (17)

e rːəˈmacː-u ku l-i ˈʒgritːs-ə ˈtutː-i l-i and soil.PRS-M.SG with DEF-M.PL splash(M)-PL all-M.PL DEF-M.PL ˈpanː-i ˈʃteːs-i ˈkə ˈeːr-i ˈbjaŋg-i cloth(M)-PL hang:PTCP-M.PL REL be.IMPF-M.PL white-M.PL puˈliːt-i clean-M.PL ‘And with the splashes he soils all the hung-up clothes that were white, clean.’ (ReBr, RIP74.41)

Once the right syntactic context is specified, the selection of the full or reduced agreement form is almost categorical. Table 5.21 illustrates the frequency of full and reduced agreement forms in every syntactic context in the annotated DAI corpus: attributive prenominal without determiner, attributive prenominal with determiner, attributive postnominal, and predicative. Table 5.21 Ratio of full and reduced agreement of adjectives in different syntactic environments SYNTACTIC POSITION

FULL AGR

REDUCED AGR

RATIO

ATTRIBUTIVE

14 3 91 128

0 24 1 2

— 1:8 91:1 64:1

PREDICATIVE

prenominal, without determiner prenominal, with determiner postnominal

The very few forms which do not take the expected set of forms (full or reduced) were all realized by the same speaker.

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5.4.2.3 Participles The occurrence of participial agreement controlled by unergative and transitive subjects is a recent innovation (relative to the common Romance development), which arose in some eastern Abruzzese dialects of Abruzzo (Teramo area) and the Marche (Ascoli Piceno area), see Harder (1988: 153–4, 230); Loporcaro (1998: 180–2, 2016b: 811–12); D’A lessandro and Roberts (2010: 43); D’A lessandro (2017: 30). An example of an unergative construction is given in (18), where the participle agrees with the plural subject of the clause. (18)

ˌʃt-u ˈmeːs-a nən ˈtseːmə faˈtjaːt-i DEM.PROX-M.SG month(M)-SG NEG be.PRS.1PL work:PTCP-M.PL ‘We [ = male referents (M.PL)] did not have any work this month.’ (LuCa, RIP11_42)

(19) illustrates participial agreement in transitive clauses, a phenomenon which is undergoing syntactic change. Harder (1988: 135, 154) reports the variable occurrence of agreement with a lexical direct object, along the same conditions as are observed in several varieties of central-southern Italy (for further examples and references, see Loporcaro 2016b: 806–7). However, agreement with a lexical direct object has been deemed ungrammatical by DAI consultants (19b), who only accept either subject agreement (19a), which is the preferred and more likely option for them, or default agreement (19c), when the subject and the lexical object have different feature specifications. This is the case in (19), where there is a first-person singular subject with a male referent and a feminine singular direct object. (19)

a. ˌso sprəˈʃːaːt-u l-a ˈjːiːv-e be.PRS.1SG squeeze:PTCP-M.SG DEF-F.SG olive(F)-SG b. ∗ ˌso sprəˈʃːaːt-e l-a ˈjːiːv-e be.PRS.1SG squeeze:PTCP-F.SG DEF-F.SG olive(F)-SG c. ˌso sprəˈʃːaːt-ə/-a l-a ˈjːiːve be.PRS.1SG squeeze:PTCP-N.SG.RED_AGR DEF-F.SG olive(F)-SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] squeezed the olive.’ (LuCa, RIP11_145)

Further evidence of this tendency towards subject agreement, which has already been reported among younger speakers by Jones (2008, cited in Ledgeway 2012: 305, fn. 25), are examples where the direct object is realized by conjoined noun phrases, which force gender resolution. In these cases, the participle also matches the subject feature specification, rather than agreeing with the conjoined object, as (20) shows. (20)

luˈtʃiː-e Lucia(F)-SG

a raˈkːɔːt-e have.PRS.3 harvest:PTCP-F.SG

l-ə fav-ə DEF-F.PL bean(F)-PL

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e l-i bːəˈʃejː-ə and DEF-M.PL pea(M)-PL ‘Lucia has harvested beans and peas.’ (FiPi, RIP23_10) D’A lessandro (2017: 30) interprets these facts as signalling a change towards topic-oriented agreement, which is also shown by neighbouring varieties within the eastern Abruzzese diasystem. For evidence of non-matching agreement, see Ledgeway (2012: 303–5) and D’A lessandro (2017: 25–6). In the DAI corpus, only third-person direct object clitics categorically control agreement. Some examples of this pattern are given in (21). (21)

a. l-a= ˌso ˈdːʒa spəˈðiːt-e l-a DO3-F.SG= be.PRS.1SG already send:PTCP-F.SG DEF-F.SG kartuˈliːn-e postcard(F)-SG ‘I [ = male/female referent (M/F)] already sent it, the postcard.’ (LuCa, RIP11_81) b. l-i ˈpakː-i l-i= ˌso ˈdːʒa DEF-M.PL parcel(M)-PL DO3-M.PL= be.PRS.1SG already spəˈðiːt-i send:PTCP-M.PL ‘I [ = male/female referent (M/F)] already sent them.’ (LuCa, RIP11_81)

As in StIt, agreement with first- and second-person direct object clitics is optional. Unaccusatives and reflexives preserve past participle agreement with the subject if it is not in focus, as seen in (22), where every target agrees with the subject: (22)

mə= ˌso ˈfːatː-u ˈmaːl-u e ˌsːo REFL.1SG= be.PRS.1SG do:PTCP-M.SG hurt-M.SG and be.PRS.1SG rːiˈvaːt-u ˈkwa arrive:PTCP-M.SG here ‘I [ = male referent (M)] hurt myself and arrived here.’ (ReBr, RIP74_78)

As already seen with the finite verb forms, and also confirmed by comparison within Romance, the nature of the direct object is relevant and allows us to distinguish different types of alignment: nominative–accusative alignment is observed if the direct object is nominal, but ergative–absolutive alignment if the object is a clitic. In ditransitive constructions, the participle occurs in the default form, as (23) shows. (23)

peˈrɔ l-i paˈtru m= a DEF-M.PL owner(M)\PL IO1SG= have.PRS.3 but l-i ˈka DEF-M.PL dog(M).PL ‘But the owners set the dogs on me.’ (LuCa, RIP74_79)

uˈtːsaːt-a set:PTCP-N.SG

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But both subject agreement and default agreement are possible in unergatives, as in (24). (24)

ʃteməˈtiːne e tələfoˈnaːt-ə/-u ˈmaːrj-u this_morning be.PRS.3 call:PTCP-N.SG/-M.SG Mario(M)-SG ‘Mario called this morning.’ (ReBr, RIP21_32)

In (25), after the focus adverb ‘not even’, the nominal controller ‘a child’ selects the reduced form of the verb, whereas the full form is ungrammatical. (25)

ˈmaŋg-a n-u frəˈki ˌa paˈɣaːt-a/-ə/∗ -u not_even-N.SG INDEF-M.SG child(M).SG have.PRS.3 pay:PTCP-N.SG/-M.SG l-u bːiˈʝːetː-a DEF-M.SG ticket(M)-SG ‘Not even a child has paid the ticket.’ (LuCa, RIP11_67)

As already shown (§5.4.2.1, ex. (16)), the interrogative ˈki does not control full agreement on the verb. In (26), the participle preserves the masculine stem ˈmwort-, but has the reduced suffix -ə. (26)

ˈki saˈra ˈmwort-ə? who be.FUT.3 die:PTCP\M-M.SG.RED_AGR ‘Who could have died?’ (FiPi, RIP21_8)

The facts about Ripano agreement presented here demonstrate that even familiar targets and domains illustrate several peculiarities in comparison to the Abruzzese diasystem in particular, and the (Italo-)Romance varieties in general. First, whereas a lexeme normally has one form for a given feature specification, Ripano adjectives and verbs have two sets of inflectional forms for each given feature specification, and this poses the challenge of understanding under which conditions each set is used. Second, gender agreement on finite verb forms that is systematic (rather than limited to isolated verb forms) represents a unique phenomenon in Romance. Third, finite verbs and participles both show two different innovative alignment patterns, accusative and ergative, depending on the nature of the direct object.

5.5 Unusual agreement targets A characteristic that makes Ripano particularly noteworthy, both within ItaloRomance and cross-linguistically, is the diversity of targets that have the potential for agreement. At the clause level, it is not just finite verbs, predicative adjectives, and past participles that agree, but also numerals, prepositions, non-finite verb forms, adverbs, wh-words, and nouns. These targets are now discussed in turn.

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5.5.1 Numerals In Ripano, as is typical of Italo-Romance varieties, cardinal numerals occur either in prenominal attributive position or in predicative position, but do not occur postnominally. While in StIt only uno ‘one’ agrees, in old and modern nonstandard varieties there are several examples of a gender opposition in other low cardinal numerals (see Rohlfs 1966–9: §971–2). In Ripano, not only low cardinal numerals, but every numeral from ‘one’ to ‘one thousand’ can agree in gender and number, depending on the syntactic context. They agree when they are pronominal, as in (27), but not when they are adnominal (28). (27)

ˈka, nə= ˌso ˈviʃt-ə ˌsɛtː-i/∗ -ə dog(M).PL PRTV be.PRS.1SG see.PTCP-N.SG seven-M.PL/-N.SG ‘Dogs, I have seen seven of them.’ (LuCa, RIP11_98)

(28)

ˌso ˈviʃt-u ˌsɛtː-ə/∗ -i ˈka be.PRS.1SG see.PTCP-M.SG seven-N.SG/-M.PL dog(M).PL ‘I have seen seven dogs.’ (LuCa, RIP11_97)

The exponents of agreement and the selection of the set of agreement forms are the same as those already seen with adjectives (§5.4.2.2). In this area, however, I have observed much more variation between speakers, including in answers given by the same speaker.

5.5.2 Prepositions There are at least seven agreeing prepositions in DAI, namely ˈdɔːpə ‘after’, ˈpriːmə ‘before’, ˈdrendə ‘inside’, ˈrɛːtə ‘behind’, ˈsoːprə ‘on’, ˈsotːə ‘below’, and ˈvɛrsə ‘towards’. They can optionally agree in gender and number, but not person. When they do, they agree either with their complements, i.e. we have phrase-level agreement (as in (29); see Ledgeway 2012: 309; D’A lessandro 2020: 264–5) or with the clausal subject. In (29), from a picture story, the second occurrence of the preposition ‘towards’ ˈvɛrsi has the masculine plural suffix -i as it agrees with the noun ˈpaɲːə ‘clothes’, which is masculine in gender and plural in number, whereas the first occurrence ˈvɛrsə with a final -ə could be either a feminine plural form agreeing with the noun ‘roses’ or the neuter non-agreeing form. (29)

ˈskapːu ˈvɛrs-ə l-ə ˈrɔːs-ə ˈvɛrs-i flee.PRS.M.SG towards-F.PL DEF-F.PL rose(F)-PL towards-M.PL l-i ˈpaɲː-ə ˈʃte:s-i DEF-M.PL cloth(M)-PL hang:PTCP-M.PL ‘He flees towards the roses and the clothes that are hung up.’ (ReBr, RIP74_38)

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Phrase-level prepositional agreement is not categorical. In (30) the prepositional phrase is ˈju ˈversə li ʃkrəˈjːu ‘down towards the furrows’, where the noun is masculine plural, but nevertheless the preposition occurs in its default form. (30)

ˈju ˈvers-ə l-i ʃkrəˈjːu sə= down towards-N.SG DEF-M.PL furrow(M)\PL REFL.3= ˈtrɔːv-i/-ə l-i ˈspardʒ-ə find.PRS-M.PL/-N.SG DEF-M.PL asparagus(M)-PL ‘Down between the furrows there is asparagus.’ (FiPi, RIP22_113)

The preposition occurs in the default form whenever its complement is modified. This is illustrated in (31), repeated here from (9). (31)

ˈdɔːp-ə/∗ -u l-u ˈbːrutː-ə ˈtjemb-ə after-N.SG/-M.SG DEF-M.SG bad-M.SG.RED_AGR weather(M)-SG ˈvɛ l-u ˈtjemb-ə ˈbːjelː-u come.PRS.3 DEF-M.SG weather(M)-SG good\M.SG-M.SG ‘Good weather will come after bad weather.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_21)

If the complement of the preposition is a first- or second-person personal pronoun the preposition ˈvɛrsə ‘towards’ takes the default form. This is illustrated with firstperson complements in (32). (32)

lu ʃtraˈnjeːrə ˈskapː-u ˈvɛrs-ə ˈmə / ˈnojə DEF.M.SG stranger(M).SG flee.PRS-M.SG towards-N.SG 1SG / 1PL ‘The stranger flees towards me/us.’ (Luigino Cardarelli, p.c.)

Moreover, prepositions without complements can also show agreement at the clause level. The examples in (33) show agreement of the temporal preposition ‘before’ with the non-overt personal pronoun, which is the clausal subject, in an interrogative clause. (33)

a. nən pəˈteːvi rvəˈni ˈpriːm-u? NEG can.IMPF.2SG come.INF before-M.SG ‘Could you [ = male referent (M)] not come sooner?’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_18.a) b. nən pəˈteːvi rvəˈni ˈpriːm-e? NEG can.IMPF.2SG come.INF before-F.SG ‘Could you [ = female referent (F)] not come sooner?’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_18)

Some declarative examples with ‘after’ are provided in (34).¹⁵

¹⁵ I interpret ˈpriːmə ‘before’ and ˈdɔːpə ‘after’ as prepositions whose complements can be omitted, in line with Salvi’s (2014: 68–9) argumentation on corresponding structures in StIt.

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a. ˈvjeŋg-u ˈdɔːp-u come\PRS.1SG-M.SG after-M.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] come later.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_21.a) b. ˈvjeŋg-e ˈdɔːp-e/-a come\PRS.1SG-F.SG after-F.SG/-N.SG ‘I [ = female referent (F)] come later.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_21b)

Agreeing adpositions are extremely unusual within Italo-Romance but they have quite a wide distribution cross-linguistically (see Bakker 2013 and Bond et al., Chapter 1, this volume).

5.5.3 Non-finite verb forms Non-finite verb forms such as gerunds and rhizotonic infinitives¹⁶ agree in gender and number with the subject, whenever certain prerequisites are satisfied. An example of an agreeing gerund is seen in (35), where ‘eating’ agrees in gender and number with the subject of its clause. (35)

pəˈrɔ ˈrːɛt a l-u but behind to DEF-M.SG l-i ˈluːp-i kə DEF-M.PL wolf(M)-PL REL

ˈmucːo haystack(M).SG

tʃə= LOC=

ˈʃta stay.PRS.3

ˌʃta maˈɲː-ɛnː-i n-a stay.PRS.3 eat-GER-M.PL INDEF-F.SG

karˈkasː-ə ðə ˈkakːə aniˈmaːl-ə k ˌɛ ˈmːwort-u carcass(F)-SG of some animal(M)-SG REL be.PRS.3 die:PTCP\M-M.SG ‘But behind the haystack there are wolves that are eating a carcass of some animal that has died.’ (FaCa, RIP72_37) Inflected infinitives are reported by Harder (1988: 200), Mancini (1993: 111–13), and Ledgeway (2012: 301–2), but not by D’A lessandro (2020: 241–2). This suggests that the presence of these unusual targets, described as obsolete by Mancini (1993: 112), is subject to intra-speaker variation. This is confirmed by the fact that in the DAI spontaneous corpus only one out of 40 infinitives is inflected. Nevertheless, it has to be emphasized that younger speakers also use them in natural speech, as shown in (36). (36)

ˈva a ˈzbatː-i, ˈtutː-i dːɔ ˈluːp-i e ˈorts-i go.PRS.3 to collide.INF-M.PL all-M.PL two wolf(M)-PL and bear(M)-PL ‘They run into each other, wolves and bears.’ (FaCa, RIP74_54)

While person–number agreement on gerunds and infinitives has some sporadic parallels in Romance (cf. Loporcaro 1986), gender agreement on these non-finite ¹⁶ Truncated infinitives, ending in a stressed vowel, never show agreement.

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verb forms represents a unique peculiarity of Ripano not only in the Abruzzese diasystem, but also in Romance.

5.5.4 Adverbs Adverb agreement in Romance is well explored from both descriptive and theoretical perspectives (see, among others, Cinque 1999; Fábregas & Pérez-Jiménez 2008; Hummel 2017 and references therein). Southern Italian dialects are known to have agreeing manner adverbs that are morphologically identical to adjectives and not derived through a language-specific productive suffix for adverb formation like –ment(e) in Romance, –ly in English (Rohlfs 1966–9: §887; Ledgeway 2011, 2017: 50–66; Silvestri 2017). In Ripano, besides manner adverbs, quantity, temporal, and spatial adverbs have also been reported as agreeing (see Table 5.5; see already Harder 1988: 251; Burroni et al. 2016; Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018a: 159–60; D’A lessandro 2020: 238–9). Within each semantic type, agreement is lexically conditioned. For instance, in the spontaneous speech collected for DAI using picture stories, only two agreeing adverbs occur: ˈmal- ‘badly’ and ˈkom- ‘like’. Moreover, adverb agreement is constrained by syntactic and pragmatic conditions. Adverbs can agree (i) if they modify the predicate, agreeing with one of its obligatory arguments, normally the clausal subject; (ii) if they modify another modifier, i.e. an adjective or an adverb; (iii) if they are focus adverbs and can modify different syntactic constituents. Even when the syntactic conditions are satisfied, there is no agreement if the controller is in focus. Adverbs which modify the clause never display agreement (Burroni et al. 2016). I exemplify these in turn, giving for each semantic type examples of adverbs in different syntactic positions, in clauses with different information structures. I start with agreeing manner adverbs. In (37) and (38) the adverb ˈpjaːn- ‘slowly’ is in an imperative sentence and agrees with the internal argument of the unaccusative verb ˈʝitːʃə ‘go (INF)’, which has a male referent in (37) and a female referent in (38). (37)

ˈva =tːʃ-u¹⁷ ˈpjaːn-u ŋgə ˌsː-ə ˈvi, go.IMP.2SG =LOC-M.SG slowly-M.SG with DEM.PROX-N.SG wine(N).SG səˈnːɔ tə= mˈbrjaːk-u otherwise REFL.2SG= get_drunk.PRS-M.SG ‘You [ = male referent (M)] have to go easy on this wine, otherwise you will get drunk.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_23.2)

¹⁷ The locative clitic tʃə, which stands for various types of prepositional phrases, can also show gender–number agreement with the subject.

UNUSUAL AGREEMENT TARGETS IN RIPANO (38)

ˈva go.IMP.2SG

=tːʃ-e ˈpjaːn-e =LOC-F.SG slowly-F.SG

183

ŋgə ˌsː-ə ˈvi, with DEM.MED-N.SG wine(N).SG

səˈnːɔ tə= mˈbrjaːk-e otherwise REFL.2SG= get_drunk.PRS-F.SG ‘You [ = female referent (F)] have to go easy on this wine, otherwise you will get drunk.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_23.2) An example in a declarative intransitive clause is shown in (39). Here the manner adverb ˈmaːlu ‘badly.M.SG’ takes the suffix -u to agree with the masculine subject ˈbabːu ‘dad’. (39)

ˈmaːl-u/-ǝ ˈbabː-u ˈʃtieːv-u dad(M)-SG stay.IMPF-M.SG badly-M.SG/-N.SG ‘Dad wasn’t feeling well.’ (FiPi, RIP24_9)

In (40), a reflexive construction, the manner adverb ˈmaːlu ‘badly.M.SG’ is in its unmarked position, after the verb, and agrees with the masculine subject lu ʃtraˈnjeːru ‘the stranger’, which can be inferred from the context. (40)

e sːə= ˌfa ˈmaːl-u ˈjo l-ə jəˈnɔcː-ə and REFL.3= do.PRS.3 badly-M.SG down DEF-F.PL knee(NAN)\PL-PL ˈtutːə ˈdːo all.F.PL two ‘And he hurts both his knees.’ (LuCa, RIP74_56)

Ripano belongs to the group of southern Italian dialects that also permits adverbial agreement with the subject of an unergative predicate (see Ledgeway 2017: 61–5, and references therein). This is illustrated in (41), where participle agreement is also controlled by the unergative subject lu frəˈki ‘the child’. (41)

l-u DEF-M.SG

frəˈki child(M).SG

m= IO1SG=

ˌa have.PRS.3

rəsˈpɔʃt-u answer:PTCP-M.SG

ˈmaːl-u [archaic] / ˈmaːl-a [modern] badly-M.SG / badly-N.SG ‘The child answered me badly.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_9) However, as shown by the alternatives in (41), adverb agreement with an unergative subject is becoming dispreferred. Witness the preference, in Modern Ripano, for default neuter singular agreement. Meanwhile, quite surprisingly, in transitive clauses with a lexical direct object such as (42a), the adverb is totally inert for agreement, occurring in the default form. If the object is cliticized as in (42b), then adverbial agreement is marginally accepted at best. (42)

a. lwiˈdːʒiːn-u Luigino(M)-SG

ˌa mːiʃˈkiaːt-u have.PRS.3 mix:PTCP-M.SG

ˈmaːl-a/∗ -u/∗ -i badly-N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL

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TANIA PACIARONI l-i kuˈluːr-a DEF-M.PL colour(M)-PL ‘Luigino mixed the colours badly.’ (Remo Bruni, p.c.) b. l-i ˈmuːr-a, l-u piˈtːoːr-a l= ˌa DEF-M.PL wall(M)-PL DEF-M.SG painter(M)-SG DO3= have.PRS.3 pitːuˈraːt-i ˈmaːl-a/? -i paint:PTCP-M.PL badly-N.SG/-M.PL ‘The walls, the painter painted them badly.’ (Remo Bruni, p.c.)

Ripano therefore does not fit the distributional pattern of agreement defined by Ledgeway (2011, 2017: 61–5) in terms of an ‘ergative split’, which in several southern Italian dialects also permits agreement with transitive objects as well as intransitive subjects. Given both agreement with unergative subjects and failure of agreement with transitive objects, Ripano fits even less well into the active–stative agreement patterns explored by Ledgeway (2017: 50–60) and widely found among southern dialects. Significantly, since the list of agreeing adverbs includes adverbs controlled by both unaccusative and unergative subjects, a theoretical account must allow for the agreement of all these adverbs to be controlled by an intransitive clausal subject. Unsurprisingly from a theoretical perspective, sentence adverbs are totally inert for agreement, invariably occurring in the neuter singular default form. When they modify a predicate, quantity adverbs can agree in the speech of elderly speakers, as illustrated in (43), but the default neuter form is strongly preferred. The neuter form is the only one accepted by younger speakers, as in (44). (43)

a. dʒuˈva ˈmaɲː-u ˈʈɽɔpː-ə/-u Giovanni(M).SG eat.PRS-M.SG too_much-N.SG/-M.SG ‘Giovanni eats too much.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_57) b. ˌso faˈtjaːt-e ˈtand-e/-a be.1SG work:PTCP-F.SG a_lot-F.SG/-N.SG ‘I [ = female referent (F)] worked a lot.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_57)

(44)

ndoˈndɔ ˌa faˈtjaːt-u Antonio(M).SG have.PRS.3 work:PTCP-M.SG ‘Antonio worked too much.’ (FaCa, RIP21_30)

ˈʈɽɔpː-a/∗ -u too_much-N.SG/-M.SG

Quantity adverbs modifying an adjective usually agree, as in (45), including in the speech of younger speakers like FaCa, born in 1990. (45)

niˈkɔ(ːla) ˌɛ ˈʈɽɔpː-u ˈfwort-u Nicola(M).SG be.PRS.3 too-M.SG strong-M.SG ‘Nicola is too awesome.’ (FaCa, RIP21_31.1)

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In (46) the clausal subject is masculine plural, and both agreeing masculine plural and non-agreeing neuter singular forms on the degree adverbs tand- ‘much’ are accepted. (46)

l-i ˈtsiː-ə ˈmje ˌe ˈtːand-i/-ə puˈliːt-i DEF-M.PL uncle(M)-PL POSS.1SG be.PRS.3 much-M.PL/-N.SG clean-M.PL ‘My uncles are very clean.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_54.1)

Spatial adverbs with argument function, e.g. with existential predicates like ʃtare ‘stay’, can likewise agree, as illustrated in (47). (47)

l-i ˈfjuːra ˌʃta ˈɛkː-i DEF-M.PL flower(M).PL stay.PRS.3 here-M.PL ‘The flowers are here.’ (Cardarelli 2010: 33, and p.c.)

Example (48) illustrates that locative adjuncts do not agree. (48)

ˈtutːi s= ˌɛ ʒvəˈjːat-i ˈprɛʃt-a all.M.PL REFL.3= be.PRS.3 wake_up:PTCP-M.PL early-N.SG ˈɛkː-a/∗ -i here-N.SG/-M.PL ‘Everyone was up early here.’ (Remo Bruni, p.c.)

The example in (49) shows agreement of the temporal adverb ‘early’ with the noun phrase lu kuˈdːʒiːnə ˈmje ‘my cousin’. (49)

l-u kuˈdːʒiːn-ə ˈmje sə= ˈrːitːs-u DEF-M.SG cousin(M)-SG POSS.1SG REFL.3= get_up.PRS-M.SG ˈprɛʃt-u/-ə early-M.SG/-N.SG ‘My cousin [ = male referent (M)] gets up early.’ (FiPi, RIP22_16.3)

The same pragmatic conditions on agreement observed for finite and non-finite verbs apply to the adverb. An illustration of this is given in (49) and (50). Example (49) has predicate focus and full agreement both on the verb (sə) ˈrːitːs-u ‘gets up’ and on the adverb ˈprɛʃt-u ‘early’. Note that while the verb always agrees in gender and number with the masculine subject in this focus construction, the adverb may agree with the subject or occur in the default neuter singular form. In (50) the verb and the adverb agree with the indefinite negative pronoun nǝˈʃu ‘nobody’ and take the reduced form ˈrːitːsə, whereas the full form ˈrːitːsu is ungrammatical. The adverb also takes the default form ˈprɛʃta. (50)

nǝˈʃu sə= ˈrːitːs-ə/∗ -u ˈprɛʃt-a nobody REFL.3= get_up.PRS-RED_AGR/-M.SG early-N.SG ‘No one gets up early.’ (FiPi, RIP22_17.1, 17)

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Note that when adverbs of different types occur in sequence following a verb form, they may each display agreement, providing the subject is not in focus, as illustrated by (51). (51)

l-u rəˈlɔdːʒ-ə ˈʝːeːv-u ˈsɛmbr-u aˈnːandz-u DEF-M.SG clock(M)-SG go.IMPF-M.SG always-M.SG forward-M.SG ‘The clock always went on.’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_40.1)

The agreeing adverbs discussed so far all agree with a particular grammatical function (either the intransitive subject or a clitic object pronoun), but when focus adverbs agree they are controlled by the syntactic head of the constituent on which they operate, i.e. their ‘domain of association’ rather than by a specific clausal argument. The phrase projected by this head may thus fulfil a range of roles within the sentence. For instance, in (52) and (53), the restrictive adverb ˈsol- ‘only’ immediately precedes its ‘domain of association’, represented in (52) by the NP Pippì ‘Peppe’, while in (53) the ‘domain of association’ is the NP meˈriːe ‘Maria’.¹⁸ (52)

ˈmaɲː-ə ˈsoːl-u piˈpːi eat.PRS-RED_AGR only-M.SG Peppe(M).SG ‘Only Peppe eats.’ (FiPi, RIP22_45.3)

(53)

ˈmaɲː-e¹⁹ ˈsoːl-e meˈriːe eat.PRS-F.SG only-F.SG Maria(F).SG ‘Only Maria eats.’ (FiPi, RIP22_45.3)

In (52) and (53) the controller of agreement is the clausal subject, but this need not be the case. In (54) the ‘domain of association’ is the clause a gwarda =lːe, and ‘only’ takes the default neuter form. (54)

l-a ˈpitːse ˌeːre ˈbːɔːn-e; ˈsoːl-a DEF-F.SG pizza(F).SG be.IMPF.F.SG good\F-F.SG only-N.SG gwarˈda =lː-e] look_at.INF =DO3-F.SG ‘The pizza was good. Just looking at it.’ (Cardarelli 2010: 84)

[a to

Adverbs belonging to the other semantic classes, which can only be clausal modifiers, invariably take the default form. Similarly, textual connectors such as nˈdanda ‘in the meantime’ are invariant and never agree. An example can be seen in (10b). These data demonstrate that agreeing adverbs in Ripano adverbs are especially valuable for the development of syntactic theory. While there is homogeneity in terms of their position in the clause, their alignment patterns, especially in respect ¹⁸ See De Cesare (2022) for a recent analysis of the interaction of focus adverbs with the focus structure of the sentence. ¹⁹ As -e serves both as feminine agreement suffix (Table 5.15) and as a suffix generalized to all cells (Table 5.18), it is not possible to decide whether this is the full agreement form or the reduced agreement form.

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of their presence in transitive clauses, provide evidence for a type that has not yet been discussed in the Italo-Romance literature on adverb agreement.

5.5.5 Wh-words As in StIt, in Ripano, the relative pronoun ˈkə ‘which’ and the interrogative pronouns ˈki/ˈkə ‘who/what’, which stand in for arguments in content questions, end in a stressed vowel and therefore are never inflected. However, ˈkwal- ‘which’ and ˈkwand- ‘how much/how many’, which are adjectival proforms, satisfy the phonological prerequisites and inflect as adjectives of IC I; see Harder (1988: 160). Unexpectedly, some other wh-words, which are usually uninflected in Romance, can also inflect following the paradigm displayed for IC I adjectives (demonstrated for ‘big’ in Table 5.8); these are ˈ(n)doːv- ‘where’, ˈkomː- ‘how?’, ˈkwanː-/ˈkwand‘when’ (Harder 1988: 161–3). In each case they agree in gender and number with the subject of the clause. Examples are given in (55)–(57). (55)

ˈ(n)doːv-i ˈjeːt-i? where-M.PL go:PRS.2PL-M.PL ‘Where are you [ = male referents (M.PL)] going?’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_37)

(56)

a. ˈkomː-e ˈfa a pːarˈla kːuˈʃi? how-F.SG do.PRS.2SG to talk.INF in_this_way ‘How can you [ = female referent (F)] talk like this?’ (ArCa, RIP24.2_5.1) b. ˈkomː-i/-ǝ ˈfa a pːarˈla kːuˈʃi? how-M.PL/-N.SG do.PRS.3 to talk.INF in_this_way ‘How can they [ = male referents (M.PL)] talk like this?’ (LuCa, RIP24.2_5.2)

(57)

a. ˈkwanː-e ˈvje? when-F.SG come.PRS\2SG ‘When are you [ = female referent (F)] coming?’ (FiPi, RIP29_54.9.9) b. ˈkwanː-ə/∗ -i vǝˈneːt-i? when-N.SG/-M.PL come:PRS.2PL-M.PL ‘When are you [ = male referents (M.PL)] coming?’ (FiPi, RIP29_54.9.8)

In the masculine plural cell of their paradigm, each of the agreeing wh-words has different realizations, as illustrated by Harder (1988: 161–3). This was confirmed by DAI consultants (with some differences with regards to ˈkomː-): while ˈ(n)doːv- has the expected masculine plural suffix -i, illustrated in (55), with ‘how’ both the agreeing form ˈkomː-i and the default form ˈkomː-ə are used, as in (56b); meanwhile, with ˈkwanː- ‘when’ only the default form ˈkwanːə is used, as seen in (57b).

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5.5.6 Complementizers Complementizers in Ripano can optionally agree (Ledgeway 2012: 309). When they do, they agree with an argument in the clause that they introduce. In (58) ˈkomːu agrees with the subject of the clause in an unergative construction. (58)

e ˈkːomː-u ˈmaɲː-u and as_soon_as-M.SG eat.PRS-M.SG ‘A s soon as he eats . . .’ (RIP_LuCa_74_33)

In (59) it agrees with the pronominal direct object ˈkwiʃtu ‘this’ in a transitive construction. (59)

e iɱˈfatːi l-i ˈka ˈkomː-u tə= and indeed DEF-M.PL dog(M).PL as_soon_as-M.SG IO2SG= ˈviːð-ə see.PRS-RED_AGR

ˈkwiʃt-u DEM.PROX-M.SG

jə= sə= IO3= REFL.3=

ˈmetː-ə start.PRS-RED_AGR

a ˈkːorːe ðeˈrɛːta to run.INF behind ‘And indeed, the dogs, as soon as they see him, dart after him.’ (LuCa, RIP74_42) There are two agreeing complementizers in DAI—namely, ˈdɔːpə kə ‘after’ and ˈkomːə ‘as soon as’. In this corpus, complementizer agreement is controlled by unaccusative, reflexive, and unergative subjects and transitive objects, but never by transitive subjects.

5.5.7 Nouns Nouns are typically agreement controllers (Corbett 2006: 35–7). As targets of agreement in the clausal domain they are cross-linguistically rare, but not unattested; the most convincing examples have been reported in Nakh-Daghestanian languages (see Kaye, Chapter 2, this volume; Sumbatova, Chapter 3, this volume). In Ripano nouns can agree in light verb constructions, when they occur as the head of a direct object nominal phrase, or in a prepositional adjunct (Parrino 1967: 162; Harder 1988: 243–8; Ledgeway 2012: 309–10; Paciaroni & Loporcaro 2018a: 162–4; D’A lessandro 2020: 240–1; Loporcaro, forthcoming). However, this peculiar agreement phenomenon is subject to syntactic and semantic restrictions which will be discussed in turn.

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5.5.7.1 Agreement on nouns with light verbs ‘have’ and ‘do’ and similar constructions Subject agreement on nouns is found in Ripano light verb constructions, i.e. complex predicates formed by a verb ‘have’ or ‘do’ and a postverbal predicative noun, which license an experiencer argument exhibiting clause subject properties. Only certain nouns have agreement potential, which means that the ability to agree must be specified in the lexicon. The types of nouns which can occur here are mostly nouns referring to physiological or psychological states; cf. Benedetti (2013) for an account of constructions with psychological noun predicates in Italian. In (60), the feminine noun ‘hunger’ occurs with the masculine singular suffix, to agree with the noun phrase nu ˈdʒoːvənə ʃtraˈnjeːru ‘a young stranger’, which is featurally masculine singular and the antecedent of the relative pronoun kə. (60)

n-u ˈði ˈpasː-ə ðə ˈlɔːkə n-u INDEF-M.SG day(M).SG pass_by.PRS-RED_AGR of there INDEF-M.SG ˈdʒoːvən-ə ʃtraˈnjeːr-u kə tːʃaˈvje ˈfːaːm-u young-M.SG stranger(M)-SG REL have.IMPF.3 hunger(F)-M.SG ‘One day all of a sudden a young stranger who was hungry passed by.’ (ReBr, RIP74_8)

Agreement is almost always realized on the predicate noun target within similar expressions with ‘have’, such as aˈve(tːʃə) bːəˈswoɲːə ‘need’, aˈve(tːʃə) ˈfːuːrjə ‘be in a hurry’, aˈve(tːʃə) pːaˈurə ‘be scared’, aˈve(tːʃə) ˈsːeːtə ‘be thirsty’, aˈve(tːʃə) ˈsːɔnːə ‘be sleepy’, aˈve(tːʃə) ˈtːjembə ‘have time’.²⁰ Subject agreement on these nouns is realized in all five occurrences attested in the picture story, from which (60) is also drawn, as well as in the questionnaires collected for DAI. Agreeing nouns in constructions with the light verb ‘do’ were regularly attested in the course of the DAI fieldwork. Agreeing nouns have been recorded in the expression fa ˈfːində ‘pretend’, as shown in (61) and (62), as well as in fa kaˈɲːarə ‘have a fight’, illustrated in (63). Each of these examples demonstrates that agreeing nouns are sensitive to the number and gender of their controller. (61)

l-i frəˈki ˈfa ˈfind-i DEF-M.PL child(M).PL do.PRS.3 feint(F)-M.PL ‘The children pretend.’ (PaVe, RIP28_28)

(62)

kə fːaˈtʃeːtə ˈfind-i də kasˈka =vːə? COMP do.PRF.2PL feint(F)-M.PL of fall.INF =REFL.2PL ‘Did you [ = male referents (M.PL)] pretend to fall?’ (PaVe, RIP28_27.2)

²⁰ Here and hereafter, nouns are given in the neuter singular form in -ə, also realized as [a], because this is the form used in the absence of a subject, as in the sentence [aˈve(tːʃə) ˈfːaːmə ɛ ˈbːrutːa] ‘to be hungry is bad.’ (LuCa, RIP11)

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(63)

l-a ˈmoːj-e e l-u mːaˈriːt-ə kə ˈʃta DEF-F.SG wife(F)-SG and DEF-M.SG husband(M)-SG REL stay.PRS.3 faˈtʃɛnːə kaˈɲːar-i do.GER racket(F)-M.PL ‘the wife and husband arguing’ (PaVe, RIP74_29)

These examples demonstrate that agreement on nouns within light verb constructions can occur in a range of syntactic environments, including main clauses (61), relative clauses (60), and gerundive clauses (63) too. Similar lexical and syntactic constraints also occur in constructions with the verb ‘feel’ and nouns denoting a property like ˈfredːə ‘cold’. This is illustrated by examples (64) and (65), where ˈfredː- takes the suffix -u or -a, depending on whether the experiencer subject is masculine singular (as with ˈmaːrjo in (64)) or feminine singular (as with seˈre(na) in (65)) respectively. (64)

ˈmaːrjo ˈsɛnd-u ˈfredː-u? Mario(M).SG feel.PRS-M.SG cold(N/M)-M.SG ‘Mario, do you feel cold?’ (GiCa, RIP28_4.1)

(65)

seˈre ˈsjende ˈfredː-a/∗ -u? Serena(F).SG feel.PRS\2SG.F.SG²¹ cold(N/M)-F.SG/-M.SG ‘Serena, do you feel cold?’ (GiCa, RIP28_3)

Although ‘cold’ in (64) and (65) is the output of a conversion from the adjective ˈfredːə/-u/-i/-e/-ə ‘cold.N.SG/-M.SG/-M.PL/-F.SG/-F.PL’, it cannot simply be analysed as an adjective. It has the syntax of a noun: for instance it can be replaced by a direct object clitic, as illustrated by the sentences in (66), where the speaker assigns ‘cold’ to either masculine gender as in (66a) or to neuter gender as in (66b), and refers to it with the appropriate masculine or neuter direct object clitic. (66)

a. ˈl-u ˈfredː-u l-u ˈsɛnd-ə/-e ˈpuːrə ˈi(a) DEF-M.SG cold-M.SG DO3-M.SG feel.PRS-RED_AGR even 1SG b. ˈl-ə ˈfredː-a l-ə ˈsɛnd-ə/-e ˈpuːrə ˈi(a) DEF-N.SG cold-N.SG DO3-N.SG feel.PRS-RED_AGR even 1SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] feel cold too.’ (GiCa, RIP28_12)

Although they display some direct object properties (like control of participle agreement), nouns like ‘cold’ do not have argument status, as can be seen for instance from their reluctance to combine with determiners and relativization.

²¹ The lexical stem recurs here in the expected metaphonized form due to the final etymological -/i/. The same speaker also produces the second-person form without metaphony, a clear indication of the recession of this phenomenon in Modern Ripano.

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If the noun in such constructions is within an NP containing a determiner, agreement with the subject of the clause does not normally occur, as illustrated in (67). (67)

maˈriːe Maria(F).SG

ˈsɛnd-e feel.PRS-F.SG

l-u DEF-M.SG

ˈʃtesːə same.M.SG.RED_AGR

ˈfredːa cold(M).SG

də lː ˌaʈʂ ˈanː-ə of DEF.M.SG other year(M)-SG ‘Maria feels as cold as last year.’ (GiCa, RIP28_10) If the object noun in such constructions is preceded by a quantifier, in the most conservative variety gender and number agreement with the clausal subject can still be signalled at the phrasal level by the quantifier, as shown by the masculine singular form ˈtandu in (68a), which agrees with the male referent. However, in Modern Ripano the absence of subject agreement is preferred, as shown in (68b) by the nominal phrase ˈtanda ˈfredːa, where the quantifier ˈtanda agrees with the neuter head noun ˈfredːa. (68)

a. ˈi ˈsɛnd-u 1SG feel.PRS-M.SG

ˈtand-u much-M.SG

ˈfredːa/∗ -u cold(N).N.SG /-M.SG

b. ˈi ˈsɛnd-u ˈtand-a ˈfredː-a 1SG feel.PRS-M.SG much-N.SG cold(N)-N.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] feel very cold.’ (LuCa, RIP11_224) When the subject is plural, agreement is dispreferred, especially by younger speakers, leading to patterns like those in (69), where neuter singular agreement is normal, and masculine plural agreement is marginal. (69)

l-i frəˈki ˈsɛnd-i ˈfredː-a/ ? -i DEF-M.PL child(M).PL feel.PRS-M.PL cold(N)-N.SG/-M.PL ‘The children feel cold.’ (GiCa, RIP28_6)

In all these structures there is a predicate–argument relationship between the psychological state noun and the experiencer subject. Further partially similar constructions are:ˈfa a ˈ(ʃ )kaɲːə ‘swap’ (70), ˈji a ˈʃpasːə ‘go for a walk’ (71), where the noun is preceded by the preposition a ‘at’. (70)

ˈfatːʃ a ˈkːaɲː-u do.PRS\1SG to change(M)-M.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] take turns.’ (PaVe, RIP28_58.2)

(71)

a. l-u frəˈki ˌɛ ˈiːtə a ˈʃpasː-u DEF-M.SG child(M).SG be.PRS.3 go:PTCP to walk(M)-M.SG ‘The child went for a walk.’ (PaVe, RIP28_56)

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a ˈʃpasː-a to walk(M)-F.SG

Despite being the object of a preposition, agreement with the clausal subject is still possible. We also see a similar pattern when the prepositional phrase is an adjunct.

5.5.7.2 Agreement on nouns within prepositional adjuncts Agreement on nouns within prepositional adjuncts is considered ‘obsolete, rustic’ by Harder (1988: 250–1) and our oldest informant AlRo, and agreeing constructions of this kind have been deemed ungrammatical by eight out of 10 DAI informants. Only the most conservative speaker, AnIa (∗ 1937), spontaneously produced agreement on nouns in this context. (72)

ˈi ˈvaʝː-u a ˈrːoːm-u 1SG go\PRS.1SG-M.SG to Rome(F)-M.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] am going to Rome.’ (AnIa, RIP20_1)

In (72) the feminine place name Roma takes the form ˈrːomu, because it agrees in gender and number with the masculine singular referent of the subject of the clause. The potential for agreement realization in this syntactic environment depends, in my view, on the salience of the target for the speaker. For instance, gender agreement is not realized on the proper noun in (73). Although the syntactic domain, the controller and the target properties are the same as in (72), the speaker has never been to Verona, and therefore the salience condition on agreement is not met. (73)

ˈi ˈvaʝː-u a vːeˈroːn-a 1SG go\PRS.1-M.SG to Verona(F)-SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] am going to Verona.’ (AnIa, RIP20_3)

Agreement between a goal and a plural subject is not permitted, as demonstrated by example (74b), where use of the masculine plural form gːrotːaˈmːari to agree with a plural subject with male referents is ungrammatical for all speakers. Note that when the subject is singular, agreement is possible for the two older speakers, who accept this construction as grammatical, though only one of them would use it. (74)

a. ˈi ˈvaʝː-u a gːrotːaˈmːar-u 1SG go\PRS.1SG-M.SG to Grottammare(F)-M.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] am going to Grottammare.’ (AnIa, RIP20_7)

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b. ∗ nu ˈʝ-eːm-i a gːrotːaˈmːar-i 1PL go\PRS.1PL-M.PL to Grottammare(F)-M.PL Intended: ‘We [ = male referents (M.PL)] are going to Grottammare.’ (AnIa, RIP20_13) Similar syntactic constraints also occur in constructions with the close to inalienable noun ‘home’, which takes the suffixes -u or -a depending on whether the clausal subject is masculine singular (75a, c) or feminine singular (75b), in both declarative (75a–b) and imperative (75c) clauses. Here again, as illustrated in (75d), the use of the masculine plural form ˈkːaːsi to agree with the non-expressed personal pronoun ˈnui̯ ‘we’ is ungrammatical. (75)

a. mə= nə= rəˈvaʝː-u a ˈkːaːs-u REFL.1SG= GEN= go_back\PRS.1SG-M.SG to house(F)-M.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] am going home.’ (AnIa) b. mə= nə= rəˈvaʝː-a a ˈkːaːs-a REFL.1SG= GEN= go_back\PRS.1SG-F.SG to house(F)-F.SG ‘I [ = female referent (F)] am going home.’ (AnIa and MaIa) c. ˈva =nː-u a ˈkːaːs-u! go.IMP.2SG =GEN-M.SG to house(F)-M.SG ‘Go home!’ [ = male addressee (M)] (AnIa) d. ∗ ˈʝeːt-i a ˈkːaːs-i! go.IMP.2PL-M.PL to house(F)-M.PL Intended: ‘Go home!’ [ = male addressees (M.PL)] (AnIa)

The speaker AnIa also produced agreement on nouns in nominal adjuncts with temporal meaning, exemplified in (1) and (2).

5.5.7.3 Agreement with the subject of the clause on nouns in object position There is limited evidence that nouns in direct object position can agree with the subject of the clause. The most conservative speakers of a rural variety, AnIa, ∗ 1937, and his sister MaIa, ∗ 1940, use gender and number agreement of the direct object with the subject also in transitive constructions such as (76) and (77). (76)

a. ˈdʒanːi s= a kəmˈbraːt-ə l-a Gianni(M) REFL.3 have.PRS.3 buy:PTCP-N.SG DEF-F.SG ˈkaːsə house(F).SG b. ˈdʒanːi s= a kəmˈbraːt-ə l-a Gianni(M) REFL.3 have.PRS.3 buy:PTCP-N.SG DEF-F.SG ˈkaːs-u house(F)-M.SG ‘Gianni has bought the house.’ (AnIa, RIP21.1)

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(77)

a. ˈmo ˈvaʝː-u a ˈbːeːv-u l-a now go\PRS.1SG-M.SG to drink.INF-M.SG DEF-F.SG ranˈdʒaːt-u orangeade(F)-M.SG ‘I [ = male referent (M)] am now going to drink orangeade.’ (AnIa and MaIa) b. ˈmo ˈvaʝː-a a ˈbːeːv-a l-a now go\PRS.1SG-F.SG to drink.INF-F.SG DEF-F.SG ranˈdʒaːt-a orangeade(F)-F.SG ‘I [ = female referent (F)] am now going to drink orangeade.’ (AnIa and MaIa) c. vəˈl-eːm-i ˈʝi a ˈbːeːv-i l-a want:PRS-1PL-M.PL go.INF to drink.INF-M.PL DEF-F.SG ranˈdʒaːt-i? orangeade(F)-M.PL ‘Shall we [ = male referents (M.PL)] go and drink orangeade?’ (AnIa and MaIa) d. vəˈl-eːm-ə ˈʝi a ˈbːeːv-ə l-a/-ə want:PRS-1PL-F.PL go.INF to drink.INF-F.PL DEF-F.SG/-PL ranˈdʒaːt-ə? orangeade(F)-F.PL ‘Shall we [ = female referents (F.PL)] go and drink orangeade?’ (AnIa and MaIa)

Examples of this phenomenon are extremely limited, both in terms of the targets that can agree and the number of speakers who produce them.

5.5.7.4 Variation and ongoing change DAI speakers differ in the realization of gender and number agreement on nouns, as summarized in Table 5.22, where four degrees of variation are distinguished: (i) √ = consistent realization; (ii) % √ = variable realization; (iii) (√) = some sporadic realization; (iv) X = non-realization.²²

²² Note that MaIa, the sister of AnIa, was not a language consultant on the DAI project, and her judgements about nouns as agreement targets are therefore not included in Table 5.22.

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Table 5.22 Summary of nouns as agreement targets in DAI

∗ The data are drawn from DAI fieldwork, and also from Rossi’s (2008) dictionary and his poems (1999, 2001), as well as speaker judgements by AlRo found in Harder (1988).

Evidently there is a tendency towards the loss of subject agreement on nouns, but with different constructions moving in this direction at different speeds. Agreement on nouns in constructions with light verbs ‘do’ and ‘have’ is the best preserved, whereas agreement on predicative nouns with the verb ‘feel’ is dispreferred by most speakers except the oldest speakers of the urban and rural varieties. Agreement on the direct object in transitive constructions as well as on nouns within adjuncts has been found in just a single elderly speaker of a rural variety, AnIa, born in 1937.

5.6 Conclusions In this chapter, I have analysed the lexical, morphological, and syntactic features of unusual agreement targets in the complex agreement system of Ripano, fitting them into a full account of the agreement system. Ripano has received a good deal of attention, but the data used here, from a database of both elicited and natural data, allow further progress in our knowledge of the phenomenon treated here. This is particularly important given that we are dealing with a rapidly changing variety in a language attrition situation with substantial intra-domain and intraspeaker microvariation. Previous linguistic literature has already reported a cross-linguistically impressive range of unusual agreement targets, including all word classes except interjections. Moreover, it has outlined the unusual sensitivity to the agreement features of gender and number, with the same possible values, shown by all (both more and less usual) parts of speech containing agreeing items, as well as the pervasiveness

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of agreement forms. This means that there is an extension of the nominal features gender (and number) to verb forms—both finite and non-finite. Person is still relevant in finite forms, although it is realized only through stem change. One aspect of the phenomenon that has not yet received sufficient attention is the structure of a reduced set of agreement forms. In this sense, unusual targets are systematically restricted in comparison to other targets in terms of how the reduced paradigm is split. In fact, among adjectives, there is a stable distinction between two agreement suffixes, one for the feminine singular vs one for the rest, whereas among finite verbs there is a tendency towards neutralization of the features expressed by the gender–number suffixes, with free variation between the two suffixes -ə and -e. Another dimension which has not been investigated so far is the proportion of agreeing items within each word class. Also in this respect, data from DAI confirm the general observable tendency that unusual agreement targets have less agreement potential than more canonical targets. For instance, in the spontaneous DAI corpus, agreement characterizes all lexemes belonging to adjectives (usual targets), but only a handful of adverbs (unusual targets). Concerning the syntactic behaviour of this phenomenon in terms of domains and controllers, unusual cases of agreement are mostly subject to the same constraints as usual targets. However, they display much higher optionality and lower levels of acceptability, which leads to apparently irregular agreement patterns, and a clear tendency towards loss of agreement. In terms of the actual structure, all instances of agreement in Ripano in the DAI corpus are found either at the phrase level or at the clause level, and never beyond the clause (cf. Bond et al., Chapter 1, this volume). Targets of the first type, i.e. those constrained by their own argument structure, are represented for instance by prepositions agreeing with their arguments. Unusual targets are typically of the second type, i.e. agreeing within the domain of the clause with an argument of the verb. Numerals, prepositions, adverbs, wh-words, complementizers, and nouns are examples of this type, showing the same constraints as verbal targets, which involve an interaction between syntactic rules and conditions (syntactic structure, type of direct object, feature specification of the arguments, polarity) and pragmatic conditions (focus). Comparison of canonical and non-canonical targets highlights significant microvariation in the relevant patterns and an overall tendency towards loss of agreement, although different types of targets are at different stages in this process. More specifically, agreement availability increasingly displays variation, in relation to, for example: (i) the canonicity of the part of speech as target; (ii) the syntactic construction; (iii) the individual lexical item. Variation according to part of speech (i) is illustrated by comparing adjectives and numerals: both have two sets of agreeing forms which are selected in the same contexts. The selection is almost categorical on adjectives, but subject to high intraand inter-variation on numerals in the different syntactic contexts.

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The syntactic construction (ii) is relevant among other things for capturing the different behaviour of verbal and adverbial agreement. Agreement on finite verb forms, like agreement on past participles, can be controlled by the subject of both intransitive (unaccusative and unergative) and transitive verbs, provided that the direct object is a full noun phrase. However, if the direct object is a clitic, finite verbs and participles agree with the object rather than the subject, resulting in ergative–absolutive alignment. Adverbs agree optionally in a smaller number of contexts. They display agreement with intransitive subjects, but fail to agree either with the transitive subject or with the transitive NP object. Agreement with a clitic direct object has proved extremely marginal, and for most speakers impossible. Therefore, the pattern of adverb agreement is not oriented towards any of the three splits (nominative–accusative; ergative–absolutive; active–stative) observed in the literature so far. Finally, the facts presented demonstrate that an adequate account requires access to (iii) lexical information associated with the agreement target, and that this marked dimension of variation becomes more relevant the less canonical the target is, as exemplified by the realization of gender and number agreement on nouns. The results and the open questions that emerge from the present chapter highlight once more the necessity of detailed empirical description of microvariation on (un)usual domains and targets and their relevance to general theorizing on agreement.

Acknowledgements I am very grateful to all Ripano speakers, especially Remo Bruni and Paolo Vecchiarelli, for sharing their expertise with me, and to Erika Vecchiarelli for her valuable help with data transcription. Thanks to Anna M. Thornton for helpful comments on a previous draft. I am particularly indebted to Oliver Bond, Marina Chumakina, Sebastian Fedden, and Steven Kaye for generously sharing their knowledge and giving constructive comments and insightful suggestions, which led to substantial improvement of the chapter. All remaining errors are the responsibility of the author. The support of the Swiss National Science Foundation [research project 100012-156530, ‘The Zurich Database of Agreement in ItaloRomance’ (DAI)] and of the URPP Language and Space (University of Zurich) are gratefully acknowledged.

6 External agreement in Khwarshi Marina Chumakina and Ekaterina Lyutikova

6.1 Introduction This chapter focuses on the agreement behaviour of unusual targets in Khwarshi, a Nakh-Daghestanian language belonging to the Tsezic group. Khwarshi presents a surprisingly large and versatile inventory of non-verbal targets which have a morphological position for agreement and agree with the absolutive of the clause. Tsezic languages in general have the morphological property of allowing agreement in gender and number only on vowel-initial items, generally verbs and adjectives, while suffixal agreement is allowed only on borrowed adjectives. Unusual targets normally follow this rule—prefixally agreeing adverbs and postpositions are observed in several Tsezic languages. Khwarshi stands out by also having adverbs with infixal agreement. After providing some general information about Khwarshi in §6.2, we concentrate on the morphological properties of unusual agreement targets in Khwarshi against the Tsezic background (§6.3.1). We discuss infixal agreement and propose an explanation of how this situation of unique morphological behaviour may have arisen in Khwarshi (§6.3.2), and present instances of adverbs which employ suffixal agreement (§6.3.3). Syntactically, the behaviour of agreeing adverbs and postpositions in Khwarshi may not be unique in the Nakh-Daghestanian context, and this chapter offers not only a description of the morphosyntactic behaviour of these targets but also a formal analysis of it in §6.4, adding to the growing body of research in this area (Polinsky et al. 2017; Rudnev 2020; Kaye, forthcoming). Most illuminating for the analysis are constructions with two absolutives, where the argument normally encoded in the ergative takes the absolutive case instead, and after discussing the general properties of the controller of adverbial agreement in §6.4.1, we turn to the analysis of these biabsolutive constructions in §6.4.2. If there is an agreeing adverb, in the biabsolutive context it is presented with a choice between potential controllers, and this choice reveals the syntactic relations within the sentence (in particular it provides arguments for analysing the Khwarshi biabsolutive construction as biclausal). The behaviour of agreeing adverbials in so-called long-distance agreement (LDA) (i.e. agreement across a clause boundary) is also revealing for the analysis of clause structure: this analysis is provided in §6.4.3. Marina Chumakina and Ekaterina Lyutikova, External agreement in Khwarshi. In: Agreement beyond the Verb. Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Marina Chumakina and Ekaterina Lyutikova (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0006

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Finally, §6.4.4 outlines the possibilities for coding information structure, specifically topic status, with the use of agreeing adverbials. We present our conclusions in §6.5.

6.2 Khwarshi: general information Khwarshi is spoken in Tsumada district, Republic of Daghestan (Russian Federation). There are seven Khwarshi settlements. About 70% of Khwarshi speakers have migrated to lowland villages, where they spend the majority of the year (Khalilova 2009), and only some of those return to their highland villages during the summer months. It is hard to estimate the number of Khwarshi speakers because many of them self-report as Avars; thus, the Russian Federation census of 2002 registers only 128 Khwarshi speakers, whereas Khalilova (2009: 3) gives a more realistic estimate of over 8,500 speakers. Khwarshi is a non-written language. Within the community Khwarshi is used on a day-to-day basis and in every domain of oral communication. In addition, most Khwarshi people (except for children of pre-school age) are proficient in Avar and Russian, used mainly for external communication and secondary school education. Five dialects of Khwarshi can be distinguished, namely Khwarshi proper, spoken in the villages of Khwarshi and Khonokh, and four dialects named after the village in which they are spoken: (Upper and Lower) Inkhokwari, Kwantlada, Santlada, and Khwayni. Currently only the dialect of Inkhokwari has a detailed grammatical description (Khalilova 2009); this chapter is based on existing descriptive work, fieldwork on Khwarshi proper conducted in Khonokh by the authors and their colleagues, and a grammatical sketch of Khwarshi proper resulting from this fieldwork (Khalilova & Testelets, n.d.). The Khwarshi noun distinguishes five genders and two numbers: genders I and II denote male and female humans respectively, and the remaining nouns are distributed across genders III, IV, and V (cf. Plaster et al. 2013 on gender distribution in Tsez). Table 6.1 shows the agreement markers used for different gender–number combinations and gives some examples of nouns belonging to each gender. Table 6.1 Agreement markers i

ii

iii

iv

v

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Nouns can be divided into two types based on the distribution of stems in their nominal paradigm. ‘One-stem nouns’ like on ˇcu ‘hen’ use a single stem (with a phonologically conditioned epenthetic vowel) as the base for forming all cases. ‘Two-stem nouns’ like buca ‘month’ have an absolutive stem and employ a distinct oblique stem (coinciding with the form of the ergative case) to produce all other case forms. Examples of grammatical cases (i.e. non-spatial cases used to mark core arguments) are shown in Table 6.2. Table 6.2 Khwarshi grammatical cases (Khalilova & Testelets, n.d.)

The absolutive case is used for the single argument of intransitive verbs, the object of transitive verbs, and the stimulus argument of experiential verbs. Verbs of this third type, which denote perception, cognitive processes, and emotions, take their experiencer argument in the dative, which in Khwarshi is syncretic with the lative case, as is common in Tsezic. Regardless of the details of case assignment, the argument in the absolutive case controls agreement in the clause. The ergative codes the subject of the transitive verb, while the dative codes not only the experiencer argument but also the benefactive and other third arguments of ditransitives. There are two distinct genitive cases: genitive 1 is used to modify absolutive arguments, while genitive 2 modifies nouns in oblique cases (see Lyutikova 2021 for a detailed analysis). As is typical for a Nakh-Daghestanian language, Khwarshi also has a morphologically distinct paradigm of spatial cases (see Table 6.3). The spatial case forms are made up as a combination of orientational and directional suffixes. Orientational suffixes denote the spatial location of an object with respect to another, e.g. ‘on’, ‘in’, ‘inside’, ‘under’, ‘at’, and ‘near’. Directional suffixes denote the direction an object moves in (if any). There are six orientations and six directional cases. As well as nouns, spatial adverbs like ‘here’ and ‘there’ also inflect for direction, e.g. in go ‘there’, in go-l ‘to there’, in go-ʁol ‘towards there’, in go-zˇo ‘from there’, in go-jzˇa ‘through there’, in go-q’a ‘up to there’; idi ‘here’, idi-l ‘to here’, idi-ʁol ‘towards here’, idi-zˇo ‘from here’, idi-jzˇa ‘through here’, idi-q’a ‘up to here’ (Khalilova & Testelets, n.d.).

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Table 6.3 Khwarshi spatial cases (Khalilova & Testelets, n.d.)

∗

This localization is termed CONT in Khalilova and Testelets (n.d.), but as it often means ‘inside filled space’ and is attested in the texts to encode meanings such as ‘in the river’, ‘in the village’, ‘in the forest’, we have changed it to INTER. The original decision to label it as CONT was presumably based on the fact that it is also attested in contexts such as ‘on the wall’, ‘on the ceiling’.

Just as in other Nakh-Daghestanian languages exhibiting gender–number (GN) agreement, in Khwarshi the predicate agrees with its absolutive argument. Only verb stems with an initial vowel have a morphological slot for agreement, which is always realized prefixally. Examples of agreeing verbs are illustrated by biχw ado ‘slaughter’, luwo ‘do, make, build’ in (1), and an auxiliary jejcˇa in (2). Verb stems without a vowel-initial stem, exemplified by hoco ‘leave’, χeχiƛana ‘hurry’ in (1), q’ucˇana ‘love’ and liːχa ‘come’ in (2), do not participate in agreement. (1) wole hoc-o beƛ’e hanq’u-q’ale-l b-iχw ad-o, wait leave-IMP lamb(III)[SG.ABS] family-child-DAT III.SG-slaughter-IMP di-l has gudamuda l-uw-o χeχiƛa-na-ƛƛan I-DAT one roasted.grain(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-IMP hurry-CVB-QUOT ‘Wait, leave (it), slaughter the lamb for the family, give me quickly made roasted grain, he said.’ (A Ram for the Family: 7)¹ (2) waj ma-n q’ucˇa-na liːχa j-ejcˇa da oh you[ABS]-ADD love-CVB come.PST.PTCP II.SG-AUX.AOR I[ABS] deb-ho you-AD.ESS ‘Oh, I married you . . .’ (lit. ‘loving you I came to you’) (Husband and Wife: 9) ¹ Examples marked with text titles are from Khwarshi texts published in Karimova (2014) or collected by Yakov Testelets and his team during their fieldwork in Khonokh in 2018 and 2019. The number following the text title indicates the line number in the text. Examples without sources come from our own fieldwork.

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In (3), various types of clauses are exemplified: intransitive clauses with unaccusative and unergative absolutive subjects (3a–b), transitive clause with ergative subject (3c), experiential and potential clauses with oblique subjects (3d–e). In all clause types the absolutive obligatorily controls agreement on the predicate, including both lexical and auxiliary verb forms. (3)

a. obu at’t’a-na ejcˇa father(I)[SG.ABS] [I.SG]come-CVB [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Father came.’ b. obu iša-t’-qo-l gic’a-na ejcˇa father(I)[SG.ABS] mother(II)-OBL-POSS-LAT look-CVB [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Father looked at mother.’ c. iša-t’-i obu at’t’a-k’-na mother(II)-OBL-ERG father(I)[SG.ABS] [I.SG].come-CAUS-CVB ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Mother brought father.’ d. iša-t’e-l obu akw a-na ejcˇa mother(II)-OBL-DAT father(I)[SG.ABS] [I.SG]see-CVB [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Mother saw father.’ e. iša-t’-qo obu at’t’a-k’-eɬ-na mother(II)-OBL-POSS father(I)[SG.ABS] [I.SG]come-CAUS-POT-CVB ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Mother could bring father.’

In addition to verbs, adjectives, demonstrative pronouns, adverbs, and postpositions can all serve as agreement targets in Khwarshi. While demonstrative pronouns and attributive adjectives are involved in agreement within the noun phrase, predicative adjectives, adverbs, and postpositions can agree with clauselevel arguments.

6.3 Unusual target agreement in Khwarshi and other Tsezic languages When talking about adverbs in Tsezic (and to certain extent in NakhDaghestanian in general), it has to be noted that within the larger class of adverbs there is a group of lexical items which can be used as both postpositions and adverbs; in the former function they select a complement in a specific case and head a postpositional phrase usually functioning as adjunct (although PP arguments have also been registered in Nakh-Daghestanian languages); and in the latter they are used without the complement in adverbial function in clause-initial

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and (less often) clause-final position (although other positions in the clause are also possible). Usually, this class of items express locative and temporal meanings (again, it is not unusual for a Nakh-Daghestanian verb to take an argument in a locative case). The Tsezic languages in general and Khwarshi in particular have a number of agreeing lexical items in this adverb/postposition group, and we will be pointing out their functions in the relevant sections. As the adverb class in general is larger, and as there are no postpositions in Khwarshi that cannot also be used adverbially, i.e. without their complement, we will use the term ‘adverb’ here when discussing the group as a whole. While almost all Tsezic languages have some clausally agreeing adverbs, Khwarshi seems to stand out in having more targets of this type than any other language in the group.² In this section we list and discuss all the agreeing adverbs in Khwarshi, providing parallels with other Tsezic languages whenever possible, and demonstrate that many agreeing Khwarshi lexical items do not have these parallels. Agreeing adverbs in Khwarshi can be divided into three groups according to the morphological realization of agreement: we can distinguish between prefixally, infixally, and suffixally agreeing adverbs. Prefixally agreeing adverbs are not especially unusual: they exist in all Tsezic languages and follow the general Tsezic morphological pattern of agreement. Infixally agreeing adverbs are more interesting, as they are found in Khwarshi only. Finally, there is one adverb in Khwarshi which has an agreement slot in suffixal position. Borrowed adjectives of Avar origin agree by means of suffixes, but one of these borrowings is primarily used as an adverb. The following sections discuss these in turn.

6.3.1 Prefixally agreeing adverbs As is the case in all Tsezic languages, in Khwarshi only vowel-initial verb stems and vowel-initial adjectives can have a morphological slot for agreement. Examples include GN -aha ‘get up’, GN-uwa ‘do’, GN-ac’a ‘eat’ (verbs), GN -eχola ‘long’, GN -icˇːu ‘fat’, GN -agu ‘good’, and GN -uq’u ‘big’ (adjectives). While we have no frequency data for Khwarshi, the Tsez dictionary reports the proportion of agreeing verbs and adjectives as 27% and 4% respectively, although corpus studies show higher numbers for both lexical classes (Fedden 2019: 319). It is unsurprising that adverbs express agreement in the same way as these more familiar targets, i.e. by employing prefixes. However, adverbs are much less likely to show agreement than adjectives or verbs: most vowel-initial adverbs do not ² This is a tentative observation, since it may simply reflect the fact that Khwarshi adverbs have been studied in more detail than those in closely related languages.

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show agreement, and are instead invariable in form (examples include in go ‘there’, ago ‘nearby’, and eze ‘in the eye’). It is impossible to give the percentage of agreeing adverbs in Khwarshi, as we do not yet have a comprehensive list of adverbs; but this section lists all agreeing adverbs that have been registered so far, and it will become clear that the number is very low. Prefixally agreeing adverbs index the gender and number features of their controller. In what follows, we outline the properties of some well-attested members of this class.

6.3.1.1 ‘in between’ and related forms A lexical item expressing the meaning ‘in between, in the middle’ is attested as an agreeing item in several Tsezic languages. These lexemes are mostly used as postpositions, although, as pointed out above, they can also be used as adverbs. Examples (4)–(6) are from Khwarshi proper, where this lexeme has the form GN -oƛaƛ’o, in which we can distinguish the root oƛa and the SUP localization suffix -ƛ’o. Example (4) shows a postpositional usage: j-oƛaƛ’o ‘between’ takes its complement uzˇa-za-ɬ ‘boys’ in interessive case and agrees with the absolutive Pat’imat by means of the prefix j-, and not with its own complement: (4)

Pat’imat uzˇa-za-ɬ j-oƛaƛ’o Patimat(II)[SG.ABS] boy(I)-PL.OBL-INTER.ESS II.SG-in.between j-ahecˇa-na goɬe II.SG-stand-CVB COP.PRS ‘Patimat is standing among the boys.’

In (5) this postposition takes the translative ending -zˇa, and it agrees in gender III with the absolutive mašina ‘car’ rather than with its own complement, the gender IV noun an q ‘house’ in interessive case: (5)

mašina an q-za-ɬ b-oƛaƛ’o-jzˇa car(III)[SG.ABS] house(IV)-PL.OBL-INTER.ESS III.SG-between-TRNS m-ajk’a? II.SG-go.PST.PTCP ‘Will the car go through in between the houses?’

In (6) this item is used as an adverb and is modified by a quantifier hecˇ’cˇ’e ‘most’, giving ‘in the very middle (of a space)’. This adverb GN -oƛaƛ’ol takes the lative case and agrees with the absolutive of the clause, the third-person singular pronoun idu referring, in this sentence, to a man: (6)

hecˇ’cˇ’e oƛaƛ’o-l idu at’t’a-zal most [I.SG]between-LAT he [I.SG]go-TMP ‘Once he got to the very middle . . .’ (lit. ‘to in the very middle’) (Mouse and Crow: 35)

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In the Inkhokwari dialect this word has the form GN -oƛoƛ’o, as in (7), where it agrees in gender with the absolutive kert’i ‘fence’ by means of the prefix l-: (7) obu-t’-i q’w ana-cˇ buƛu-lo l-oƛoƛ’o father-OBL-ERG two.OBL-COLL shed(III)[SG.ABS]-GEN2 IV.SG-between kert’i l-i-ji fence(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-do-PST.W ‘The father made a fence between two sheds.’ (Khalilova 2009: 138)³ The adverb/postposition ‘in between’ agrees in all Tsezic languages. In Tsez it has the form GN -oƛƛo ‘among’ (Khalilov 1999: 415), in Hinuq it is GN -oƛƛo ‘in between’ (Forker 2013: 353), in Hunzib it is GN -aƛƛe ‘middle’ (van den Berg 1995: 68), and in Bezhta it is GN -aƛƛo ‘between’ (Khalilov 1995: 143). In all these lexemes the doubling of the consonant ƛ probably originates from merging the root oƛa with the SUP localization suffix. The same root with the lative ending -l is attested in Khwarshi with the meaning ‘in equal parts, equally’. In (8) from Khwarshi proper it is used as an adverb in clause-final position and agrees in gender III with the absolutive os ‘money’: (8) is-i q’ala-l os tiƛa b-oƛa-l he-ERG children-DAT money(III)[SG.ABS] give.AOR III.SG-equally-LAT ‘He paid the children equally.’ In (9), from Inkhokwari, it is also used adverbially and agrees in gender IV with the absolutive šiƛ’u ‘clothes’: (9)

zˇide šiƛ’u l-ez-i l-oƛo-l they.ERG clothes(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-buy-PST.W IV.SG-apart-LAT ‘They bought clothes, each paying half of the price.’ / ‘They bought clothes in order to wear them together.’ (Khalilova 2009: 131)

Another item based on the same root is GN -oƛanuq’a ‘in the centre’. It contains the terminative ending -q’a; it is also possible to identify the masdar suffix -nu in the makeup of this form, but synchronically it is a single word which we gloss as ‘centre’. Khalilova (2009: 134) glosses it as ‘in.the.center’ without separating off the terminative ending. When used as a postposition, it takes a complement in the inessive case. This is illustrated in examples (10) from Khwarshi proper and (11) from Inkhokwari. (10)

ʕaƛ ʁw ano-ɬ b-oƛanu-q’a goɬe village(III)[SG.ABS] forest-IN III.SG-centre-TERM COP.PRS ‘The village is in the centre of the forest.’

³ In this chapter we use to signify the palatal resonant; citations from Khalilova (2009), where is used for the same phoneme, are modified accordingly.

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(11)

aq-ma l-oƛonuq’a gul-un goli ustur room-IN IV.SG-in.the.center put-PFV.CVB be.PRS chair(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘The chair is put in the centre of the room.’ (Khalilova 2009: 139)

In addition, the Inkhokwari description mentions an adverb GN -oƛo ‘apart’, which our language consultant from Khonokh did not recognize as being present in her variety. However, the only examples of this adverb provided in Khalilova (2009) appear in the formulaic ending of a tale (12) and the fixed expression meaning ‘to bet on’ (13), so it may be obsolete. There are several tokens which look like GN -oƛa in the Khwarshi proper text collection, all used in the same formula as in (12), but they are all given with different transcriptions so without additional fieldwork it is hard to say whether this adverb is still used in Khwarshi proper. (12)

b-oƛo bada-n b-ut’-un, dijo III.SG-apart sack(III)[SG.ABS]-ADD III.SG-divide-PFV.CVB I.GEN1 muχa-n ɬuq-un tale(III)[SG.ABS]-ADD finish-PST.UW ‘My sack is torn apart, and the tale finished.’ (Khalilova 2009: 131)

(13)

obu-t’-i sojro b-oƛo gul-i father-OBL-ERG horse(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-apart put-PST.W ‘The father bet on the horse.’ (Khalilova 2009: 131)

6.3.1.2 ‘well’ Another agreeing adverb found across the Tsezic languages is the lexeme meaning ‘well’. In the Inkhokwari dialect this has the form GN -og, while in Tsez it appears as GN -ig (Polinsky 2015: 3) and in Hinuq it is GN -eg (Forker 2013: 294). The Hunzib adverb GN-izˇeq’ ‘much’ (van den Berg 1995: 68) is probably also related. Example (14) from the Inkhokwari dialect shows this adverb agreeing in gender I with the absolutive Muћamad: (14)

Muћamad Pat’imati-ƛ’o-zi-n og durid-ej Magomed(I)[SG.ABS] Patimat.OBL-SUP-ABL-ADD [I.SG]well run-GNT ‘Magomed runs faster than Patimat.’ (lit. ‘runs better’) (Khalilova 2009: 286)

In Khwarshi proper there is no corresponding adverb; there is, however, an adjective GN -agu which can be used predicatively, as examples (15) and (16) demonstrate. In both examples the adjective agrees in gender IV, which is the default gender (thus, for example, matrix verbs can take gender IV when agreeing with a clausal argument): (15)

han , gossal l-agu-ƛƛa iƛa-na ah thus IV.SG-well-QUOT say-CVB ‘A h, all right then, she said.’ (The Beauty: 12)

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l-agu-ƛƛa raziɬa-na eχun-e-s uzˇa IV.SG-well-QUOT agree-CVB blacksmith-OBL-GEN1 son(I)[SG.ABS] ‘A ll right, agreed the blacksmith’s son.’ (The Blacksmith’s Sons: 38)

6.3.1.3 ‘back’ In the Inkhokwari dialect there is an agreeing adverb GN -aχχacˇ ‘back’, which is absent from Khwarshi proper. In (17) it agrees with os ‘money’ in gender III and in (18) it agrees with the conjoined noun phrase obun uzˇen ‘father and son’: (17)

ise b-oq-i b-aχχacˇ q’udu-l he.OBL.ERG III.SG-take-PST.W III.SG-back down-LAT b-išš-u os III.SG-fall-PST.PTCP money(III)[SG.ABS] ‘He took back the money that fell down.’ (Khalilova 2009: 350)

(18)

obu-n uzˇe-n b-aχχacˇ m-ok’-i father(I)[SG.ABS]-ADD boy(I)[SG.ABS]-ADD HPL-back HPL-go-PST.W ‘The father and the son went back.’ (Khalilova 2009: 316)

6.3.1.4 ‘like, in the same way, thus’ While ‘back’ is only attested in the Inkhokwari dialect, an agreeing adverb meaning ‘like, in the same way, thus’ is attested in Khwarshi proper only. It appears in two slightly different forms, GN -ajɬa / GN -aɬala. In (19) the adverb agrees with the covert absolutive argument of the imperative; in (20) b-aɬala agrees in gender III with mašina ‘car’: (19)

iɬi-ho ø-ajɬa / j-ajɬa ejcˇ-u / j-ejcˇ-u she.OBL-AD I.SG-like / II.SG-like [I.SG]be-PROH / II.SG-be-PROH ‘Don’t you [ = male referent (I) / female referent (II)] be like her’.

(20)

Rasul-i mašina ʕadala-w Rasul-ERG car(III)[SG.ABS] mad-I.SG m-iq’w -eːk’-a III-go-CAUS-GNT ‘Rasul drives a car like a madman.’

zˇik’w a b-aɬala man(I).SG.ERG III.SG-like

The adlative form of this adverb has the meaning ‘equally; alike’: (21)

il-i b-ajɬo-ho-l os we-ERG III.SG-like-AD-LAT money(III)[SG.ABS] ‘We paid equally.’

tiƛa give.AOR

To summarize, there are two prefixally agreeing adverbs that are registered in several Tsezic languages, ‘between’ and ‘well’, and five prefixally agreeing adverbs that are found in Khwarshi only. Table 6.4 presents these findings. The cells with two forms show dialectal variants: the variant with /a/ is from Khwarshi proper (Kp), and the variant with /o/ is from the Inkhokwari dialect (IK).

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Table 6.4 Prefixally agreeing adverbs in the Tsezic languages

6.3.2 Infixally agreeing adverbs Both the Khwarshi proper and Inkhokwari dialects have adverbs featuring an infixal agreement slot. Infixal inflection is not found elsewhere in the morphological system of Khwarshi, or indeed anywhere else in the Tsezic languages in general. Consider the following examples: (22)

uzˇa a‹w›di goɬe boy(I)[SG.ABS] ‹I.SG›here COP.PRS ‘The boy is here.’

(23)

kad a‹j›di goɬe girl(II)[SG.ABS] ‹II.SG›here COP.PRS ‘The girl is here.’

(24)

zihin a‹b›di goɬe cow(III)[SG.ABS] ‹III.SG›here COP.PRS ‘The cow is here.’

(25)

en a‹r›di-l tiƛ! knife(IV)[SG.ABS] ‹IV.SG›here-LAT give.IMP ‘Give the knife here!’

(26)

hor-o a‹w›di-ʁol, come-IMP here‹I.SG›-VERS ‘Come here, she said.’

eƛƛa say.AOR

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šog o‹r›engo goɬe pan(IV)[SG.ABS] ‹IV.SG›there COP.PRS ‘The saucepan is there.’

The adverbs a‹GN ›di ‘here’ and o‹GN ›engo ‘there’ agree with the absolutive of the clause and can additionally be inflected with locative affixes, such as lative -l in (25) and directive -ʁol in (26). In these respects, they behave like other Khwarshi adverbs. But the position of the agreement marker is very unusual. Another adverb based on the same root is a‹GN ›na ‘thus’, illustrated in (28); when it bears the intensifier -cˇ, a‹GN ›nacˇ has the meaning ‘just so, for free’, as in (29) and (30): (28)

is-i zˇu a‹j›na leƛ’a-ba l-eːjt-o-q’ar-ƛ’o he-ERG she.ABS thus‹II› hand-PL IV.SG-touch.PST.PTCP-OBL-time-SUP ‘When he touched her thus with his hands . . . [that skin slid off and the frog turned into a beautiful girl].’ (The Khan’s Sons: 11)

(29)

Rasul-i Muћammad-es televizor Rasul(I)-ERG Magomed(I)-GEN1 television(IV)[SG.ABS] a‹r›na-cˇ q’ajida ‹IV.SG›thus-INTS fix.AOR ‘Rasul fixed Magomed’s television set for free.’

(30)

de zˇu a‹w›na-cˇ in q’a I.ERG he.ABS ‹I.SG›thus-INTS bring.AOR ‘I merely brought him, all I did was bring him.’

All these infixally agreeing adverbs are derived from the predicative demonstratives (see Killian 2021) a‹GN ›e ‘here, voici’ and o‹GN ›e ‘there, voilà’, which are found in both Khwarshi proper and Inkhokwari dialect: (31)

a‹r›e šog / o‹r›e šog ‹IV.SG›here pan(IV)[SG.ABS] / ‹IV.SG›there pan(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘Here is the saucepan.’/ ‘There is the saucepan.’

The difference between locative adverbs and predicative demonstratives is easy to demonstrate: the latter head the clause and cannot be used alongside another predicate. This is illustrated by (32), where the use of the copula is ungrammatical: (32)

∗

a‹r›e šog goɬe / ∗ o‹r›e ‹IV.SG›here pan(IV)[SG.ABS] COP.PRS / ‹IV.SG›there šog goɬe pan(IV) [SG.ABS] COP.PRS Intended: ‘Here is the saucepan.’/ ‘There is the saucepan.’

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This restriction does not cover a separate use of the predicative demonstrative a‹GN ›e ‘here’ to mark information structure. This function is discussed in §6.4.4. These adverbs are derived in different ways: a‹GN ›na ‘thus’ is based on a‹GN ›e ‘here’ plus the converbial suffix -na; a‹GN ›nacˇ ‘just so’ consists of a‹GN ›e followed by -na plus an intensifier -cˇ; a‹GN ›di contains an adverbializer -di which is also found in the adverbs idi and hobodi, both meaning ‘here’. The adverb o‹r›engo ‘there’ seems to be used less frequently. It is based on the predicative demonstrative o‹r›e ‘there, voilà’ and contains an adverbial suffix also seen in adverbs such as hobongo ‘thus’, bercingo ‘beautifully’. The agreeing items shown in (22)–(32) are different from other agreeing adverbs in Khwarshi in two ways: first, they realize agreement with an infix rather than a prefix, and, second, they have the overt masculine (gender I) exponent ‹w›. The only other items which have an overt (suffixal) exponent for gender I are the adjectives borrowed from Avar. Testelets (2021: 13) mentions this morphological anomaly, analysing ‹w› as an interfix between two pronominal roots in complex deictic pronouns and adverbs. However, this does not explain why the first root does not also bear the agreement prefix (i.e. why we do not see something like ∗ j-a‹j›di in (23)) and why Khwarshi is so different from other Tsezic languages in this respect. The second question requires further investigation, but one possible direction of research would be to investigate whether this results from borrowing from Tindi, a neighbouring language belonging to the Andic group. In Tindi, there are agreeing items identified in the grammatical description as ‘predicative pronouns’ which locate an object in space with reference to elevation (up, down, and level) (Magomedova 2012: 170). These items agree with the absolutive of the clause by means of infixes, which for Tindi is unremarkable: verbs and adjectives also have infixal slots for agreement. The situation in Tindi has a further complication: these predicative pronouns also possess the typologically rare feature of allocutivity (also observed in some other Andic languages), i.e. they agree (suffixally) with the addressee. Thus, in (33a) a‹b›a-j ‘here’ agrees in gender with absolutive ʁocˇa ‘book’ (neuter) by means of the infix ‹b› and also agrees with the feminine addressee of the clause, Patimat, by means of the suffix -j. Likewise, in (33b) a‹j›a-w ‘here’ agrees in the feminine gender with absolutive hamaʁa ‘girlfriend’ by means of the infix ‹j› and also agrees with the addressee of the clause, ima ‘father’, in masculine gender by means of the suffix -w: (33)

Tindi (Magomedova 2003: 29, 2012: 148) a. Paːt’imata a‹b›a-j du-ɬa q’ocˇ-an -b ‹N.SG›here-F.SG you-DAT need-PTCP-N Patimat ʁocˇa book(N)[SG.ABS] ‘Patimat, here is the book you need.’

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b. ima a‹j›a-w di-j hamaʁa father ‹F.SG›here-M.SG I-GEN.F friend(F)[SG.ABS] ‘Father, here is my girlfriend.’

6.3.3 Suffixally agreeing adverbs There is one group of lexical items in Khwarshi which has an agreement slot in suffixal position: it comprises adjectives borrowed into Khwarshi from Avar, such as c’odora- ‘clever’, bercina- ‘beautiful’, micˇaha- ‘rich’. Once borrowed, the adjectives follow the Khwarshi rather than the Avar pattern of agreement: first of all, Avar has only three genders whereas Khwarshi has five, and the borrowed adjectives take agreement in all five genders. The GN markers partly coincide in the two languages, yet once borrowed into Khwarshi, the Avar adjectives take on distinctively Khwarshi inflectional markers; compare Khwarshi c’odora-b kande-ba ‘clever girls’, featuring the Khwarshi human plural agreement suffix, with its Avar equivalent c’odora-l jas-al ‘clever girls’, which shows the -l suffix that indiscriminately denotes plural for all genders in Avar (Khalilova & Testelets, n.d.). At least one such borrowing represents a lexical item which functions in the donor language as both an adverb and an adjective. The Avar word t’ok’a-GN can mean ‘superfluous, extraordinary’ or ‘(once) more’. In Khwarshi this item is used mostly as an adverb: in the existing (relatively small) corpus it is used 13 times as an adverb and never as an adjective. Examples (34) and (35) illustrate this usage: in (34) t’ok’ar agrees with lok’w a ‘heart’, the absolutive of the idiomatic construction lok’w a lijaχa ‘kill heart’ (= hurt): (34)

hobona-jci da goqa-la-sa de-ba t’ok’a-r thus-even I[ABS] like-FUT-ATTR you-GEN1 once.more-IV.SG lok’w a l-ija-χ-łal heart(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-kill-CAUS-COND ‘If I once more hurt you, who love me so much . . .’ (Husband and Wife: 12)

In (35) this adverb is used in clause-initial position and agrees with the omitted absolutive of the verb ‘let in’. (35)

an c-na χiša-na, t’ok’a-w in du-ʁol-na door(IV)[SG.ABS]-ADD lock-CVB once.more-I.SG home-VERS-ADD ešt’a-na gobcˇ’i [I.SG]let.in-CVB NEG.AUX ‘Having locked the door, she didn’t let her son in any more.’ (Ash-stirrer: 18)

This adverb is only used in non-veridical contexts such as conditionals, as in (34), and negative predicates, as in (35); its syntactic behaviour will be treated in §6.4.

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More research is needed on the morphological properties of Khwarshi unusual controllers and the morphosyntactic properties of Khwarshi adverbs in general, and since Khwarshi is an unwritten and poorly documented language (except for the Inkhokwari dialect, which is described by Khalilova 2009), this will require more fieldwork. We have shown that Khwarshi has a rich inventory of clausally agreeing adverbs, which realize agreement both in line with the morphological configuration of Khwarshi and other Tsezic languages (prefixal agreement) and in a more language-specific way (infixal and suffixal agreement). The remainder of the chapter deals with the syntactic properties of unusual agreement targets in Khwarshi.

6.4 Syntactic properties of adverbial agreement: choice of controller In this section we identify the controllers of agreeing adverbs in Khwarshi, restricting our attention to the Khwarshi proper variety. In §6.4.1, we show that a simple generalization can be drawn that determines the choice of the agreement controller attested on prototypical and unusual targets. In §6.4.2 and §6.4.3 we deal with apparent variability in the choice of the controller. Specifically, we discuss possible controllers of agreeing adverbials in biabsolutive constructions (§6.4.2) and in complementation constructions allowing LDA (§6.4.3). In §6.4.4 we present evidence for the discourse function of agreeing adverbs.

6.4.1 Controller of adverbial agreement As has been illustrated in previous sections, the controller of agreement in the clause is the absolutive argument. In a number of constructions, this absolutive can be missing. This can be due to various processes, both syntactic and postsyntactic, e.g. ellipsis. The category of the syntactic gap may vary as well (e.g. A-trace, A-bar-trace, PRO, pro), but, irrespective of this, GN agreement reveals the presence of the absolutive argument. Non-absolutive DPs may sometimes seem to act as agreement controllers, but this is possible only if they form a derivational or anaphoric chain with an absolutive. This claim is illustrated below with specific examples. In (36a), the absolutive argument of the nominalized verb receives adnominal (genitive) encoding; in (36b), the absolutive argument of the non-finite converbial clause is represented by a silent pronominal (pro); in (36c), the absolutive argument corresponds to the gap in the relative construction. In all these cases, we observe predicate agreement with the missing absolutive.

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a. beq-a-loi [ __i b-orƛ’ida]-nu-qo-zˇu sun(III)[SG.ABS]-OBL-GEN2 __ABS III.SG-burn-MSD-POSS-ABL idu aʁuda-ɬ-el c’oχχa he[ABS] sweat-POSS-LAT abound.AOR ‘Because the sun was bright, he became sweaty.’ b. is-ii , [ __i in ƛ’a-na], . . . kejka l-u-ho he-ERG __ABS [I.SG]go-CVB flour(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-do-CVB.IPFV l-ecˇa-na IV.SG-AUX-CVB ‘He, having gone (there), was grinding flour.’ (The Bear’s Ear: 7) c. [q’ej-lo-ƛ’o-l __i l-ajšo] hiban-a-ƛ’oi floor-OBL-SUP-LAT __ABS IV.SG-put.PST.PTCP thing-OBL-SUP q’onta-za-ƛ’o-l-na j-uƛ-na. . . knee-PL.OBL-SUP-LAT-ADD II.SG-stand-CVB ‘Having knelt on the thing placed on the floor (i.e. the carpet) . . .’ (Ropewalker and Marten: 13)

Another type of missing absolutive is attested in complementation constructions where the clausal argument occupies the absolutive position. In this case, the default gender IV singular agreement marker appears on the predicate (37a).⁴ Similarly, other non-nominal expressions in the absolutive position, like the adverbial in (37b), or the absence of the absolutive argument, as in (37c), trigger default agreement as well.⁵ The fact that even in the absence of the appropriate controller the agreement slot is still filled by a default marker provides robust evidence for treating GN congruence in Khwarshi as agreement proper, and not as clitic doubling (Preminger 2014). (37)

a. qw aj-a c’alid-a l-iq’a-la-sa hadam write-INF read-INF IV.SG-know-FUT-ATTR people(HPL)[ABS] iɬi zaman-a-ƛ’o dah b-ecˇa-na . . . this.OBL time-OBL-SUP few HPL-be-CVB ‘A s at that time there were not many people who could read and write . . .’ (Mullah and Healer: 1) b. da ek’ejɬ-a, di-l hobona l-eqq-a I[ABS] [I.SG]fall-AOR I-DAT so IV.SG-happen-AOR ‘I fell, it so happened to me.’ (The Bear’s Ear: 23) c. hobozˇa idu isu-ɬ gojɬa hadam-i now these.OBL this.OBL-INTER COP.PTCP people-ERG

⁴ Alternatively, the embedded absolutive can control the agreement of the matrix predicate, giving rise to the LDA configuration, see §6.4.3 for details. ⁵ It is also possible that in (37b–c) the absolutive position is occupied by an empty anaphoric pronoun (‘it, this’): ‘this happened to me so’ in (37b) and ‘Molla Nasreddin was annoyed at this’ in (37c). Note, however, that this pronoun should belong to the default IV class anyway.

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MARINA CHUMAKINA AND EKATERINA LYUTIKOVA isu-lo lozˇ-za-s milat this.OBL-GEN2 word-PL.OBL-GEN1 care(III)[SG.ABS] b-uwa-jto-q’ar-ƛ’o, is-a l-agu III.SG-do-NEG.PTCP-time-SUP this.OBL-GEN1 IV.SG-good lok’w a l-uwa-la-sa lozˇa-n heart(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-do-FUT-ATTR word(IV)[SG.ABS]-ADD kula-jti-q’ar-ƛ’o, l-ajc-a q’aʕida-ƛ’o isi throw-NEG.PTCP-time-SUP IV.SG-hate-AOR manner-SUP this.OBL Mala Nasrudin-i-l Molla Nasreddin-OBL-DAT ‘When his companions (= these people who were with him) did not pay any attention to his words, and did not say to him any kind words (= words which make the heart good), this Molla Nasreddin got offended.’ (Ah, Youth: 9)

Clausally agreeing adverbials are licensed as modifiers in the extended projection of the verbal predicate; consequently, they belong to the same agreement domain as the predicate they modify. Unsurprisingly, they exhibit the same GN features in their agreement slot as the verbal predicate (38): (38)

a. kad j-agu j-ado-ho girl(II)[SG.ABS] II.SG-well II.SG-work-CVB.IPFV ‘The girl was working well.’

j-ejcˇa II.SG-AUX.AOR

b. kand-i b-agu ħalt’i b-u-ho girl(II)[SG]-ERG III.SG-well work(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-do-CVB.IPFV b-ejcˇa III.SG-AUX.AOR ‘The girl was doing the job well.’ The same holds for constructions with a missing absolutive: whatever the reason for the absence of an overt absolutive, agreeing adverbials share GN features with the predicate. (39)

a. __ o‹j›engo j-aqe-χ-na j-ecˇa-na . . . pro(II).ABS there‹II.SG› II.SG-lie-CAUS-CVB II.SG-AUX-CVB han da q’em-lo ʁin-a one.OBL head-GEN2 woman-ERG ‘There she, one of our relatives, laid her . . .’ (Our Mum: 18) b. . . . dibir-i an se-qo l-agu esa-na isu-lo-ho-l mullah-ERG healer-POSS IV.SG-well say-CVB he-GEN2-AD-LAT rešt’id-o-ƛƛan descend-IMP-QUOT ‘. . . Mullah asked the Healer nicely to come down to him.’ (Mullah and Healer: 10)

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Examples (39a–b), featuring the equative adverb -aɬala ‘like’, are especially instructive. In (39a), this item shows up with the feminine (II) gender agreement marker, suggesting that its dependent ma ‘you’, the standard of equation, is the controller. In (40b), however, the adverb seems to agree with the absolutive of the dominating clause ћalt’i ‘work’. Note that the difference between the two examples is that in (40a) the clause is intransitive, and the arguments being equated are in the absolutive, whereas in (40b) the clause is transitive, and two ergative arguments are being equated. (40)

a. da [ma j-aɬala] kapiko-za-ƛ ħalt’ida-ha I[ABS] you[ABS] II.SG-like penny-PL.OBL-SUB work-IPFV.CVB ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘I [ = male referent (I)] was working for a penny, like you [ = female referent (II)].’ b. de [mi b-aɬala] kapiko-za-ƛ quba-b I.ERG you.ERG III.SG-like penny-PL.OBL-SUB dirty-III.SG ħalt’i b-u-ho b-ejcˇa work(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-do-IPFV.CVB III.SG-AUX.AOR ‘I was doing a dirty job for a penny, like you.’

This seemingly intricate pattern of agreement becomes straightforward if we consider the equative construction introduced by GN -aɬala ‘like’ as involving a clausal standard of equation with subsequent ellipsis of the recoverable material, a process similar to comparative deletion in clausal comparatives (Merchant 2001; Lechner 2004). The corresponding structures are represented in (41a–b). We observe that under this analysis, GN -aɬala ‘like’ invariably agrees with the absolutive of its own clause. (41)

a. da [ma kapiko-za-ƛ ħalt’ida-ha I[ABS] you[ABS] penny-PL.OBL-SUB work-CVB.PRS j-ejcˇa j-aɬala] kapiko-za-ƛ ħalt’ida-ha II.SG-AUX.AOR II.SG-like penny-PL.OBL-SUB work-CVB.PRS ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘I [ = male referent (I)] was working for a penny, like you [ = female referent (II)] (were working for a penny).’ b. de [mi kapiko-za-ƛ quba-b ħalt’i I.ERG you.ERG penny-PL.OBL-SUB dirty-III.SG work(III)[SG.ABS] b-u-ho b-ejcˇa b-aɬala] kapiko-za-ƛ III.SG-do-CVB.PRS III.SG-AUX.AOR III.SG-like penny-PL.OBL-SUB quba-b ħalt’i b-u-ho b-ejcˇa dirty-III.SG work(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-do-CVB.PRS III.SG-AUX.AOR ‘I was doing a dirty job for a penny, like you (were doing a dirty job for a penny).’

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To sum up, we can identify the controller of adverbial agreement in Khwarshi as the absolutive of the clause which the target belongs to. Since the verbal predicate agrees with its absolutive argument as well, the generalization can be stated as follows: (42)

In Khwarshi, absolutives control agreement on verbal predicates (prototypical agreement) and their adverbial modifiers (external agreement).

The identity of agreement features on verbs and adverbs can be technically implemented in various ways (Rudnev 2020). One of the parameters distinguishing these approaches is the relation they take to exist between multiple agreement targets. On one hand, one might suppose that all agreement targets agree with the dedicated absolutive separately and independently: once an agreeing element enters the derivation, it searches for the closest absolutive argument and agrees with it. Alternatively, agreement of multiple targets could be construed successively, whereby the previous agreement target serves as the controller of the next agreement operation. The latter is the approach often assumed in formal accounts of agreement in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. Thus, Gagliardi et al. (2014) claim that in Lak and Tsez, auxiliaries agree with the verb phrase rather than with absolutives directly; similarly, Polinsky et al. (2017) posit GN agreement of feature-deficient personal pronouns in Archi with a verbal functional projection, which has previously received these features via agreement with the absolutive. The two alternatives are represented schematically in (43a–b). (43)

a.

separate agreement AuxP

VP

Adv

Aux

VP

ABS

V

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b.

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successive agreement AuxP

VP

Aux

VP

Adv

ABS

V

The difference between the two approaches becomes important in modelling variable agreement features on various targets. We will return to this issue in §6.4.3.

6.4.2 External agreement in biabsolutive constructions The biabsolutive construction is a transitive construction in which both core arguments appear in the absolutive case. An example of a minimal pair is provided in (44). Example (44a) is a standard transitive construction where the subject is ergative and the verbal predicate invariably agrees with the absolutive argument. Example (44b) attests a biabsolutive construction which is characterized by the following properties: first, the subject also appears in the absolutive; secondly, the auxiliary agrees with the subject absolutive. (44)

a. Rasul-i an q l-u-ho Rasul-ERG house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV l-ejcˇa / ∗ ejcˇa IV.SG-AUX.AOR / [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building a house.’ b. Rasul an q l-u-ho Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa / ∗ l-ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR / IV.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building a house.’

It turns out that in biabsolutive constructions, external agreement can be controlled by either the subject or the object absolutive, as in (45).

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(45)

Rasul a‹w›di / a‹r›di an q Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] ‹I.SG›there / ‹IV.SG›there house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building a house there.’

The variability exemplified in (45) seems to suggest that the choice of the controller of external agreement may be not as straightforward as the generalization in (42) claims. Nonetheless, in what follows we show that the variability in (45) is structurally determined, and that the adverb agrees with the absolutive of the clause it belongs to. In other words, we propose that biabsolutive constructions in Khwarshi form a biclausal structure and that the adverb in (45) is ambiguous with respect to its structural position as part of the matrix or the embedded clause. We motivate our proposal in two stages. First, we argue that biabsolutive constructions in Khwarshi involve two clauses. Second, we show that the variable agreement of adverbials correlates with their structural position.

6.4.2.1 The structure of the biabsolutive construction Forker (2012) presents a detailed overview of properties of biabsolutive constructions in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. Khwarshi shares many of them. To start with, it attests the biabsolutive construction in the context of analytic verb forms of only one type, namely those involving the imperfective converb. The auxiliary is represented by the present tense copula goɬe (negative form gobcˇ’i), or by the auxiliary verb -ecˇa ‘be, become, stay’ in synthetic (aorist, habitual) or analytic (perfect/evidential, future) forms. The present positive copula goɬe can be omitted. Several non-elicited examples from the text collection are shown below. (46)

a. hobo-ɬi-cˇ ʕaƛ-a ʕumru b-u-ho this-OBL-INTS village-IN.ESS life(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-do-CVB.IPFV ecˇa-na c’aq’ šiƛ’u-niƛu [I.SG]AUX-CVB very clothing-footwear(IV)[SG.ABS] n-aqʷ-ala-sa zˇik’ʷa IV.SG-sew-FUT-ATTR man(I)[SG.ABS] ‘In the same village there lived a very good tailor.’ (Walls have ears: 2) b. t’ok’a-w ecˇa-bcˇ’u ek’e-jzˇo-qo once.more-I.SG [I.SG]be-NEG.CVB younger-ATTR.OBL-POSS os esaχ-χo ecˇa-ha money(III)[SG.ABS] ask-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX-CVB.IPFV ecˇa-na [I.SG]AUX-CVB ‘[As] they no longer had [a father], [he] asked the younger one for the money.’ (The Blacksmith’s Sons: 11)

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c. lac’a k’w e-ho idu-cˇ ecˇa-na . . . food(IV)[SG.ABS] search-CVB.IPFV this-INTS [I.SG]AUX-CVB ‘While he was looking for food . . .’ (The Blacksmith’s Sons: 25) d. c’a-n gin-na, hobondu-t’a hibane-ba fire(IV)[SG.ABS]-ADD put-CVB such-PL thing(IV)-PL.ABS l-u-ho b-eːcˇa b-ejcˇ-a kʷerti-ƛ’o NHPL-do-CVB.IPFV III.SG-AUX.GNT III.SG-AUX-AOR godekan-SUP.ESS ‘(We) used to build bonfires and do such things at the godekan [village square].’ (Girl and Djinns: 46) e. . . . maʁol-ecˇ eqw a-bcˇ’u hobona jun ƛu outward-INTS [I.SG]exit-NEG.CVB so ash(V)[SG.ABS] t’irat’a-ha ecˇa-na move-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX-CVB ‘. . . he did not go outside, (just sat there and) stirred the ash thus.’ (Ash-stirrer: 8) Other analytic and synthetic forms, including those based on the perfective converb of the lexical verb (perfect/pluperfect) in (47), and on the infinitive of the lexical verb (future/future in the past), as in (48), are not compatible with the biabsolutive construction. (47)

a. Rasul-i an q l-u-na Rasul-ERG house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB goɬe / l-ejcˇa COP.PRS / IV.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Rasul has/had built a house.’ b. ∗ Rasul an q l-u-na Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB goɬe / ejcˇa COP.PRS / [I.SG]AUX.AOR Intended: ‘Rasul has/had built a house.’

(48)

a. Rasul-i an q l-uw-a Rasul-ERG house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-INF goɬe / l-ejcˇa COP.PRS / IV.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Rasul is/was going to build a house.’ b. ∗ Rasul an q l-uw-a Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-INF goɬe / ejcˇa COP.PRS / [I.SG]AUX.AOR Intended: ‘Rasul is/was going to build a house.’

Although Khwarshi word order is fairly free, especially in the main clause, the biabsolutive construction exhibits significant restrictions. The object absolutive must precede the lexical verb; the two cannot be separated by either the auxiliary

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or the subject absolutive. The possible word order permutations in the biabsolutive construction are listed in (49); (50) shows some ungrammatical word orders. Importantly, the orders in (50) are licit in the standard ergative construction. (49)

a. b. c. d. e. f.

S O V Aux S Aux O V Aux O V S Aux S O V O V S Aux O V Aux S

(50)

a. b. c.

∗

O S V Aux (object and lexical verb separated by subject) S Aux V O (object follows the lexical verb) ∗ V Aux S O (object and lexical verb separated by subject and auxiliary; object follows the lexical verb) ∗

We conclude that in the biabsolutive construction, the object and the lexical verb form a constituent with fixed word order, which does not allow subextraction. For the Nakh-Daghestanian languages, this is a telling sign of a clause-like or noun phrase boundary. Not only ergative-licensing transitive verbs, but also experiential verbs licensing dative subjects can appear in the biabsolutive construction. Forker (2012) notes that, among the Nakh-Daghestanian languages she considers, the majority (Archi, Bezhta, Inkhokwari Khwarshi, Tsez, Hinuq, Avar, Godoberi, Lak, and Icari Dargwa) do not allow the biabsolutive construction in the context of experiential and potential verbs, with only Chechen and Ingush being the exceptions to the rule. Kazenin (2013) adds Lak to the list of languages where the affective construction alternates with the biabsolutive; see also Gagliardi et al. (2014) for Lak data. Khwarshi proper, unlike Inkhokwari, seems to belong to this class too; it attests the biabsolutive construction with affective verbs (relevant examples are given in (51)–(52)). As for potential and possession verbs which select for a possessive oblique subject, they are illicit in the biabsolutive construction in Khwarshi (53)–(54). (51)

a. Pat’imat-e-l uzˇa Patimat(II)-OBL-DAT boy(I)[SG.ABS] ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Patimat was seeing (her) son.’ b. Pat’imat uzˇa Patimat(II)[SG.ABS] boy(I)[SG.ABS] j-ejcˇa II.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Patimat was seeing (her) son.’

akw a-ha [I.SG]see-CVB.IPFV

akw a-ha [I.SG]see-CVB.IPFV

E XTERNAL AGREEMENT IN KHWARSHI (52)

a. Pat’imat-e-l zˇu Patimat(II)-OBL-DAT this l-ejcˇa IV.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Patimat knew this word.’ b. Pat’imat zˇu Patimat(II)[SG.ABS] this j-ejcˇa II.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Patimat knew this word.’

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lozˇa l-iq’e-he word(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-know-CVB.IPFV

lozˇa l-iq’e-he word(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-know-CVB.IPFV

(53)

a. Rasul-qo ʁin j-ucˇ’e-ɬ-ɬo Rasul(I)-POSS milk(V)[SG.ABS] V.SG-pour-POT-CVB.IPFV j-ejcˇa V.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was spilling the milk (accidentally).’ b. ∗ Rasul ʁin j-ucˇ’e-ɬ-ɬo Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] milk(V)[SG.ABS] V.SG-pour-POT-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR Intended: ‘Rasul was spilling the milk (accidentally).’

(54)

a. Rasul-qo os ƛiχw a-ha Rasul(I)-POSS money(III)[SG.ABS] remain-CVB.IPFV b-ejcˇa III.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Rasul had some money left.’ b. ∗ Rasul os ƛiχw a-ha Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] money(III)[SG.ABS] remain-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR Intended: ‘Rasul had some money left.’

Finally, we discuss properties of the object in the biabsolutive construction in Khwarshi. Forker (2012) claims that in many Nakh-Daghestanian languages, focusing of the object in the biabsolutive construction is illicit, and the reason is that this argument is backgrounded. However, the Khwarshi biabsolutive construction allows constituent questions where the object is questioned (55); similarly, it can be focused with various focus particles, including question particles (56). (55)

adʁol Rasul hiba l-u-ho before Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] what(IV) IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa? [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘What was Rasul building previously?’

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(56)

a. Rasul an q-ecˇ l-u-ho Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS]-INTS IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building A HOUSE.’ b. Rasul an q-ek l-u-ho Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS]-Q IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa? [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Is it A HOUSE that Rasul was building?’

Interestingly, it is possible in Khwarshi to introduce a question particle into a constituent question. As argued in Kazenin and Testelets (1999) and Kazenin (2001), this type of construction is very instructive with regard to constituent structure in Nakh-Daghestanian languages. The question particle normally appears on the interrogative pronoun or on a clause-bound constituent dominating it. Applied to the Khwarshi biabsolutive construction, this diagnostic shows that the object forms a clause-level constituent with the lexical verb, and this constituent excludes the subject (57)–(58). (57)

a. Rasul hiba-k l-u-ho ejcˇa? Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] what(IV)-Q IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘What was Rasul building?’ b. Rasul hiba l-u-ho-k ejcˇa? Rasul(I) what(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV-Q [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘What was Rasul building?’ c. ∗ Rasul hiba l-u-ho ejcˇa-k? Rasul(I) what(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR-Q Intended: ‘What was Rasul building?’

(58)

a. zˇidu-ššo hiba-k an q l-u-ho they-INTER.ABL who(I)-Q house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa? [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Who among them was building a house?’ b. zˇidu-ššo hiba an q l-u-ho they-INTER.ABL who(I) house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV ejcˇa-k? [I.SG]AUX.AOR-Q ‘Who among them was building a house?’ c. ∗ zˇidu-ššo hiba an q they-INTER.ABL who(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho-k ejcˇa? IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV-Q [I.SG]AUX.AOR Intended: ‘Who among them was building a house?’

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There are no tangible differences between the questions in (57a–b), or between those in (58a–b): both are constituent questions where the interrogative pronoun is focused. The example in (57b) has an additional reading whereby the kind of activity executed by Rasul is questioned (‘What was Rasul doing?’); this reading results from the broad meaning of the verb -uwa ‘do, make, build’. Finally, Gagliardi et al. (2014) report that in Tsez, the object in the biabsolutive construction cannot relativize with a gap. In Khwarshi, this constraint does not hold, and object gapping is licit, as shown in (59). (59)

a. [ __ an q l-u-ho eːjcˇa] __ABS house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.PST.PTCP zˇik’ʷa man(I)[SG.ABS] ‘the man who was building a house’ b. [Rasul __ l-u-ho eːjcˇa] Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] __ABS IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.PST.PTCP an q house(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘the house which Rasul was building’

The collection of properties outlined above does not fit perfectly into the typology of Nakh-Daghestanian biabsolutive constructions proposed in Gagliardi et al. (2014). They claim, specifically, that in Lak the biabsolutive construction is a monoclausal construction involving aspectual restructuring, whereas in Tsez the biabsolutive construction is a biclausal construction involving subject control. The differing properties of biabsolutive constructions in these languages, which we represent in Table 6.5, follow from the fact that differing syntactic structures underlie superficially similar configurations.

Table 6.5 Properties of biabsolutive constructions in Lak, Khwarshi, and Tsez

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The discussion above strongly suggests that Khwarshi is more similar to Tsez than to Lak: constituency diagnostics reveal the biclausal structure of the biabsolutive construction, and the non-finite form of the lexical verb—the imperfective converb—even seems to have the same structure in Tsez and Khwarshi (being homonymous with the combination of the verbal stem and the adessive case affix). This is not surprising, given that Khwarshi belongs to the Tsezic group of languages and is thus genetically closer to Tsez than to Lak. Additional evidence for the biclausal control configuration in Khwarshi comes from complex reflexives. In (60), complex reflexives in the possessor position are exemplified; their second component bears the genitive case marker signalling this position. The first component of the reflexive pronoun, which normally copies the case of the binder, does not appear in the absolutive; rather, it occurs in the ergative in (60a) and in the dative in (60b). This fact strongly suggests that the ergative/dative case is still licensed in the embedded constituent of the biabsolutive construction, and it is the null pronoun (PRO) that controls the reflexive. (60)

a. Rasul isi isa an q Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] self.ERG self.GEN1 house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building his own house.’ b. Pat’imat iɬi-l iɬi-s uzˇa Patimat(II)[SG.ABS] self -DAT self-GEN1 boy(I)[SG.ABS] akw a-ha j-ejcˇa [I.SG]see-CVB.IPFV II.SG-AUX.AOR ‘Patimat was seeing her own son.’

Taking these facts into account we conclude that the Khwarshi biabsolutive construction is a biclausal control configuration similar to that identified for Tsez. The differences between Khwarshi and Tsez (lines 7–9 in Table 6.5) are independent of the alleged structure of the biabsolutive construction, and follow from other parameters distinguishing these languages. We briefly discuss these now. The first parameter concerns A-bar extraction. Gagliardi et al. (2014) explain the ban on object relativization and topicalization in the Tsez biabsolutive construction by assuming that the lower clause is a nominalized structure embedded under a PP layer. Since PPs are islands in Tsez (Polinsky 2015), A-bar extraction processes such as gap relativization, wh-movement, and focusing are illicit. For Khwarshi, however, there is no evidence that gap relativization, wh-questions, and focusing are based on movement. Khwarshi belongs to the ‘wh-in-situ’ languages, in which interrogative pronouns are spelled out in their base positions. Since they can appear within islands (see (61a–b), violating the Coordinate Structure Constraint and the Complex NP Constraint respectively), we conclude that no covert movement is involved in the derivation of constituent questions.

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a. [Rasul-na ɬija es-na] Rasul(I)[SG.ABS]-ADD who.GEN1 sibling(I)[SG.ABS]-ADD b-at’iq’q’a? HPL-approach.AOR ‘Rasul and whose brother came?’ (Testelets 2019, ex. 37d) b. idu [[na-zˇo l-at’oːq’q’a] muša]-q’e? this[SG.ABS] where-ABL IV.SG-come.PTCP smell-Q ‘Where does this smell come from?’ (lit. ‘this is a where-from coming smell?’) (The Blacksmith’s Sons: 28)

Focusing and relativization show no restrictions that could be attributed to constraints on extraction either. For example, postpositional objects can be focused and relativized with a gap: (62)

a. ma [bercina-j-la-q’e kand-e-lo zˇoho] you[ABS] beautiful-II.SG-OBL-Q girl-OBL-GEN2 after baχilɬa-ha? envy-CVB.IPFV ‘Do you envy a BEAUTIFUL girl?’ b. Pat’imat [(iɬi-lo) zˇoho] baχilɬa-la-sa Patimat(II)[SG.ABS] (this.OBL-GEN2) after envy-FUT-ATTR kad girl(II)[SG.ABS] ‘the girl Patimat envies’

Therefore, the object of a Khwarshi biabsolutive construction can be embedded under a PP but still remain available for questioning, focusing, and relativization. The second difference between Khwarshi and Tsez is that the former attests the biabsolutive construction with affective verbs, which the latter disallows. We believe that this can be attributed to case restrictions on PRO.⁶ It is indicative that the same distribution of PRO is observed elsewhere: thus, in the standard control configuration involving the matrix causation verb ešt’a ‘let’, affective predicates are licit, but potential predicates are excluded. (63)

a. obu-t’-i Rasul [PRO Pat’imat father-OBL-ERG Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] DAT Patimat(II)[SG.ABS] j-akw -a] ešt’a-j II.SG-see-INF [I.SG]let-NEG.AOR ‘The father did not allow Rasul to see Patimat.’

⁶ Lyutikova (2022) argues that dative subjects and possessive subjects in Khwarshi differ with respect to the type of case marking: dative subjects are structurally case-marked DPs whereas possessive subjects are inherently case-marked DPs embedded under PP. If this analysis is on the right track, then Khwarshi exhibits the familiar ban on inherently case-marked PRO (Sigurðsson 2002, 2008).

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MARINA CHUMAKINA AND EKATERINA LYUTIKOVA b. ∗ obu-t’-i Rasul [PRO ʁin father-OBL-ERG Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] POSS milk(V)[SG.ABS] j-ucˇ’e-ɬ-a] ešit’t’a V.SG-pour-POT-INF [I.SG]let.AOR Intended: ‘The father made Rasul spill the milk (accidentally).’

Therefore, we conclude that a biclausal account similar to Gagliardi et al.’s (2014) analysis of Tsez is justified for Khwarshi. In the next section we return to the variable agreement of adverbials and show that the choice of the controller follows directly from the structural position of the adverbial.

6.4.2.2 Structural determination of external agreement Variable agreement of adverbials in biabsolutive constructions is exemplified in (45), repeated here as (64a). Our proposal is that (64a) results from two underlying structures: one where the adverb belongs to the embedded clause (64b) and one where the adverb belongs to the matrix clause (64c). In each case, no variation in the choice of the controller arises: the adverb attests agreement with the absolutive of the clause it belongs to, in accordance with the generalization in (42). (64)

a. Rasul a‹w›di / a‹r›di an q Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] ‹I.SG›there / ‹IV.SG›there house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building a house there.’ b. Rasul [a‹r›di an q Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] ‹IV.SG›there house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho] ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building a house there.’ c. Rasul a‹w›di [an q Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] ‹I.SG›there house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho] ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was building a house there.’

In order to substantiate this proposal we need to show that adverbials exhibiting external agreement can modify the matrix clause semantically and syntactically, and provide evidence for correlation of the structural position of the adverbial with the agreement pattern it attests. Let us start by determining the semantic properties of matrix predicates in Khwarshi biabsolutive constructions. The first thing to note is that the copular verb goɬe and the auxiliary verb -ecˇa attest not only functional but also lexical uses: goɬe functions as an existential verb, forming the locative existential construction (65) and the predicative possession construction (66).

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a. bit’t’e zˇil-lo dandil goɬe hun-es exactly they-GEN2 in.front.of COP.PRS mountain-GEN1 mani peak(III)[SG.ABS] ‘They have a mountain peak right opposite.’ b. l-uw-a hiban gobcˇ’i IV.SG-do-INF thing(IV)[SG.ABS] NEG.COP ‘There is nothing to do.’ (Shepherd and Evil Spirit: 40) c. zˇene-ba hobozˇa gobcˇ’i, zˇidu l-ejcˇ-a ezaƛ’o, djinn(III)-PL now NEG.COP they.ABS 3PL-be-AOR before gobicˇ’u hiban a‹r›e hobozˇa gobcˇ’i NEG.COP.PTCP thing(IV)[SG.ABS] ‹IV.SG›here now NEG.COP ‘There are no more djinns now. They were around in olden times, but as for nowadays, there are none.’ (Girl and Djinns: 53)

(66)

a. amma but

ih-a [I.SG]die-INF

adʁol deb-eɬ q’asan-ƛ’o before you-INTER.ESS contest-SUP.ESS

eqw -a q’ucˇa-na di-l, daci [I.SG]come-INF want-CVB I-DAT how.much q’uwat gojɬa deba b-iq’-a force(III)[SG.ABS] COP.PTCP you.GEN1 III.SG-know-INF ‘But before I die, I want to fight you and find out how much strength you have.’ (Shepherd and Evil Spirit: 24) b. wo hun-ba, wo ɬa-ba, wo hey mountain(V)-PL hey water(IV)-PL hey ʁʷan-ʁur-eba, il-lo begawul-es mihi tree(IV)-stone(V)-PL we-GEN2 headman-GEN1 tail(IV)[SG.ABS] goɬe! COP.PRS ‘Hey, mountains and rivers, trees and stones, our headman has a tail!’ (Walls have ears: 29) The verb -ecˇa not only covers the missing part of the paradigm of existential goɬe (67), but also has its own lexical meanings. They include ‘become’, ‘be in the state of ’, ‘be engaged in’, ‘be pending’. Some examples from the text collection are presented in (68). (67)

a. in du giɬ cˇ’ama b-ecˇa-na at.home inside dried.apricot(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-be-CVB ‘There was some dried apricot inside the house.’ (Donkey went, not me: 5) b. iɬi ʁamasu-ma gobicˇ’u hiban l-ecˇa-na this.OBL chest-IN.ESS NEG.COP.CVB thing(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-be-CVB

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MARINA CHUMAKINA AND EKATERINA LYUTIKOVA gobcˇ’iː os-na misedi-n, NEG.COP money(III)[SG.ABS]-ADD gold(III)[SG.ABS]-ADD erešun-ba-n-arbašun-ba-n, šiƛ’u-n-niƛu-n fabric(IV)-PL-ADD-fabric(IV)-PL-ADD clothing-ADD-footwear(IV)-ADD ‘There was everything in this chest: money and gold, fabrics, clothing, footwear.’ (Stepdaughter: 20) c. zˇid-a ɬona biton-no l-ecˇa-na. . . they-GEN1 three flask(IV)[SG.ABS]-ADD IV.SG-be-CVB nuco-s-na, laɬ-o-s-na, urba-s-na honey-GEN1-ADD butter-GEN1-ADD urbech-GEN1-ADD ‘They had three flasks: (one) with honey, (one) with butter and (one) with urbech.’ (Fox, Bear, and Wolf: 2)

(68)

a. deba na-zˇu b-ejcˇ-a idu zihin ? you.GEN1 where-ABL III.SG-become-AOR this cow(III)[SG.ABS] ‘Where did you get this cow from?’ (Molla Nasreddin’s Raven: 12) b. b-aq-a b-ecˇa-tte-ƛƛa-n an q’ʷa-ƛ’o-l III.SG-catch-INF III.SG-AUX-NEG.PRS-Q-ADD mouse-SUP-LAT semi-n m-ak’a-na b-ecˇa-na k’it’ bile(III)[SG.ABS]-ADD III.SG-go-CVB III.SG-stay-CVB cat(III)[SG.ABS] ‘The cat was very angry that he could not catch the mouse.’ (lit. ‘because he cannot catch it, the cat’s bile flowed upon the mouse’) (Cat and Mouse: 3) c. nišoho hadam ƛes-cˇo-q’a-n at.night people(HPL)[ABS] sleep-IPFV.CVB-TERM-ADD ecˇa-na, Mala Nasrudin-lo kerti-ma-ʁol kul-na [I.SG]stay-CVB Molla Nasreddin-GEN2 fence-IN-DIR throw-CVB lolqosa-ba, zˇidu l-itoːχ-χ-a pulahan footwear(IV)-PL they.ABS NHPL-disappear-CAUS-PST.PTCP certain ʕoloqan zˇik’w a young man(I).SG.ERG ‘. . . having waited (stayed) until the night, when people were asleep, a certain young man who had stolen Molla Nasreddin’s shoes threw them over the fence.’ (Footwear from Cut Boots: 11) d. ecˇa-ɬ-abcˇ’u, Mala Nasrudin-ʁal poho-χ-na, [I.SG]wait-POT-NEG.CVB Molla Nasreddin-DIR near-CAUS-CVB ʁaʁacˇu esa-χ-χa-ƛa ƛ’aƛ’aqale. . . softly say-CAUS-CVB.IPFV-NAR thief.SG.ERG ‘Being unable to wait, the thief approached Molla Nasreddin and asked him softly . . .’ (Footwear from Cut Boots: 15)

The lexical nature of -ecˇa is also evidenced by its aspectual structure: in perfective verbal forms, e.g. the aorist, it can support not only atelic (delimitative) but also telic interpretations. We observe this in examples such as (68a), as well as in

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idiomatic combinations with directional adverbs. In (69), for instance, the complex predicate qudu -ecˇa ‘sit down’ is exemplified. Importantly, the context clearly suggests that the predicate is dynamic and denotes entry to the state rather than the state itself. (69)

χeχiɬa-na in du-l-na an k’a-na, in du-l-kin hurry-CVB home.IN-LAT-ADD [I.SG]go-CVB home.IN-LAT-even eqʷa-bcˇ’u mada-ha in m-mo-qo m-aca-na [I.SG]enter-NEG.CVB threshold-AD pole-OBL-POSS III.SG-tie-CVB b-eːjcˇ-a sajro-n b-icˇa-χ-na, III.SG-AUX-PST.PTCP horse(III)[SG.ABS]-ADD III.SG-untie-CAUS-CVB iɬi-ƛ’o-n q’udu-n ecˇa-na, an k’a-na ʕaƛ-a-zˇu it-SUP-ADD down-ADD [I.SG]sit-CVB [I.SG]go-CVB village-IN-ABL maʁol icˇa-na away [I.SG]flee-CVB ‘He went home quickly, and, without even going in, he untied the horse which was tied near the threshold, mounted it and disappeared from the village.’ (Walls have ears: 35)

Syntactically, both goɬe and -ecˇa can form a predicate on their own, without additional verbal, nominal, or adverbial phrases functioning as their complement. As such, they are compatible with non-finite clauses which are clearly adverbial—e.g. converbial clauses marked with the additive particle -na/-n (68b) or specialized converbial clauses such as the terminative temporal clause in (68c). Compare also the minimal pair in (70). (70a) shows that the biabsolutive construction with the perfective converb is illicit, cf. the similar positive imperfective example in (44b). In (70b), however, the converb’s absolutive argument an q ‘house’ bears the additive suffix, which is the hallmark of an adverbial (adjunct) clause.⁷ (70)

a. ∗ Rasul an q l-uw-abcˇu Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.NEG.PFV ejcˇa [I.SG]AUX.AOR Intended: ‘Rasul hadn’t built a house.’ b. Rasul an q-na l-uw-abcˇu Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS]-ADD IV.SG-make-CVB.NEG.PFV ejcˇa [I.SG]be.AOR ‘Rasul remained without having built a house.’

⁷ In Khwarshi, perfective converbs are not only used to build analytic verbal forms of the perfective/evidential series, but can also head adverbial clauses. In the latter case, the converbial clause contains the additive particle -na / -n, which is generally located on the absolutive of the clause, but can be shifted to another constituent of the clause if the absolutive is missing. See Kazenin (2001) on a very similar construction found in Bagwalal.

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In view of the evidence above, we conclude that matrix verbs in the biabsolutive construction are semantically and syntactically compatible with their own adverbial modifiers. Now we are in a position to demonstrate that the choice of the controller in external agreement targets is determined by their structural position. The easiest way to do this is to make use of the restrictions on linearization of biabsolutive constructions and to consider the agreement found on adverbials in structurally unambiguous linear positions. We will restrict ourselves to a couple of examples here. In (71a), the adverb precedes the subject and, consequently, cannot belong to the embedded clause. We see that in this case, only the matrix absolutive controls agreement on the adverb. By contrast, in (71b), the adverb is positioned between the object and the lexical verb,⁸ which signals that it belongs to the embedded clause. In this case, the adverb agrees with the lower (object) absolutive. (71)

a. Adv S [O V ] Aux a‹w›di / ∗ a‹r›di Rasul an q ‹I.SG›there/‹IV.SG›there Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘There, Rasul was involved in building a house.’ b. S [O Adv V ] Aux ? ∗ Rasul an q a‹w›di / a‹r›di Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] house(IV)[SG.ABS] ‹I.SG›there/‹IV.SG›there l-u-ho ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was involved in building a house there.’

Another way to demonstrate the correlation between the structural position of the adverb and its agreement controller is to exploit structural restrictions on the distribution of specific adverbs. The adverb t’ok’a- ‘any more’ appears in non-veridical contexts, e.g. in conditionals, questions, or under negation. In the latter case, it functions as a negative polarity item and can only occur in the context of negation in its own clause. Luckily, this adverb also contains an agreement slot. The patterns of agreement available with this adverb are extremely revealing. In the ergative construction (72a), the negated auxiliary licenses t’ok’a- ‘(any) more, (any) longer’ in any linear position, and the adverb agrees with the absolutive object. In the biabsolutive construction (72b) only the matrix verb can bear negation. Crucially, in this case, the adverb has to agree with the absolutive subject, because it is only licensed in the matrix clause. ⁸ One of our consultants dispreferred this word order because the adverb separates the object and the lexical verb. This is why this example is marked with the question mark (? ).

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a. Rasul-i t’ok’a-r an q Rasul(I)-ERG.SG once.more-IV.SG house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho l-ecˇa-j IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV IV.SG-AUX-NEG.AOR ‘Rasul wasn’t building a house any longer.’ b. Rasul t’ok’a-w / ∗ t’ok’a-r Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] once.more-I.SG / once.more-IV.SG an q l-u-ho ecˇa-j house(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX-NEG.AOR ‘Rasul was no longer involved in building a house.’

Finally, there are obvious interpretational differences correlating with various positions of the adverb and, consequently, with its adjunction site. Let us consider the adverbial a‹w›na-cˇ ‘so, just so, simply so’. It consists of the demonstrative manner adverb a‹w›na ‘so, in this way’ plus the intensifier particle -cˇ. With verbs denoting professional activities it develops the reading ‘for free, at no charge’, which is clearly incongruous with the higher predicate of the biabsolutive construction. The latter favours the discourse-oriented reading ‘just, simply’. The readings of a‹w›na-cˇ are in perfect match with its agreement controller, cf. (73a–b). (73)

a. Rasul a‹r›na-cˇ an q Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] ‹IV.SG›thus-INTS house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was involved in building a house free of charge.’ b. Rasul a‹w›na-cˇ an q Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] ‹I.SG›thus-INTS house(IV)[SG.ABS] l-u-ho ejcˇa IV.SG-make-CVB.IPFV [I.SG]AUX.AOR ‘Rasul was merely involved in building a house.’

6.4.3 LDA of adverbials In this section, we deal with another configuration where external agreement targets exhibit variation as to the choice of the controller. Let us consider example (74). (74)

Pat’imat-i-l t’ok’a-r / t’ok’a-w Patimat(II)-OBL-DAT once.more-IV.SG / once.more-I.SG Rasul iɬi-qo-l gic’a-nu Rasul(I)[SG.ABS] this(II).OBL-POSS-LAT look-MSD ‘Patimat no longer likes it that/when Rasul looks at her.’

goqa-tte like-NEG.PRS

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In (74), a complementation construction is exemplified. The matrix clause contains the affective predicate goqa- ‘like, want’, which takes two arguments: the experiencer expressed by the dative noun phrase and the clausal theme occupying the absolutive position. The embedded clause is nominalized, its predicate bearing the masdar marker -nu. The adverb in the matrix clause shows two agreement patterns. First, it can take the gender IV agreement suffix, which could be regarded as an exponent of standard absolutive agreement with the masdar (which is a nominal of gender IV) or as an exponent of default agreement. This is an instance of local agreement, which obeys the generalization in (42). Second, the adverb can exhibit GN features of the absolutive of the embedded clause. In this case, we are dealing with LDA— agreement across a clause boundary. It should be emphasized that the agreement variation in (74) differs from the pattern we observed in biabsolutive constructions in §6.4.2. The adverb t’ok’a- ‘any longer’ clearly belongs to the matrix clause. This follows from its linear position, the fact that it is licensed by negation in the same clause, and its interpretation. Yet two possible agreement strategies are readily available: local agreement and LDA. The term ‘long-distance agreement’ is primarily used for denoting agreement of the matrix predicate with the absolutive of the embedded clause; however, external agreement targets are involved in this type of agreement as well. In Khwarshi, matrix predicates exhibiting LDA include goqa ‘like, want’, q’ucˇa ‘want’, -akw a ‘see’, tiq ‘hear’, -iq’e ‘know’, and -eqw ‘be able, manage’. All these verbs project the experiencer argument as an oblique subject (possessive with -eqw ‘be able, manage’, dative with other verbs) and the theme argument as a non-finite clause (nominalization, infinitive, or participle). Matrix predicates impose selectional restrictions on the form of the embedded clause: thus, the verbs -akw a ‘see’ and tiq ‘hear’ combine with participles or masdars, the verbs q’ucˇa ‘want’ and -eqw ‘be able, manage’ combine with infinitives, the verb goqa ‘like, want’ selects for masdars or infinitives, and the verb -iq’e ‘know’ uses all three strategies, with certain differences in meaning. Every matrix predicate on this list allows for both agreement patterns: local agreement and LDA, regardless of the form of the embedded clause. If the matrix predicate itself has no agreement slot, the controller of agreement can still be made clear by the form of the auxiliary. Selected examples from the text collection are given in (75)–(76): (75) shows LDA of matrix predicates, while (76) shows local agreement of matrix predicates. (75)

a. amma ih-a adʁol deb-eɬ q’asan-ƛ’o but [I.SG]die-INF before you-INTER contest-SUP eqw -a q’ucˇa-na di-l, daci [I.SG]enter-INF want-CVB I-DAT how.much q’uwat goːjɬa deba b-iq’-a force(III)[SG.ABS] COP.PTCP you.GEN1 III.SG-know-INF ‘But before I die, I want to fight you and find out how much strength you have.’ (Shepherd and Evil Spirit: 24)

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b. hobo-ɬi zaman-a-ƛ’o __ na-l m-iƛ’a-cˇ this-OBL time-OBL-SUP __(III) where-LAT III.SG-go.INF-INTS b-iq’a-bcˇ’u, maduƛe-n t’ahida-na III.SG-know-NEG.CVB marten(III)[SG.ABS]-ADD get.lost-CVB ‘At this time, not knowing where it was going, the marten got lost.’ (Ropewalker and Marten: 10) c. dija laga mi ejša-l esan-o, I.GEN1 body(III)[SG.ABS] you.ERG broom-DAT wash-IMP deb-el leƛ’a-ba di-qo l-etaχ-a you-DAT hand(IV)-PL I-POSS NHPL-touch-INF goqa-ha l-isa-j-ɬal like-CVB.IPFV NHPL-find-NEG.AOR-COND ‘Wash my body with bath broom if you don’t want to touch me.’ (Stepdaughter: 12) (76)

a. __ in go-jzˇa-l m-iƛ’-a-n l-eqʷa-bcˇ’u, __(HPL) there-TRNS-LAT HPL-go-INF-ADD IV.SG-can-NEG.CVB hiba l-uw-a-n l-iq’a-bcˇ’u what(IV)[SG.ABS] IV.SG-do-INF-ADD IV.SG-know-NEG.CVB ‘They could not climb up there and they didn’t know what to do.’ (Girl and Djinns: 15) b. ʕeziʕan ʕaq’uba b-akʷa-na an q’ʷa-l iɬ-i much trouble(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-see-CVB mouse-DAT this-OBL qaba-ma-zˇu __ b-eqʷ-a-cˇ l-eqʷ-abcˇ’u . . . jug-IN-ABL __(III) III.SG-exit-INF-INTS IV.SG-can-NEG.CVB ‘The mouse suffered great hardship as it could not get out of this jug . . .’ (Cat and Mouse: 10) c. hobozˇa dudu zˇu j-eʁʷ-a l-iq’a-bcˇ’u ʕaƛ-a now how this(II) II.SG-take-INF IV.SG-know-NEG village-IN.ESS ‘(The people) in the village didn’t know how to get her (down) from there.’ (Girl and Djinns: 13)

Both local agreement and LDA are generally available, unless specific properties of the clause specifically trigger one pattern or the other. On one hand, LDA is strongly favoured in the presence of A-bar elements like wh-pronouns and relative gaps in the dependent clause which are intended to take scope over the matrix clause, as (77a–b) demonstrate (see Khalilova 2009: 389–91 for similar phenomena in Inkhokwari Khwarshi). On the other hand, in complementation constructions involving masdars, adnominal (i.e. genitive or attributive) encoding of arguments is incompatible with LDA, see (78): (77)

a. o‹w›zˇu di-l os b-as-nu ‹I.SG›this I-DAT money(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-take-MSD b-aːjka / ?∗ l-aːjka uzˇa goɬe III.SG-see.PTCP / IV.SG-see.PTCP boy(I)[SG.ABS] COP.PRS ‘This is the boy that I saw take the money.’

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MARINA CHUMAKINA AND EKATERINA LYUTIKOVA b. deb-el Anwar-i daj sajro you-DAT Anvar-ERG which horse(III)[SG.ABS] b-aqoːχa b-iːq’e / ?∗ l-iːq’e? III.SG-catch.PTCP III.SG-know.GNT / IV.SG-know.GNT ‘Which horse do you know Anvar caught?’

(78)

a. Pat’imat-e-l j-iːq’e / l-iːq’e Patimat(II)-OBL-DAT II.SG-know.GNT / IV.SG-know.GNT Rasul-e-l zˇu goqa-nu Rasul(I)-OBL-DAT she[ABS] love-MSD ‘Patimat knows that Rasul loves her.’ ∗ j-iːq’e / OK l-iːq’e b. Pat’imat-e-l Patimat(II)-OBL-DAT II.SG-know.GNT / IV.SG-know.GNT Rasul-e-s zˇu goqa-nu Rasul(I)-OBL-GEN1 she[ABS] love-MSD ‘Patimat knows that Rasul loves her.’

We suppose that the choice between local agreement and LDA is determined structurally. Examples like (78a) which allow for both agreement patterns are structurally ambiguous, in that they may possess a transparent or an opaque version of the clausal complement (79a–b). Presumably, opaqueness follows from a more articulated functional structure of the clausal boundary, symbolized as FP in (79b): for instance, from the presence of nominal projections responsible for genitive case marking and adjectival modification in nominalization, or complementizer projections responsible for clause typing in participles and infinitives. (79)

a. long-distance agreement, transparent clausal complement (XP) VP

XP

VMATRIX

…

VP

ABS

…

V

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local (default) agreement, opaque clausal complement (FP) VP

FP

VMATRIX

F

XP

…

VP ABS

… V

In transparent clausal complements, the matrix predicate can locate the embedded absolutive and agree with it. In opaque clausal complements, the additional functional structure FP makes the embedded absolutive inaccessible to the matrix predicate. At the same time, predicate agreement is a necessary operation which should be initiated irrespective of the presence of a suitable controller (Preminger 2014), and, consequently, local agreement should be regarded as failed agreement, revealing the default GN valuation (IV gender singular) rather than the properties of the embedded clause. Under this analysis, the preference for LDA in configurations requiring wide scope of A-bar elements of the embedded clause receives a straightforward account. Since A-bar elements should establish a relation with their scope position, which lies inside the matrix clause, opaque complementation structures are dispreferred. To sum up, we believe that agreement variation in complementation structures is not about the choice of the controller, but about its availability. LDA arises in configurations where the absolutive controller in the embedded clause is available, and in such configurations this agreement pattern is obligatory. Local agreement is the strategy resorted to in the situation of failed agreement, and this strategy involves the default valuation of the gender and number features on the agreement target.

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Another important question is how the LDA is possible in the transparent configuration, given that looking into a complement clause for a controller is generally not permitted. We think LDA should not be possible with fully projected complement clauses. However, Khwarshi complement clauses that allow LDA are truncated clauses which lack the functional structure of the highest clausal domain. Note that they are non-finite, do not support temporal or aspectual oppositions and disallow analytic verbal forms involving auxiliaries. Reduction of the functional structure is responsible for the elimination of the boundary between the matrix and the complement clause which prevents LDA in standard cases. It is independently attested (Wurmbrand 2001) that restructuring can reduce the functional structure of the embedded clause and make it possible for its argument to enter into the agreement relation with an element of the matrix clause. Thus, German voice restructuring infinitives allow for the long passive construction exemplified in (80), whereby the matrix verb agrees with the argument of the embedded infinitive. We believe that in Khwarshi, non-finite complement clauses allow for size restructuring, and this option makes them transparent for agreement processes. (80)

German (Wurmbrand 2001: 19) a. weil der Traktor zu reparieren versucht because the tractor.NOM repair.INF try.PST.PTCP wurde AUX.PST.3SG ‘. . . because they tried to repair the tractor.’ b. weil die Traktoren zu reparieren because the tractors.NOM repair.INF wurden AUX.PST.3PL ‘. . . because they tried to repair the tractors.’

versucht try.PST.PTCP

Importantly, the availability of restructuring does not make it obligatory. Thus, for instance, German infinitives allow for both restructured and non-restructured construals in the same context, as seen in (81). In (81), unlike (80), the infinitival clause is opaque for agreement, and the matrix predicate exhibits the default agreement (3SG). (81)

German (Wurmbrand 2001: 40) a. weil den Traktor zu reparieren versucht because the tractor.ACC repair.INF try.PST.PTCP wurde AUX.PST.3SG ‘. . . because they tried to repair the tractor.’

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b. weil die Traktoren zu reparieren versucht because the tractors.ACC repair.INF try.PST.PTCP wurde AUX.PST.3SG ‘. . . because they tried to repair the tractors.’ Therefore, we believe that the availability of the local (default) agreement and LDA of the matrix predicate in complementation configurations of Khwarshi can be accounted for by assuming the structural ambiguity of participial, infinitival, and masdar complement clauses. Turning back to external agreement in the configurations discussed above, we might ask whether it follows the pattern exhibited by matrix predicates or employs a separate strategy. In other words, the question is whether agreement in matrix predicates and external agreement co-vary. It turns out that external agreement and predicate agreement do co-vary. That is, adverbials in the matrix clause and the matrix predicate itself never differ in their agreement. Examples like (82c–d) are ungrammatical in Khwarshi. (82)

a. dil I.DAT

a‹r›na-cˇ ‹IV.SG›thus-INTS

l-iːq’e IV.SG-know.GNT

zˇu this

os di-lo es-t’-i money(III)[SG.ABS] I-GEN2 brother(I)-OBL-ERG b-itaː-χ-χa III.SG-disappear-CAUS-PST.PTCP ‘I just know that my brother stole this money.’ b. dil a‹b›na-cˇ I.DAT ‹III.SG›thus-INTS

b-iːq’e III.SG-know.GNT

zˇu this

os di-lo es-t’-i money(III)[SG.ABS] I-GEN2 brother(I)-OBL-ERG b-itaː-χ-χa III.SG-disappear-CAUS-PST.PTCP ‘I just know that my brother stole this money.’ c. ∗ dil a‹b›na-cˇ I.DAT ‹III.SG›thus-INTS

l-iːq’e IV.SG-know.GNT

zˇu this

os di-lo es-t’-i money(III)[SG.ABS] I-GEN2 brother(I)-OBL-ERG b-itaː-χ-χa III.SG-disappear-CAUS-PST.PTCP Intended: ‘I just know that my brother stole this money.’ d. ∗ dil a‹r›na-cˇ b-iːq’e I.DAT ‹IV.SG›thus-INTS III.SG-know.GNT

zˇu this

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MARINA CHUMAKINA AND EKATERINA LYUTIKOVA os di-lo es-t’-i money(III)[SG.ABS] ISG-GEN2 brother(I)-OBL-ERG b-itaː-χ-χa III.SG-disappear-CAUS-PST.PTCP Intended: ‘I just know that my brother stole this money.’

This fact allows us to model external agreement in complementation configurations in purely structural terms. The adverbial always agrees with the available absolutive, along the lines of (42), or else it shows up with the default gender and number values. The last issue we address in this section is the relation between multiple agreement targets we mentioned in §6.4.1. Since the GN features exhibited by external agreement targets always coincide with the GN features found on prototypical agreement targets (i.e. predicates), and this identity is at least clause-bound, both models—separate agreement and successive agreement—are theoretically possible. However, we believe that the separate agreement model provides us with a more restrictive theory and therefore should be preferred. The two models differ with respect to two parameters. The first parameter concerns whether exponents of agreement can become controllers of a subsequent chain of agreement. In the separate agreement model, each instance of agreement is invariably controlled by the constituent on which the agreement features are interpreted (in our case by the absolutive noun phrase, on which gender and number are at least partially interpretable). In the successive agreement model, all instances of agreement except for the first are controlled by constituents on which the agreement features are uninterpretable (in our case these are various extended projections of the lexical verb). The second parameter is locality. The successive agreement model allows us to present LDA as a sequence of more local agreement processes between the controller and the target. The separate agreement model, on the other hand, is one that should tolerate non-local dependencies. The reason why we opt for the separate agreement model is as follows. Suppose that in complementation constructions like (76a–c), which exhibit default agreement of the matrix predicate, the chain of successive agreement processes transferred the GN features of the embedded absolutive up to the higher projection of the embedded clause, as in (83). In this case the matrix predicate would agree with FP, which bears the GN features of the embedded absolutive. This agreement would proceed in the local configuration, and the barrier properties of FP that we relied on when explaining agreement failure would not prevent successful feature copying. In other words, the successive agreement model cannot easily handle the existence of variation between local (default) agreement and LDA,⁹ and this is why we prefer the separate agreement option. ⁹ The successive agreement model can be saved if we suppose that FP does not bear the absolutive’s GN features, i.e. F does not agree with lower projections. However, there is evidence that all the constituents of the embedded clause have access to the features of the absolutive in Khwarshi. However

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successive agreement model, opaque clausal complement (FP) VP

FP [CL]; [NUM]

VMATRIX

F

XP [CL]; [NUM]

…

VP [CL]; [NUM]

ABS [CL]; [NUM]

…

V

6.4.4 Coding of information structure This section discusses a specific function of the predicative demonstrative a‹GN ›e ‘here, voici’. Recall that when used in its original function, this element heads the clause and cannot co-occur with another predicate. However, a‹GN ›e can also be used in a clause headed by another predicate if it marks the topic. Thus, in (84) the demonstrative a‹j›e is used to mark the contrastive topic de ‘I’ in the clause headed by jiːcˇ’a ‘wake up’. In (85) the same demonstrative has the form a‹b›e, agreeing with the absolutive q’ale ‘children’. Again, it does not express locative meaning but marks the contrastive topic: (84)

da a‹j›e ašemƛ’o j-ijcˇ’a I[ABS] ‹II.SG›TOP time.SUP II.SG-wake.up.AOR j-icˇ’a-j II.SG-wake.up-AOR.NEG ‘A s for me, I woke up on time, and you didn’t.’

(85)

a‹b›e ‹HPL›TOP

di-ja I-GEN1

q’ale children(HPL)[ABS]

ma you[ABS]

micˇaha-b goɬe, rich-HPL COP.PRS

high in the structure of the embedded clause the agreement target is situated, it never shows up with default GN values but invariably exhibits the absolutive’s features.

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MARINA CHUMAKINA AND EKATERINA LYUTIKOVA Rasul-e-s q’ale biskina-b goɬe Rasul-OBL-GEN1 children(HPL)[ABS] poor-HPL COP.PRS ‘A s for my children, they are rich, but Rasul’s children are poor.’

If the topic of the clause is not the absolutive argument, a‹GN ›e can still function as the topic marker, and it still agrees with the absolutive of the clause. Thus, in (86) the contrastive topic is the dative (recipient) argument Rasulel (a man’s name), and it is accompanied by the topic marker a‹b›e agreeing in gender III with the absolutive argument of the clause, os ‘money’: (86)

a‹b›e Rasul-el os b-aːqa ‹III.SG›TOP Rasul-DAT money(III)[SG.ABS] III.SG-find.AOR a deb-el b-aqa-j but(RUS) you-DAT III.SG-receive-AOR.NEG ‘A s for Rasul, he received the money but I didn’t.’

In (87) a‹b›e marks the dative (experiencer) argument Rasulel as the topic but agrees with the absolutive argument ћisab ‘maths’: (87)

a‹b›e Rasul-el b-iːq’e ħisab, deb-el ‹III.SG›TOP Rasul-DAT III.SG-know.GNT maths(III)[SG.ABS] you-DAT b-iq’a-jti III.SG-know-NEG.PST.PTCP ‘A s for Rasul, he knows maths and you don’t.’

However, the absolutive argument is not the only possible controller of agreement on the topic marker. As (88) shows, a topical argument in the dative can also control agreement on the topic marker, which in this case takes the form a‹w›e agreeing in gender I with the dative argument Rasulel: (88)

a‹w›e Rasul-el b-iːq’e ħisab, deb-el ‹I.SG›TOP Rasul-DAT III.SG-know.GNT maths(III)[SG.ABS] you-DAT b-iq’a-jti III.SG-know-NEG.PST.PTCP ‘A s for Rasul, he knows maths and you don’t.’

Interestingly, this topic marker can potentially encode conditional meaning, demonstrating that alongside ‘conditionals are topics’ (Haiman 1978) we can also say sometimes that ‘topics are conditionals’: (89)

de a‹r›e zˇequ-sa zebu-n quwa-na, ɬona I.ERG ‹IV.SG›TOP today-ATTR day-ADD count-CVB three zebu iƛ-ƛo day give-PRS ‘I am giving you three days, including today (= if we count today, I give you three days)’ (Footwear from Cut Boots: 10)

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Instances where (agreeing) predicative elements are used to mark information structure are not unknown elsewhere in the Nakh-Daghestanian family (Forker 2016; Kazenin 1999, 2002). Thus, in Tsakhur (Lezgic) the auxiliary ixes ‘become’ can mark focus: (90)

Tsakhur (Kazenin 1999: 584) a. Aˤleː ekɨn eza Ali.ERG field(IV)[SG.ABS] [IV.SG]plough.IPFV ‘A li is going to plough the field.’ b. Aˤleː ix-es ekɨn Ali-ERG [IV.SG]become-POT field(IV)[SG.ABS] ‘It is Ali who is going to plough the field.’

ix-es [IV.SG]become-POT ez-a [IV.SG]plough-IPFV

In Tanti Dargwa focus is marked by the copula, which can agree with both the absolutive (91a) and the ergative (91b): (91)

Tanti Dargwa (Sumbatova & Lander 2014: 359) a. χːink’-e Pat’imat-li=sa-d d-irq’-u-se khinkal-PL Patimat-ERG=COP-NPL NPL-do:IPFV-PRS-ATTR cˇut-ne ʕaˁtikat-li chudu-PL Atikat-ERG b. χːink’-e Pat’imat-li=sa-r d-irq’-u-se khinkal-PL Patimat-ERG=COP-F NPL-do:IPFV-PRS-ATTR cˇut-ne ʕaˁtikat-li chudu-PL Atikat-ERG (‘Who is making khinkal and chudu [names of traditional meals]?’) ‘Patimat is making khinkal and Atikat is making chudu’.

Another possible source for the practice of calquing the usage of a predicative demonstrative to mark information structure is Russian. In Russian the demonstrative вoт ‘here, voici’ is also used to mark the topic (note that the distal predicative demonstrative вoн ‘there, voilà’ does not perform information structural functions, just like Khwarshi o‹GN ›e ‘there, voilà’, which has demonstrative meaning only).

6.5 Conclusions We have described the morphosyntactic properties of unusual agreement targets in Khwarshi proper. From a morphological point of view, Khwarshi stands out among the Tsezic languages as it has lexical items which realize agreement infixally. This type of agreement exponence is not unknown in Nakh-Daghestanian languages in general, but is exceptional within the Tsezic group.

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We have also examined the syntactic behaviour of unusual agreement targets in biabsolutive clauses and LDA constructions where there is more than one possible agreement controller, focusing on the extent to which the choice of controller is syntactically vs pragmatically determined. We have proposed that biabsolutive constructions in Khwarshi form a biclausal structure, within which agreeing adverbs can be ambiguous with respect to their structural position in the matrix or in the embedded clause. We have shown that the variability in agreement controllers exhibited by the biabsolutive construction is structurally determined, and that the adverb agrees with the absolutive of the clause it belongs to. We have also presented data on LDA constructions which support this analysis. Pragmatic factors come into play in the use of one class of locative adverbials. When used as locative predicative elements, these agree with the absolutive of the clause and do not allow the presence of the copula or other verbs. However, when these elements are used as discourse particles, they exhibit properties of concord and combine freely with other predicates.

Acknowledgements This research was carried out as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘External Agreement’ (AH/R005540/1); the AHRC’s institutional and financial support is gratefully acknowledged. The ideas presented here reflect joint work by the authors. Chumakina is the primary author of §6.1–§6.3, §6.4.4, and §6.5. Lyutikova is the primary author of §6.4.1–§6.4.3. Special thanks are due to Yakov Testelets and Zaira Khalilova for sharing their knowledge of Khwarshi. Thanks to Oliver Bond, Steven Kaye, and Yury Lander for helpful comments on various drafts of the chapter. All mistakes are our responsibility.

7 Agreeing postpositions and unexpected agreement in Coastal Marind Bruno Olsson

7.1 Introduction The gender systems of the Anim languages, a family of Southern New Guinea, seem to be particularily rich in interesting gender phenomena, especially with regard to the exponence of agreement. Agreement morphology is typically steminternal, and often exhibits striking irregularity (as in Yaqay; Olsson forthcoming) or even fully fledged target suppletion (as in Coastal Marind; Olsson 2019). In this chapter, I describe some surprising agreement targets in Coastal Marind, such as the postposition lek ‘from’ agreeing with an argument of the clause in certain contexts. The phenomenon at hand is illustrated in (1), where the postposition agrees with the female (gender II) referent of the subject. For clarity, underlining marks the parts of the English translations that correspond to the phrases headed by an unexpected agreement target.¹ (1)

poya luk namaɣa o-nak-ap-hu-t-a-m garden(III) from:II now NTRL-1.A-CONTESS-emerge-1.U-EXT-VEN the garden garden’ ‘I [ = female referent (II)] just came back from garden. from the

Except for some brief comments in Olsson (2021), this type of unexpected agreement has not been described for Coastal Marind before, nor, to my knowledge, for any other Papuan language.² As will be made clear from the facts described in this chapter, ‘external’ agreement in Coastal Marind (like, perhaps, in all languages with similar agreement phenomena) has a rather marginal place in the morphosyntax of the language, as it appears with a restricted set of targets, and in a small set of contexts. In spontaneous data, the vast majority of instances of gender agreement involve standard agreement between the constituents of the NP, or pronouns picking up the gender ¹ The inherent gender of a (potential) agreement controller is indicated within parentheses immediately after its gloss, e.g. garden(III). ² In fact, the geographically closest languages that seem to display anything similar are the completely unrelated Iwaidjan languages of Northern Australia, which have some adpositions that can agree with the higher subject (Evans 2000). Bruno Olsson, Agreeing postpositions and unexpected agreement in Coastal Marind. In: Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Bruno Olsson (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0007

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of their antecedents, or agreement of the verb with its arguments. But in the circumscribed contexts in which external agreement occurs, it is perfectly systematic, and it is clearly one of the productive patterns of the language that the speaker must acquire, and the grammarian describe. The most central instances of apparent external agreement in Coastal Marind are found with adjuncts headed by the postposition lek ‘from’. I will make the observation that these are in fact quite clearly participant-oriented adjuncts, and their behaviour is largely identical to a class of adjuncts that I described as DEPICTIVE SECONDARY PREDICATES in Olsson (2021: 493–6). Although the adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ differ from the canonical depictive adjuncts in Coastal Marind, the fact that they show gender agreement with a semantically related argument makes them very similar to case-agreeing adjuncts in some Australian languages. In their cross-linguistic study of depictive secondary predication, Schultze-Berndt and Himmelmann (2004) consider case-agreeing adjuncts in Australian languages, which may express notions such as source or location, to be depictives, and in this chapter I conclude that the Coastal Marind lek-adjuncts should be treated as depictive secondary adjuncts too. From this it follows that agreement on these adjuncts is not ‘external’ in the sense of Bond et al. (Chapter 1, this volume), although it is still very surprising to find gender agreement (with an argument of the clause) on a spatial adposition, which, to my knowledge, has not been documented for any other Papuan language. Having argued that agreeing lek-adjuncts are participant-oriented depictives, I will consider some minor targets of apparent external agreement, such as the adverbial anep mayay ‘therefore’ and the interrogative en ‘where’. These show no commonalities with standard depictives, but for some of them, there is evidence that agreement reflects their semantic relationship with one of the arguments of the clause. This corresponds to the central observation about apparent external agreement in Coastal Marind, which is that it generally seems to follow a semantic pivot. In this respect, Coastal Marind differs from languages in which external agreement seems to be disconnected from semantics and instead follows a syntactic pivot. This is the case in Archi, in which agreement follows a strict absolutive S/O controller (at least under normal circumstances, or in clauses with the standard ergative–absolutive orientation; see e.g. Chumakina & Bond 2016: 96–100). The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. §7.2 gives some preliminaries about Coastal Marind morphosyntax. §7.3 is an overview of gender agreement across different targets. In §7.4, I describe agreement on adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ (or lek-adjuncts) and show that these adjuncts are semantically participant-oriented, and should be considered a type of depictive secondary predicates (rather than adverbials). §7.5 presents some minor contexts in which external agreement proper occurs. §7.6 concludes the chapter.

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7.2 Structural overview of Coastal Marind Many of the broad morphosyntactic characteristics of Coastal Marind are unusual for a Papuan language, but most of them recur, with some variations, in the other c.20 languages of the Anim family. Clause-level constituent order is relatively flexible, with AOV/SV being the most frequent and pragmatically unmarked order, but all permutations of the constituents are possible and attested. There is no case marking on core arguments, but the verb can index up to four participant roles. The indexed roles encompass, roughly, agents (glossed ‘A’), patients/undergoers of transitive and intransitive verbs (glossed ‘U’), recipients and owners of affected body parts (‘DAT’), and owners of affected non-body part participants (‘GEN’). The highly complex, mostly prefixing morphology of the verb contrasts with largely invariant nominals. The sole source of complexity in the nominal domain is a gender system with four classes (here labelled using Roman numerals I–IV); this is addressed in §7.3. I will mention one further peculiarity, the so-called Orientation prefixes, as these play an important role in Coastal Marind morphosyntax, and are of special relevance for the discussion of secondary predication. Verbs often carry an Orientation prefix which indicates the role of the immediately preverbal constituent, e.g. the Object Orientation m- in (2a), which flags the NP palung as the O-argument of the clause. If the immediately preverbal NP is the S/A-argument, the ‘Neutral’ Orientation prefix must be used instead (realized as k- in present tense contexts, and ø-, i.e. zero, in past and future contexts). (2)

a. basik palung m-a-hi-e pig(II) tuber.sp(IV) OBJ-3SG.A-eat:IV.U-IPFV ‘The/a pig is eating palung tuber(s).’ b. palung basik k-a-hi-e tuber.sp(IV) pig(II) NTRL-3SG.A-eat:IV.U-IPFV ‘The/a pig is eating palung tuber(s).’

The Orientation prefixes’ flagging of the role borne by the preverbal constituent compensates for the lack of case marking in the language, and also plays a role in the articulation of information structure. The immediately preverbal slot is the obligatory site for focused expressions (such as interrogative phrases, and the corresponding phrases in replies to such questions), so (2a) would be a well-formed reply to the question ‘What is the pig eating?’, and (2b) to ‘What animal is eating the palung tuber?’ These prefixes will be relevant in §7.4, because they make it possible to distinguish secondary predicates (which trigger the Orientation prefix corresponding to the role of the controlling argument) from adverbials (which trigger lexically specified Orientation prefixes). One of the Orientation prefixes is generally used whenever there is a preverbal constituent in the clause, except

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under certain morphological circumstances, as when the use of a prefix belonging to the same position class blocks the use of an Orientation prefix, which happens with some tense-aspect prefixes, and all imperative-forming prefixes. The details of the Orientation system go beyond what can be covered in this chapter, so the reader is referred to Olsson (2021: 253–96) for a detailed description.

7.3 Overview of gender agreement The gender system of Coastal Marind manifests itself mainly through agreement across a large—but lexically idiosyncratic—set of targets. Assignment is based on a fundamental distinction between animates and inanimates. Animates are split into one gender containing all male humans (gender I), and another containing all female humans and all animals (gender II). Inanimates are also divided between two genders, but with assignment being largely opaque. The largest inanimate gender (gender III) can be considered a general default, as agreeing targets appear in this shape in non-agreeing contexts, while gender IV can be considered a residual gender. The basics of gender membership can be summarized as follows: Gender I Gender II Gender III Gender IV

male humans female humans, all animals c.70% of inanimates c.30% of inanimates

An important difference between the animate genders (I and II) and the inanimates (III and IV) is that only the animates trigger a number distinction (singular vs. plural) in agreeing targets. Gender agreement on adjectives and postpositions (as well as object indexing on verbs) is sporadic, meaning that it is restricted to a subset of the members of a part-of-speech category (cf. Corbett 2006: 17 and Fedden 2019 on sporadic agreement). In some of the minor nominal subclasses (e.g. demonstratives and interrogative pronouns), all members have the ability to express gender agreement, whereas among members of the adjective class only a small subset alternates according to gender/number (16 adjectives in the variety described here; see Olsson 2021: 58).³ ³ It should be pointed out that the morphosyntactic criteria for distinguishing between nouns and adjectives in the language are nebulous at best (conventionalized gender assignment is suggested as a possible criterion for nounhood in Olsson 2021: 50, but this is a morphosemantic rather than morphosyntactic criterion, and it is not exceptionless). Alternatively, thing-words and property-words can be considered members of a single word class ‘nominals’; this has no consequences for the points made in this chapter.

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On non-verbal targets, exponence of gender agreement is realized mainly through changes in stem-internal vowels (Table 7.1; throughout this chapter, I use gender III forms of agreeing targets as citation forms). There is some variation in the details of exponence across agreeing lexemes. An exception is the syncretism between the animate plurals and gender IV, which always correspond to the vowel /i/ across all targets. Table 7.1 Exponents of gender agreement on the Distal demonstrative epe and the adjective akak

Within the noun phrase, agreement occurs between the head and an attributive adjective (which is compounded with the modified noun), and with modifying demonstratives. Agreement also occurs on adjectives in predicative position. Examples (3a–b) illustrate both NP-internal agreement (on the adjective dohi ‘red’ and the Distal demonstrative epe) and agreement on a predicatively used adjective (akak ‘light’). The basic word order of phrases is head-final, so that modifiers precede the head of the NP; demonstratives are an exception and are common both preceding and, as here, following the head noun. Note that the present tense copula is multiply defective (it takes invariant 3SG Actor prefixing, and has a zero stem, rendered here by upper-case Ø). (3)

a. dohu-nggat upe akuk k-a-Ø red:II-dog(II) that:II light:II NTRL-3SG.A-be.NPST ‘That brown (lit. red) dog is light (not heavy).’ b. dohi-nggat ipe akik k-a-Ø red:I/II.PL-dog(II) that:I/II.PL light:I/II.PL NTRL-3SG.A-be.NPST ‘Those brown dogs are light (not heavy).’

Other agreeing NP-internal modifiers include interrogative pronouns, such as the property interrogative entago ‘what kind, which size, how many’ in (4a), and the property demonstrative ehetago ‘like this’ in (4b). Other common adnominal modifiers, such as numerals and other quantifiers, are invariant and never agree in gender.

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(4)

a. untagu nggat? what.kind:II dog(II) ‘what kind of/how big a dog?’ b. uhetagu nggat this.kind:II dog(II) ‘this kind of dog/a dog of this size’

A more unusual target is a subset of agreeing postpositions. Fourteen postpositions are listed in Olsson (2021: 121), four of which agree in gender (see Table 7.2). For the agreeing postpositions, the agreement forms of genders I–IV are listed in the table; note the syncretism between the gender IV forms and the plural of genders I and II (which recurs in all agreement targets in the language), and the additional conflations of genders I and III in ‘from’ and ‘without’,⁴ and of all forms except gender II in ‘with’ and ‘like’. Gender agreement is obligatory on an agreeing postposition if it heads an adnominally used postpositional phrase, as shown by the postposition lek ‘from’ in (5). A somewhat unexpected feature of these postpositions is that the gender agreement is controlled not by the complement of the postposition, but by the noun that is modified by the postpositional phrase. Thus, in (5a–b), the postposition ‘from’ agrees in gender and number with the higher noun nggat ‘dog’ (gender II) rather than with the postpositional complement milah ‘village’ (gender III). Table 7.2 Some Coastal Marind postpositions AGREEING (I, II, III, IV/PL) lek, luk, lek, lik ne, nu, ne, ni ti, tu, ti, ti hi, hu, hi, hi

(5)

‘from’ ‘without’ ‘with’ ‘like’

NON-AGREEING nanggo(l) en nde mit kumaɣ etc.

‘towards, for’ Poss/Instr ‘at, in’ ‘near’ ‘inside’

a. [[milah]NP luk]PostP nggat village(III) from:II dog(II) ‘a dog from the village’ b. [[milah]NP lik]PostP nggat village(III) from:I/II.PL dog(II) ‘dogs from the village’

Agreement on adpositions is, of course, not uncommon across languages, but then typically involves person marking (e.g. Bakker 2013). Person marking on ⁴ In Olsson (2021: 123), the gender III form of ‘without’ is erroneously given as ni instead of ne.

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adpositions is often related to possessor affixes on nouns (e.g. Finnish kanssa-ni ‘with me’, cf. 1SG possessor suffix -ni), or to object indexing affixes on verbs (e.g. Lakota ni-hákab ‘behind you’, cf. 2SG object prefix ni-; Pustet 2000), suggesting that these adpositions started out as (relational) nouns and (serial) verbs, respectively. Agreement according to gender and/or number (but not person) on adpositions appears to be much less common across languages. There are no general surveys of this phenomenon,⁵ and among the Papuan languages of the New Guinea mainland, I am only aware of gender-agreeing adpositions in Coastal Marind and some other Anim languages (such as Yaqay). Gender-agreeing adpositions occur in some Papuan languages of Island Melanesia, such as Lavukaleve (see Chapter 1 of this volume) and Kuot, an isolate of New Ireland. Unlike the agreeing postpositions in Coastal Marind, the agreement on the agreeing adpositions in these languages is with the head of the complement NP (see Lindstro¨m 2002: 8 for Kuot). An alternative interpretation of the Coastal Marind postpositions in Table 7.2 is that they (or at least the agreeing ones) are not postpositions, but rather derivational suffixes that form adnominal modifiers, i.e. adjective-like expressions. This description would deprive these agreement targets of their status as typological rarities, because it is commonly the case that adjectivizing affixes exhibit gender agreement (such as participial endings in European languages with gender). The adjectival analysis echoes analyses of so-called Suffixaufnahme, i.e. stacking of two case markers on one noun, of which the innermost (typically a genitive marker) would be analysed as a derivational marker converting the noun to an adjective (see the overview by Plank 1995). This analysis does not work for the Coastal Marind postpositions, because they project a full phrase, and take a fully fledged NP as the complement, as seen in (6), which shows that they are not word-level affixes. (6)

[[uhe anum]NP ti]PostP ø-nak-e-dahetok-a-m PROX:II woman(II) with:II NTRL-1.A-1PL-return-EXT-VEN this woman woman ’ ‘I returned with woman. with this

7.4 Unexpected agreement on adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ This section examines the contexts in which the postposition lek ‘from’ agrees externally, i.e. with one of the arguments of the clause. External agreement on a directional adposition is a surprising finding. It seemingly constitutes a flagrant violation of Moravcsik’s (1978) Coreferentiality Principle (also Corbett 2006: 55–70), because the agreement is on a clause-level adjunct which is structurally independent of the noun with which it agrees. In this section, I will suggest that this ⁵ Plank (1995: 72) mentions agreement on attributive adpositions in modern Indic languages (such as Punjabi dā ‘of ’).

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agreement pattern is not so surprising when seen from the perspective of Coastal Marind morphosyntax, because agreement on adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ follows the pattern of several other expressions, all of which are clear instances of depictive secondary predicates. Therefore, the lek-adjuncts should be analysed as secondary predicates too, which makes gender agreement with the controlling noun appear much less exotic. It was shown in §7.3 that lek and other agreeing postpositions agree in adnominal position, but agreement also occurs on lek when it heads an adjunct phrase that expresses source. Agreement is controlled by the participant moving away from the source, e.g. the S-argument in (1) and in (7), or the O-argument in (8). (7)

ɣanih k-a-hihih-e lightning(IV) NTRL.PRS-3SG.A-fall.PLA:IV.U-IPFV ‘There’s lightning from above. from above above ’

lahwalah above(III)

(8)

lakalik sangga lik mata-ka-kahwahwib bracer(IV) arm(III) from:IV HORT-PRI-take.off:IV.U from my my arm arm first.’ ‘Let me take off the bracer from

lik from:IV

In order to clarify the status of the lek-phrases in (7)–(8), in §7.4.1 I present some characteristics that distinguish participant-oriented secondary predicates from event-oriented adverbials.⁶ In §7.4.2 I conclude that lek-adjuncts pattern with the secondary predicates, and I discuss some similar examples of agreeing locative expressions from other languages in §7.4.3. Finally, §7.4.4 discusses one use of lek-adjuncts which shows variable agreement, and therefore seems to straddle the divide between secondary predicates and adverbials.

7.4.1 Distinguishing secondary predicates from adverbials in Coastal Marind The semantic difference between depictive secondary predicates and adverbials is that adverbials are event-oriented, and modify the main predicate, e.g. by specifying the manner in which an action was carried out, whereas secondary predicates are participant-oriented, and add information that is specific to one of the participants in the predication. In languages in which nominals show agreement in features such as case, number or gender, the participant-oriented nature of secondary predicates is typically reflected in agreement between the secondary predicate and its controller (see Schultze-Berndt & Himmelmann 2004). In Coastal Marind, two morphosyntactic phenomena reflect the participantoriented semantics of depictives, and help distinguish them from event-oriented ⁶ For an overview of secondary predicates in Coastal Marind, see also Olsson (2021: 493–6).

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adverbials. The first is gender agreement, which occurs on all agreeing targets that function as secondary predicates. The second is the system of Orientation prefixes which mark the syntactic role of the pre-verbal constituent, or, in the case of secondary predicates placed in the pre-verbal position, reflect the role of the controlling argument. In (9), the participle ihwla ‘crying’ appears in its gender I form, corresponding to a male 1st person controller, and the so-called Neutral prefix on the verb shows that the controlling argument is the S/A-argument of the clause. In (10), kandi ‘raw’ belongs to the class of invariant adjectives and fails to show agreement, but the Object Orientation prefix m- on the verb identifies the controller as the O-argument of the clause (awe ‘fish’). (9)

(10)

ihw-la ø-no-d-ɣet be.crying-PTCP:I NTRL-1.A-DUR-be.moving crying ’ ‘I [ = male referent (I)] was walking along crying crying. kandi ma-d-ø-aheb-ti raw OBJ-DUR-3SG.A-eat:3SG.U-DUR ‘S/he ate the fish raw raw. raw ’

awe fish

In corpus data, secondary predicates are almost always found in the immediately preverbal position. As mentioned in §7.2, this position hosts focused constituents in Coastal Marind. The tendency for secondary predicates to appear in the same position as focused material is not surprising, given the observation that secondary predicates often provide focal information (Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt 2005: 45–6).⁷ Typical adverbials in Coastal Marind differ from secondary predicates in these respects, in accordance with their status as event-oriented rather than participantoriented. The clearest criterion is lack of agreement. When an agreeing lexeme is used adverbially, agreement does not occur, and the word appears in the default gender III shape. This is observed in (11), for the Distal demonstrative epe (with the meaning ‘there’), and in (12), for the adjective papes (with the meaning ‘a little [while]’). (11)

Maria epe k-ak-e-ɣadewn Maria(II) DIST:III DIR-1.A-1PL-leave:3SG.U ‘We left Maria there.’

⁷ The preverbal placement of secondary predicates is a strong tendency, and I have only found a handful of textual counterexamples in which a secondary predicate is placed elsewhere in the clause. This can occur e.g. when the secondary predicate is added as a prosodically separated ‘afterthought’ at the end of a production unit (e.g. We ate the fish . . . raw). In elicited data, non-preverbal placement occurs e.g. when a more strongly focalized expression occupies the preverbal slot (e.g. in a contrastive context such as It was Mary who ate the fish raw—not Bob). Preverbal placement of secondary predicates seems to be the default option, but is clearly not obligatory.

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(12)

mak-o-y-p-takin papes FUT:1.A-3SG.DAT-1PL-CONTESS-wait small:III ‘Let’s wait for a little while.’

A second difference concerns the use of the Orientation prefixes with adverbials. Like secondary predicates, standard adverbials can occur in the immediately preverbal position, and their presence in this slot is then reflected in the use of an Orientation prefix on the verb. But unlike secondary predicates, which trigger an Orientation prefix corresponding to the role of the controlling participant, the use of Orientation prefixes with adverbials depends either on the semantics of the adverbial expression (e.g. an adverbial expressing static location always triggers the use of the Locational Orientation prefix nd- when placed preverbally), or must simply be lexically specified for a particular adverbial expression (e.g. the negator mbya, which always triggers the Neutral Orientation ø-/k-, or the ingressive particle ɣe ‘start to’, which always triggers the Object Orientation m-). This shows that the use of Orientation prefixes with adverbials is disconnected from the roles of the core participants of the clause, whereas the role of the controlling core participant determines the Orientation prefix used with a preverbal secondary predicate. The criteria used for identifying depictive secondary predicates in Coastal Marind show that adjunct phrases headed by the agreeing postpositions ‘with’, ‘without’, and ‘like’ (see Table 7.2) are secondary predicates. Examples with these three postpositions are in (13)–(15). The postpositions agree in gender with their controllers, and the Orientation prefixes on the verb reflect the role of the associated argument: S/A-arguments in (13) and (15), and O-argument in (14). (13)

uhe kosi-tas tu k-a-aɣit-a PROX:II small-bag(III) with:II NTRL-3SG.A-run.around:3SG.U-EXT little bag bag ’ ‘This [girl] is running around with bag. with aa little

(14)

ehe nalakam ap baju ne PROX:I child(I) also shirt(III) without:I ma-n-e-aɣahit-a OBJ-3PL.A-APPL-run.around:3PL.U-EXT without aa shirt shirt ’ shirt. ‘They’re bringing along this [male] child also without

(15)

basik hu ø-d-ø-o-laɣ mayan pig(II) like:II NTRL-DUR-3SG.A-3SG.DAT-speak speech(III) ‘She was talking to him as pig. as ifif she she were were aa pig pig ’ (i.e. grunting)

Semantically, it makes sense that the adjuncts in (13)–(15) are participantoriented, because they express a property of one of the arguments, and do not characterize the event as a whole. Sometimes, the postpositional phrase can be used in an adnominal paraphrase describing the participant of the event, e.g. the child in (14) can be described by the NP baju ne nalakam [shirt without:I child]

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‘shirtless child’. This option is not systematic enough to be used as a test for participant orientation, however, as adnominal postpositional phrases tend to express individual-level predicates, whereas depictives are always stage-level predicates. Thus, basik hu anum [pig like:II woman] ‘pig-like woman’ is not a possible description of the participant in (15), as the depictive refers to a temporary property of the referent.⁸ Schultze-Berndt and Himmelmann (2004: 110–12) present cross-linguistic evidence, mainly from Australian languages, showing that adjuncts corresponding to the Coastal Marind ones in (13)–(15), i.e. adjuncts expressing comitative, privative and similative meanings, are recurrently identifiable as depictive secondary predicates, displaying morphosyntactic evidence (such as agreement in case) of participant- rather than event-oriented status. The postpositional adjuncts in (13)–(15) follow this pattern, which shows that they are participant-oriented depictives, and not externally agreeing adverbials.

7.4.2 The status of adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ Turning to adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’, as in (7) and (8), my claim is that these expressions too are participant-oriented adjuncts, i.e. secondary predicates, like the adjuncts in (13)–(15). This is somewhat counter-intuitive, since locational expressions would appear to be prototypical adverbials, adding information about the event as a whole. However, I would suggest that the ‘from’-adjuncts can be regarded as either specifying the starting point of the path along which the event unfolds, or as predicating the origin of a moving participant. It is the latter meaning that corresponds to the participant-oriented status of lek-adjuncts in Coastal Marind. The morphosyntactic evidence for the participant-oriented status of lekadjuncts is clearest in extended uses of lek, so I will give an example of this use first. Action nouns, such as walak ‘fast motion, running’, combine with lek to form predicative expressions, in this case ‘while running’. In (16a), this expression refers to the running of the male S/A-argument and accordingly shows gender I agreement and the Neutral Orientation prefix on the verb, while in (16b) it refers to the O-argument (an animal), and shows gender II agreement and the Object Orientation prefix on the verb.⁹ These patterns are the same as the morphosyntactic ⁸ A reviewer points out that this raises the question of how relative clauses are formed in Coastal Marind. However, I would argue that relativization is not relevant for the types of nominal modification discussed here, because relativization in Coastal Marind is done through the use of so-called adjoined clauses, which are not part of the relativized NP, but placed in the extra-clausal topic position (unlike secondary predicates, which are found clause-internally), as described in Olsson (2021: 531–3). ⁹ This minimal pair was originally elicited with the object given from the context, but the speaker confirmed that the NP saɣam ‘wallaby’ can be added without problem. A reviewer of this chapter asks

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properties of the depictives in (13)–(15), which shows that the lek-adjuncts are also depictive secondary predicates. (16)

a. walak lek ø-no-idih saɣam fast.motion(III) from:I NTRL-1.A-see:3SG.U wallaby(II) running (= while I was running).’ ‘I [ = male referent (I)] saw the wallaby running b. walak luk ma-no-idih saɣam fast.motion(III) from:II OBJ-1.A-see:3SG.U wallaby(II) ‘I saw the wallaby running running (= while it was running).’

Unlike typical locational adverbials (such as English from the library in I went from the library to the canteen), Coastal Marind lek-adjuncts behave morphosyntactically as if they do not primarily provide a specification about the event, but about one of its participants. They can be thought of as adding a stative predication specifying the origin of the controller. In this sense, the adnominal lek-phrases in (5a–b) (‘dog from the village’) have the same source/origin-specifying function as the lek-adjuncts in (7) and (8), or the motion verbs in (17) and (18). All placenames trigger gender III agreement, so it is clear that the subjects are controlling the plural agreement on the postpositions in these sentences.¹⁰ (17)

Kolka lik oso m-ak-um-e-hu-n epe Kolka(III) from:I/II.PL beginning OBJ-1.A-FRUS-1PL-emerge-1.U DIST:III from Kolka Kolka ’ ‘We were just about to come out from Kolka.

(18)

Mbombo keti menda-b-ø-naɣam, PNG lik Mbombo ASSOC PRF-ACT-3SG.A-come.PL PNG(III) from:I/II.PL ‘Mbombo and the others have already come back G[uinea] ’ G[uinea]. from from P[apua] P[apua] N[ew] N[ew] G[uinea]

In §7.1 I noted that lek-adjuncts are ‘largely’ identical to the other agreeing secondary predicates in the language. I will return to one difference, involving variation in the agreement of lek, in §7.4.4. Another respect in which adjuncts headed by lek differ from those headed by the other three agreeing postpositions ti ‘with’, ne ‘without’, and hi ‘like’ is that the latter three are the main options for forming comitative, privative, and similative adjuncts, whereas the use of lek-adjuncts is one of two common options for expressing source. The other option is the use of a bare NP expressing the source, placed in the immediately preverbal slot, and followed whether agreement on the secondary predicate is restricted to contexts with an overt lexical object NP, but the omissibility of saɣam ‘wallaby’ shows that agreement is unaffected by the presence of the NP. ¹⁰ As pointed out by a reviewer, examples such as (17)–(18) raise the question of whether secondary predicates could be analysed as discontinuous NPs instead. This analysis would not be suitable for these particular examples on semantic grounds (e.g. (17) would require the interpretation ‘[Those of us from Kolka]NP were just about to come out’ to make sense under a discontinuity NP analysis), but discontinuous NPs do in fact occur in Coastal Marind, as shown in Olsson (2022). However, true discontinuous NPs differ from secondary predicates semantically (as the latter are restricted to expressing temporary properties; see Olsson 2022: 842–3) and are restricted to very specific information-structural contexts (Olsson 2022: 846–60), which means that the two phenomena need to be kept apart.

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by a verb marked by the Locational Orientation prefix nd-. A simple example is given in (19), which could be used as a paraphrase of (18).¹¹ The preverbal bare-NP option in (19) is synonymous with the use of a lek-adjunct in most contexts, and the use of lek-adjuncts to express source seems to occur mainly when the preverbal slot is occupied by other material (such as the obligatorily preverbal aspectual particle oso in (17)), or when the verb carries a verb prefix that blocks the occurrence of the appropriate Orientation prefix (such as the Perfect prefix menda- in (18)). (19)

epe nd-a-naɣam there LOC-3SG.A-come.PL ‘They came from there.’

But the most important observation about this alternative option for the expression of source is that the demonstrative epe does not exhibit agreement in (19), just like in (11). This shows that agreement on source expressions is not purely semantic in nature, because then we would expect the plural form ipe in (19), in parallel with the plural agreement on the source expression in (18). Agreement on Coastal Marind source adjuncts, then, is a rather idiosyncratic fact about adjuncts headed by lek, and not a general fact about source adjuncts in the language.

7.4.3 Agreement on locative adjuncts across languages Schultze-Berndt and Himmelmann (2004: 116) observe that languages with agreeing depictives rarely extend agreement to locative and directional adjuncts. Such adjuncts are typically not coded as depictives even when they can be interpreted as specifically about the location of an argument, so they must be analysed as event-oriented adverbials in those languages. Their main counterexamples come from some Australian languages which mark some locative adjuncts as participant-oriented by agreement in case with the controlling argument. Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan; Australia), for example, shows agreement on adjuncts expressing source, just like Coastal Marind, as shown by the Elative-marked phrases in (20a–b). In these sentences, the ergative case is added to the adjuncts in accordance with the controller subjects. (20)

Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan; Hale 1982: 269) a. kilyawu-rlu ka walya kiji-rni-rni ngulya-ngurlu-rlu lizard.sp-ERG PRS dirt throw-NPST-HITHER burrow-EL-ERG ‘The lizard (sp.) is throwing dirt out from the burrow.’ (The lizard is in the burrow.)

¹¹ The use of the Location Orientation nd- in the expression of source is restricted to non-durative verbs (which includes almost all motion verbs in the language; the verb ‘come’, for example, is more correctly glossed as the punctual ‘take off hither’). With durative verbs, nd- signals that the preverbal constituent expresses static location; see (31) for an example.

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BRUNO OLSSON b. wirriya-rlu ka kiji-rni watiya pirli-ngirli-rli boy-ERG PRS throw-NPST stick hill-EL-ERG ‘The boy is throwing a stick from the hill.’ (The boy is on the hill.)

Warlpiri shows agreement in case, which probably should be regarded as quite different from agreement in gender and number (and note that the Warlpiri Absolutive case is unmarked, so the ergative is the only core case with which agreement can actually be observed). Warlpiri also differs from Coastal Marind in that the source adjuncts agree with the A-arguments in the caused motion examples in (20a–b), whereas in Coastal Marind, agreement in gender on lek-adjuncts is always with the moving entity. One could perhaps say that the Warlpiri source adjuncts in (20a–b) focus on the location of the participant bringing about the motion event, whereas the Coastal Marind lek-adjuncts track the source of the moving participant. The participant-oriented nature of adjunct agreement in Coastal Marind and Warlpiri distinguishes these phenomena from superficially similar agreement in languages such as Archi (Nakh-Daghestanian; Daghestan), in which the agreeing postposition eq’en ‘up to’ has a strictly absolutive controller. For illustration, in (21) it seems reasonable to interpret the meaning of the postpositional phrase headed by eq’en as primarily describing the progress of the A-argument of the clause (rather than a property of the O-argument), but gender agreement on the postposition is with the O-argument, the book, following the absolutive pivot. This is evidence against an analysis of the eq’en-phrase as a depictive secondary predicate (see also Schultze-Berndt & Himmelmann 2004: 84). (21)

Archi (Bond & Chumakina 2016: 73) zari q’onq’ okɬni 1SG.ERG book(IV)[SG.ABS] [IV.SG]read.PFV maq’al-li-ra-k eq’en chapter(III)-SG.OBL-CONT-LAT [IV.SG]up.to ‘I read the book up to this chapter.’

ja-b this-III.SG

In other languages with agreeing adjuncts it can be rather unclear whether agreement is participant-oriented or follows a syntactic pivot. In Mosetén (Moseténan; Bolivia), certain locative adverbs, such as the ‘downriver’ adverb in (22), agree in gender. Sakel (2004: 154) comments that the controller is usually the contextual topic, but does not elaborate on the exceptions to this pattern, so it is unclear from the description whether the agreement controller is not in fact the participant associated with the location (which may or may not coincide with the discourse topic).

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Mosetén (Sakel 2004: 155) mi’ jen’ mi’ jite-’ Maria mo¨-wë 3SG.M father 3SG.M send-3SG.F.O Maria(F) F-DOWNRIVER ‘The father sent Maria there.’

Since I have argued that adjuncts headed by lek ‘from’ in Coastal Marind are participant-oriented adjuncts, the question arises why other adjuncts in the language, with similarly participant-oriented semantics, do not show agreement too. I pointed out in connection with (11) that demonstratives expressing goals never agree, and it is unclear why goals should be less participant-oriented than sources. Indeed, data from related languages with similar agreement systems show that the absence of agreement on goals in Coastal Marind must be a historical accident. In the related language Yaqay, source expressions headed by rek ‘from’ (cognate with Coastal Marind lek) show agreement with an argument of the clause, apparently following the same pattern as in Coastal Marind. But unlike Coastal Marind, Yaqay extends agreement to goals: locational adverbials formed from demonstratives and expressing both static location and goal (‘here’, ‘there’, ‘hither’, etc.) agree in gender with the participant associated with the location, as in (23)–(24). This is unattested in the Marindic languages. (23)

Yaqay (Anim; field notes) a. yangg ka-proeb kepdekaqan fish(I) IMP-put.one:I to.there:I ‘Put (one) fish there!’ b. yangg ka-pkakin kipdekaqan fish(I) IMP-put.several to.there:I/II.PL ‘Put the fish (PL) there!’ c. buku ka-preb kopdekaqan book(III) IMP-put.one:III to.there:III ‘Put (one) book there!’

(24)

Yaqay (Anim; field notes) a. kedekaqan ka-matdirok! hither:I IMP-hide ‘Hide here!’ [ = male addressee (I)] b. kudekaqan ka-matdirok! hither:II IMP-hide ‘Hide here!’ [ = female addressee (II)]

The variation among Anim languages such as Coastal Marind and Yaqay with regard to the extent of agreement on locational adjuncts suggests that external agreement has spread (perhaps through analogy) and/or disappeared (through erosion of agreement exponents) in rather unpredictable ways. Unfortunately,

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most of the Anim languages are too poorly documented for anything of substance to be said about the diachrony of these developments.

7.4.4 Variable agreement in ‘because’-expressions I end this section by pointing out that there is also some intra-language variation in agreement on one subtype of the lek-adjunct. Schultze-Berndt and Himmelmann (2004) note that there is considerable cross-linguistic variation between adjuncts that are treated as (participant-oriented) depictives and (event-oriented) adverbials, and that it is impossible to draw a precise boundary between the two functions. Coastal Marind offers one clear example showing that there may be considerable variation even within one language, in that the same type of adjunct sometimes shows participant-oriented agreement, and sometimes doesn’t. This occurs when an adjunct headed by lek ‘from’ is used in a causal sense, i.e. to express ‘because of ’. In this use, the lek-adjunct displays a mix of adverbial-like and depictive-like behaviour. It is adverbial-like because it invariably triggers the Object Orientation prefix m- on the verb (this is a characteristic shared with other adjuncts expressing cause), but depictive-like in that lek can show agreement with an argument of the clause. Agreement, however, is optional, and can default to gender III without any change in meaning; speakers offered both variants, as in the elicited example in (25). (25)

basik emel luk / lek m-a-ihw-e pig(II) hunger(III) from:II / from:III OBJ-3SG.A-be.crying-IPFV ‘The pig is squealing out hunger. out of of hunger hunger ’

But data from spontaneous usage show a clear pattern: causal lek-adjuncts agree in gender when the causal expression can also be conceived of as a property of the S/A-argument (e.g. an emotion such as fear or hunger), as in (26), but default to gender III when the cause is some entity that exists independently of the subject. (26)

ukna luk m-a-p-ikyalun fear(III) from:II OBJ-3SG.A-CONTESS-jump out of of fear fear ’ ‘She (II) jumped out fear.

Compare this with (27)–(28), in which the lek-adjuncts express causes that are independent of the subject: (27)

baɣalim-imu lek m-a-ambid body.odour-smell(III) from:III OBJ-3SG.A-sit.down ‘It [the wallaby (II)] stopped because of the body odour [of a human].’

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anip gu lek m-a-b-naɣam EMPH:I/II.PL thumping.noise(III) from:III OBJ-3SG.A-ACT-come.PL ‘They [the wallabies] came because of the thumping noise.’

This variation in agreement illustrates that the criteria distinguishing between event-oriented adverbials and participant-oriented depictives are fuzzy, but it also confirms the participant-oriented nature of agreement on the postposition lek, which attracts gender agreement from a semantically compatible controller whenever one is available, as in (26), or defaults to gender III forms in the absence of a clausemate controller, as in (27)–(28). In this section, I claimed that agreement on lek ‘from’, heading an adjunct, is participant-oriented, and that lek-adjuncts are best understood as depictive secondary predicates, predicating the point of origin of the controlling argument. In this respect, lek-adjuncts are similar to other depictives in Coastal Marind, including those headed by postpositions such as ‘with’, ‘without’, and ‘like’, which express notions that are more typical of depictives across languages. This means that agreement on these adjuncts is not external, but rather patterns with agreement on depictives in other languages. A generative treatment of Coastal Marind adjunct agreement would presumably treat this as agreement on depictives is treated in other languages (e.g. by asserting that they are small clauses, containing an unpronounced controller). Nevertheless, agreement on a word meaning ‘from’ is still unexpected, because words meaning ‘from’ typically do not show agreement, even in languages with agreement targets spread across several parts of speech. Very little can be said about the origin of agreement on lek ‘from’ and its cognates in other Anim languages, but it is worth noting that there is no evidence that this word has a verbal origin (cf. Archi eq’en, with a converbial origin; Bond & Chumakina 2016: 73). All Coastal Marind postpositions whose etymologies are known are originally nouns (e.g. mit ‘near’ < mit ‘trunk of tree’), and nouns are not targets of agreement in the language. Unlike most Papuan languages, the Anim languages lack serial verb and converb constructions, which could have provided plausible origins of agreeing postpositions, so the origin of these unusual targets remains a mystery.

7.5 Unexpected agreement on other targets Unexpected agreement targets show up in several other corners of the grammar. Here I discuss the interrogative word en (§7.5.1), targets embedded under the postposition lek (§7.5.2), and the complex expression anep mayay (§7.5.3).

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7.5.1 Agreement on en ‘where?’ The interrogative word en, in the meaning ‘where’, agrees according to the gender of the participant whose location the question concerns. All corpus attestations of agreeing ‘where’ are in copula clauses, as in (29a–b), but in elicited data it is attested with lexical verbs, including positional verbs such as ‘be lying’, which are semantically close to copulas, but also with ‘be working’, which is not. (29)

a. wananggub un nda-ha-b-ø-Ø-e? daughter(II) where:II LOC-ROG-ACT-3SG.A-be.NPST-IPFV ‘Where is his daughter?’ b. wanangga in nda-ha-b-ø-Ø-e? children where:I/II.PL LOC-ROG-ACT-3SG.A-be.NPST-IPFV ‘Where are the children?’

Interestingly, agreement on ‘where’ is only possible if the clause has present time reference. If the clause has non-present time reference, as in (30), the question word appears in its default shape en (also the form for genders I and III). (30)

Rovina en nda-h-o-b-man? Rovina(II) where:III LOC-ROG-2SG.A-ACT-come ‘Rovina, where did you come from?’

The restriction to the present tense makes agreement on en ‘where’ very unlike depictives, whose agreement potential is not limited by tense or any other semantic features of the clause. As pointed out in §7.4, other agreeing words that express location, such as the Distal demonstrative, do not show agreement in this context, and appear in the default (gender III) shape epe (31).¹² (31)

Possible answer to (29a) epe (∗ upe) nd-a-Ø-e DIST:III DIST:II LOC-3SG.A-be.NPST-IPFV ‘She (II) is there.’

Agreement with the copula subject in (29a–b) suggests that ‘where’ is also some sort of depictive, predicating (the ignorance of ) the location of the subject. But unlike the secondary predicates that were identified in §7.4, agreement on ‘where’ does not extend to either of the arguments of a transitive clause, as shown by the default form en appearing in (32). (32)

Maria awe en nda-ha-b-ø-w-alaw-e Maria(II) fish(II) where LOC-ROG-ACT-3SG.A-3SG.U-search.for-IPFV ‘Where is Maria looking for fish?’

¹² There are several structures in the language that involve gender-agreeing deictic markers preposed to a present-tense verb (see Olsson 2021: 291–6, 497–9; these structures have various pragmatic functions), so perhaps gender agreement on ‘where’ (which also occurs preposed to the verb) arose in analogy with the other targets in this slot.

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It is clear that the agreement targets in (29a–b) are in a syntactically non-local relationship with the controller, but the extremely limited contexts in which this phenomenon occurs (present tense intransitive clauses) make it difficult to say whether agreement on ‘where’ should be seen as marking a type of participantoriented adjunct, or just as an arbitrary quirk of the grammar.

7.5.2 Agreement on targets embedded under lek ‘from’ In §7.4 I discussed agreement on lek with arguments of the clause, but adjuncts headed by this postposition display some additional agreement phenomena that are quite remarkable. Put briefly, the agreement value on the postposition ‘percolates’ into the complement of the postpositional phrase, so that agreement targets embedded within the postposition complement end up agreeing with a controller outside the postpositional phrase. I will illustrate this with demonstratives embedded under lek first. I pointed out above that demonstratives never show agreement in their locational use (i.e. when they are used to mean ‘here’ and ‘there’). But if a demonstrative is embedded under lek (to express ‘from here’ or ‘from there’), it appears in whatever gender form the postposition has. If the postpositional phrase occurs as a modifier within a NP, as in (33), agreement percolates down from the head of the higher NP (nggat ‘dog’) to the embedded demonstrative. This is a very strange phenomenon, because ‘here’ and ‘there’ never agree in gender in any other contexts in the language, and no postposition other than lek ‘from’ triggers this type of percolation of gender agreement into its complement. (33)

a. [[uhe]NP luk]PostP nggat PROX:II from:II dog(II) ‘a dog from here here’ here b. [[ihe]NP lik]PostP nggat PROX:I/II.PL from:I/II.PL dog(II) here ‘dogs from here here’

A further quirk is that gender agreement can trickle down to an embedded target even when a head with a different gender value intervenes (34). In this example, the question word en, meaning ‘which’ when used in attributive position, receives the gender II value from the subject of the copula clause (‘this woman’), despite being syntactically a modifier of the gender III noun milah ‘village’. In other contexts, ‘which’ agrees with the head that it modifies, as in (35). (34)

[[un milah]NP luk]PostP ka-ha-b-ø-Ø which:II village(III) from:II NTRL-ROG-ACT-3SG.A-be.NPST anum upe? woman(II) that:II which village is that woman?’ ‘From which

upe that:II

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(35)

[en milah]NP ka-ha-b-ø-Ø? which:III village(III) NTRL-ROG-ACT-3SG.A-be.NPST ‘Which village is it?’

The agreement on ‘which’ in (34) is remarkable, because this modifier is not in a syntactic or semantic relationship with the controller of agreement (‘this woman’) that would motivate agreement. It is a clear instance of external agreement. Note, however, that I have only observed this phenomenon in expressions referring to locations, and that the interrogative en also means ‘where’ (when used independently), so this is perhaps a remnant of more systematic agreement of locative expressions with an associated participant (as seems to be the case in the related Yaqay; cf. (23)).

7.5.3 Agreement on anep mayay ‘therefore’ The final target of unexpected agreement is an expression meaning ‘therefore’, or ‘because of that’, referring to some state of affairs mentioned previously, and consisting of a completely non-compositional combination of the emphatic demonstrative anep ‘himself, itself, etc.’ and the ability nominal mayay ‘knowing, able’ (followed by a verb marked by the Object Orientation prefix m-). When the emphatic anep occurs as part of this expression, it is ‘trigger-happy’ (see Comrie 2003 and Bond et al., Chapter 1, this volume) and agrees in gender with one of the participants that are active in the discourse. The choice of controller is flexible, although most corpus attestations have controller subjects, e.g. ‘the children’ in (36), and ‘bodies’ in (37). (36)

(Preceding context: ‘We’re not strict with the children anymore, and they don’t listen to our advice.’ ) namakad anip mayay ma-n-keway-a thing(III) therefore:I/II.PL OBJ-3PL.A-break-EXT ‘Therefore they keep ruining things.’

(37)

(Preceding context: ‘The old-timers used to eat palung tubers (IV).’ ) wahani dehi anep mayay ma-d-ø-e-uta body(III) hard:III therefore:III OBJ-DUR-3SG.A-3PL.DAT-be.PST ‘Therefore they had strong (lit. hard) bodies.’

Importantly, the controller does not have to correspond to the ‘cause’ that anep mayay refers to, as shown by (37). If anep mayay were a participant-oriented adjunct, we would expect the gender agreement to be controlled by the previously mentioned gender IV noun palung. This is not what happens in (37), or in the other corpus attestations of this expression, so it is clear that the agreement here differs from the agreement seen on lek-adjuncts in §7.4. Since the agreement occurs with a non-local and semantically unrelated controller, it must be considered external.

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7.6 Conclusions In this chapter I have been concerned with some unusual targets of gender agreement in Coastal Marind. Agreement between a locative adposition such as Coastal Marind lek ‘from’ and an argument of the clause seems to be exceptional among Papuan languages, but more research is needed to ascertain how common such phenomena are in other languages of the Anim family. Although agreement between an adposition and a clausemate argument is rare cross-linguistically, and therefore unexpected, the agreement behaviour of Coastal Marind lek is not so unexpected from a language-internal point of view, because it turns out to pattern with other participant-oriented adjuncts, i.e. secondary predicates, in the language, as discussed in §7.4. Elsewhere in Coastal Marind we find instances of gender agreement that are not amenable to analysis in terms of secondary predication; three such targets were listed in §7.5. These three targets have very marginal functions in the language, and their agreement behaviour does not seem to correspond to any more general principles at work in the grammar, other than a general tendency for agreement to show up in unexpected places. One remaining challenge is to identify the diachronic processes that have favoured unexpected agreement phenomena across the Anim languages. Historical work on Anim gender systems has suggested that the stem-internal exponence of gender/number (as in the Coastal Marind triplet anum ‘woman’, anem ‘man’, anim ‘people’) arose through an assimilatory process in which phonological features spread from a postposed vocalic gender article or demonstrative (which was subsequently lost in most daughter languages; Usher & Suter 2015: 113–20; Olsson 2019: 205–7). It seems likely that agreement on targets such as lek ‘from’ also developed from assimilation with an adjacent article, which raises the question of the role of gender-agreeing articles in the spread of agreement to unexpected targets across the Anim family. However, such questions will only be answerable once we have a better descriptive coverage of the Anim languages.

Acknowledgements I would not have been able to pursue my interest in unexpected agreement without the generosity of the speakers of Coastal Marind and Yaqay with whom I’ve worked. I am also grateful to the three editors for extensive and insightful comments on a draft.

8 Case-shift on Megrelian adverbs Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel

8.1 Introduction This study deals with the morphosyntactic behaviour of adverbs of degree and measure in Megrelian, one of the Kartvelian languages, against the background of Megrelian morphosyntax more generally. I provide a synchronic and to some extent a diachronic account of a curious effect: uniquely both within the family and beyond, adverbs of degree and measure are not only able to take on case marking otherwise associated with the marking of core arguments (subjects and objects), but also participate in the characteristically Kartvelian phenomenon known as ‘case-shift’. As a result, they show agreement in case with one of the arguments of the clause in which they appear. While this behaviour is clearly visible in important Megrelian text collections from the twentieth century and has been noted in passing in some previous treatments of the language, not all of the conditions influencing it have been appreciated before; here I aim to characterize the phenomenon in full for the first time, and to go some way towards explaining it. The nature of case-shift will be explored in detail in the course of this chapter, but fundamentally this term refers to the fact that in Megrelian, as elsewhere in Kartvelian, a verb assigns different case frames to its core arguments depending on the TAM (tense–aspect–mood) form it is found in.¹ On the basis of their morphological and morphosyntactic properties, the finite TAM values available to Megrelian verbs can be grouped into so-called series (see §8.3.2.1 and §8.3.3). The examples provided in (1a–d) illustrate the fact that the morphosyntactic encoding of an event such as Sunnie an apple varies in terms of its case-marking alignment depending on the series of the verb form involved. Specifically, the verb meaning ‘eat’ governs a nominative subject and dative direct object in Series I and IV (1a, 1d); an ergative subject and nominative direct object in Series II (1b); and a dative subject and nominative direct object in Series III (1c).²

¹ The only exceptions are the Class IV stative verbs, which do not appear in all TAM forms, see §8.3.2.2. ² The data in this chapter are based on the author’s fieldwork with Megrelian and Georgian speakers. All examples provided without a source were elicited. Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel, Case-shift on Megrelian adverbs. In: Agreement beyond the Verb. Edited by: Marina Chumakina, Oliver Bond, and Steven Kaye, Oxford University Press. © Alexander Rostovtsev-Popiel (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192897565.003.0008

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a. sani ušk’urs ˇc’k’omuns. sani-Ø ušk’ur-s Ø-cˇ’k’om-un-s Sunnie-NOMi apple-DATii DO3ii -eat-SM-S3SGi ‘Sunniei is eating an appleii .’ (Series I, PRS IND) b. sanik ušk’uri ocˇ’k’omu. sani-k ušk’ur-i o-Ø-cˇ’k’om-u Sunnie-ERGi apple-NOMii PFV-DO3ii -eat-S3SG.PSTi ‘Sunniei ate an appleii .’ (Series II, AOR IND) c. sanis ušk’uri ucˇ’k’omu. sani-s ušk’ur-i Ø-u-cˇ’k’om-u[n]-Ø Sunnie-DATi apple-NOMii IO3i -VAL:PRF³-eat-PRF-S3SGii ‘Sunniei has apparently eaten an appleii .’ (Series III, PRF IND) d. sani ušk’urs nocˇ’k’omue. sani-Ø ušk’ur-s no-Ø-cˇ’k’om-u-e[n]-Ø Sunnie-NOMi apple-DATii EVID-DO3ii -eat-PTCP-EVID.SM-S3SGi ‘Sunniei has evidently been eating an appleii .’ (Series IV, EVID PRS-IMPF IND)

It is of no surprise typologically, and especially in the context of the Caucasus, that certain adverbs in Megrelian bear fossilized case markers (see §8.4). However, what is much more surprising is the behaviour of the adverbs I focus on here, which can bear ‘live’ case markers showing sensitivity to a change in TAM under certain circumstances. This behaviour can be observed both in Megrelian text collections and, to some extent, in the modern-day usage of Megrelian speakers. Specifically, when occurring in clauses whose predicate is an inverted verb⁴ (usually with affective semantics, see §8.3.2.3), they undergo case-shift in a similar way to the nouns in examples (1a–d). For example, in (2a–b) the object c’q’ari ‘water’ shows case-shift in the context of the inverted verb meaning ‘thirst (for)’, but so too does the adverb ʒalam ‘very much, greatly’, appearing with the dative suffix -s in (2a) and with the ergative suffix -k in (2b), although it is not a core argument of the clause. (2)

a. gios ʒalams eɁumenuapu c’q’ari. gio-s ʒalam-s Ø-e-Ɂumen-u-ap-u[n]-Ø Gio-DATi very.much-DATi IO3i -VAL-thirst-MSD-AUX-SM.INACT-S3SGii c’q’ar-i water-NOMii ‘Gioi gets thirsty for waterii very much.’ (Series I, PRS IND)

³ The gloss VAL in this chapter is a cover term for the so-called pre-radical vowels (also known as pre-root vowels, version vowels, or versionizers) that usually serve as valency-changing operators and, in particular types of verbs, take part in TAM formation; see Boeder (1968); Harris (1991a: 360); Rostovtsev-Popiel (2021: 559–60), among others. ⁴ For now, an inverted verb can be taken as one whose subject is always assigned dative case, regardless of the TAM series involved. A more accurate account is presented in §8.3.2.3.

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ALE XANDER ROSTOV TSEV-POPIEL b. gios ʒalamk maɁumenu c’q’ark. gio-s ʒalam-k m[o]-Ø-o-Ɂumen-u Gio-DATi very.much-ERGii PV-IO3i -VAL-thirst-S3SG.PSTii c’q’ar-k water-ERGii ‘Gioi got thirsty for waterii very much.’ (Series II, AOR IND)

In order to appreciate the behaviour of these adverbs in context, a broader understanding of the complexities of Megrelian morphology and clausal morphosyntax is required. This chapter is thus structured as follows. §8.2 provides general information on the linguistic properties of Megrelian, which will serve as a background for the investigation of this highly distinctive Megrelian phenomenon of case marking on adverbs. Case-shift on nominal arguments is addressed in §8.3, which introduces the case system and the category of verbal class, before focusing on the concept of inverted verbs. §8.4 discusses the morphology and behaviour of Megrelian adverbs in general, while §8.5 turns to the phenomenon at issue: it shows how a full understanding of the factors involved has only gradually emerged in the scholarly literature, and suggests some considerations which may help to explain how this unusual system arose. §8.6 situates the phenomenon in typological context, underlining the exceptional nature of case-shift in the context of case marking on adverbs; §8.7 concludes.⁵

8.2 The Megrelian language Megrelian is a minority Kartvelian language spoken indigenously in Samegrelo, a historical province of Western Georgia, alongside the standard language of the country, Georgian (Rostovtsev-Popiel 2021: 529–30). Nearly all Megrelian speakers also have a native command of Georgian. Compared to the other Kartvelian languages, Megrelian has undergone significant regularization in its nominal and verbal morphology and morphosyntax (displaying less suppletion within inflectional paradigms, for example), and its TAM-based case-marking properties are in some respects simpler than in other Kartvelian languages too (for general remarks, see Boeder 2005a: 58–61). The typical word order in declaratives is SOV or SVO, ⁵ The glossing convention applied in this chapter is adapted for Megrelian morphophonology and thus features not three but four basic lines, viz.: (i) phonological representation; (ii) underlying morphemic representation; (iii) grammatical gloss; and (iv) translation, accompanied by relevant grammatical information on the verbal predicate(s). If an expression is mentioned in the paragraph but not simultaneously represented in a neighbouring example, it is provided with a simplified gloss in the text. Round brackets in glosses identify the material enclosed as optional, whereas square brackets in the morphemic representation enclose material that is underlyingly present or so etymologically obvious that it requires no special comment. Examples cited from previous Kartvelianist linguistic research are presented with my glossing, and, where applicable, extension and reworded translation. The citing of non-Kartvelian data follows the conventions followed by the original authors, with minimal adjustments.

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but in fact there are few significant word order constraints (e.g. placement of the wh-word immediately before the verb in questions). Megrelian is used primarily among kin, and represents a realm of relative linguistic freedom (Rostovtsev-Popiel 2021: 529–31). Speakers’ linguistic competence in Megrelian is conditioned by two major factors: (i) the age of respondents, younger speakers being noticeably less fluent in Megrelian than their older counterparts; and (ii) the locality where they acquired the language. As a general rule, the Megrelian of western and highland populations shows less influence from Georgian than that spoken in eastern and lowland areas. As is often the case for unwritten, non-standardized languages under pressure from a superstrate, there is a popular conception among the Megrelian-speaking population that there exists a ‘correct’ Megrelian in principle, but they know no individual who is able to speak it, in the sense that all actual speakers contaminate their Megrelian with non-native words and constructions (principally from Georgian and, to a lesser extent, Russian). Accordingly, native speakers often make an effort to distinguish their language from Georgian and therefore, when forced to borrow lexical items from Georgian, adjust them to Megrelian phonotactics. Thus the basic lexicon demonstrates a significant number of loanwords from Georgian, most of which have undergone phonotactic accommodation, including but not limited to sonorant insertion before consonants (e.g. G maǯa > M manǯa ‘wrist’, G oboli > M omboli ‘orphan’);⁶ reshaping of consonant clusters (e.g. G okro > M orko ‘gold’, G c’igni > M c’ingi ‘book’);⁷ simplification in final and medial positions (e.g. G saplavi > M saple ‘grave’, G sacˇ’iroeba > M sacˇ’ireba ‘necessity’); and vowel change (e.g. G surdo > M surdu ‘runny nose’, G ˇc’ilobi > M ˇc’ilepi ‘rush matting’). Given that almost all Megrelian speakers are also native speakers of Georgian, none of the processes mentioned can be viewed as useful for comprehension, and they should instead be viewed as ‘pragmatic’ in the sense that they emphasize that Megrelian is not a variety of Georgian but a language of its own. I suspect that the phenomenon treated in this chapter should be considered in the same light: its success within Megrelian is due in part to the fact that it is so unlike what is found in the superstrate Georgian language, and thus serves as a powerful marker of a distinct Megrelian linguistic identity. A few words should be said here about the nature of our textual evidence for Megrelian. The earliest collection of Megrelian texts, Cagareli (1880), is useful for the linguist in some respects, but Cagareli himself acknowledges (1880: xii) that after it was compiled the material underwent substantial editing, including by Georgian noblemen of the Dadiani family, the Overlords of Samegrelo; thus it cannot be relied on for attestations of morphosyntactic behaviour that would

⁶ The very term Mingrelian/Mengrelian should therefore be viewed as a ‘Megrelianized’ version of the Georgian term megrel- (cf. M margal-). ⁷ For more details, see Gudava and Gamq’reliʒe (1981: 204ff.).

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simply appear erroneous from the point of view of the Georgian standard, such as the phenomenon treated here. For our purposes the first reliable text collection is Q’ipšiʒe (1914), followed by Xubua (1937): the latter of these sources of primary data is cited widely in what follows, as well as by previous scholars who have discussed core case marking on Megrelian adverbs. Our more recent primary sources of Megrelian, Danelia, and Canava (1991) and Lomia and Gersamia (2012), show few attestations of the phenomenon and accordingly do not feature here, though in §8.5.3 we will see evidence that case marking and case-shift on adverbs can still be found in contemporary Megrelian.

8.3 Case-shift in Megrelian In order to discuss case-shift in Megrelian, I begin by presenting an overview of the cases found in the language; this is followed by an introduction to the verb system and clausal morphosyntax, as it is the finite verb that determines the assignment of cases in the clause. With all this in place, some examples are provided of case-shift as it affects Megrelian nominals.

8.3.1 The case system The Megrelian case system largely reflects the Kartvelian norm, but with certain additional values, such as those mentioned under type (iii) in §8.3.1.1, and with a greater functional scope for the ergative marker -k (Comrie 1981: 224; RostovtsevPopiel 2021: 558–9), to be discussed further in §8.3.2.2.

8.3.1.1 Types of cases Megrelian features three basic types of case markers in terms of their function and origin: (i) core argument case markers, used to encode subjects and objects. These are: nominative -i (on consonant-final stems) / -Ø (on vowel-final stems), ergative -k, and dative -s; (ii) oblique case markers, used to encode adjuncts. These are: genitive -iš / -š(i), instrumental -it / -t(i), and adverbial -o(t) / -t (all on consonant-final and vowel-final stems respectively); (iii) secondary case markers, all diachronically based on the genitive. These are: allative -iša / -ša, ablative 1 -iše(n) / -še(n), ablative 2 -išen(i) / -šen(i), and benefactive -išo(t) / -šo(t) (all on consonant-final and vowel-final stems respectively); but note that in the context of some Series III verb

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forms, allative and (in certain instances) ablative 1 are used to encode indirect objects, allying them with the type (i) markers (Rostovtsev-Popiel 2021: 558–9).⁸ Further items that form a single phonological word with their hosts are better treated as postpositions (e.g. sociative -c’k’uma / -c’k’ala). These fall beyond the scope of the discussion here. This system regulates the inflection of nouns, but also adjectives, numerals, and to a large extent pronouns too. However, the last three of these tend to inflect for case (and sometimes number) only when used as heads, not as modifiers.

8.3.1.2 Markers and morphophonotactics At this point it is important to mention one complication which will be relevant to our analysis of the behaviour of case-marked adverbs. A nominal stem can attach not only grammatical case markers but also, owing to specific properties of Megrelian morphophonotactics, semantically empty vocalic affixes and/or clitics that are referred to here as euphonic vowels (glossed EV).⁹ In the past, Megrelian was subject to a phonological law (predominantly demonstrated in Cagareli’s 1880 text collection, but also intermittently attested in more recent textual materials) which required every word to end in a vowel: if a given word did not already end in a vowel for morphological reasons, a high vowel i or u would be added to it. This law no longer applies as such, but its repercussions still persist in certain varieties of Megrelian and in the language of our texts, giving rise to such forms as r-e[n]-k=i [be-SM.INACT-S2SG=EV] ‘you (SG) are’ (Xubua 1937: 12.25) and m[o]-ur-s=u [PVgo-S3SG=EV] ‘X comes hither’ (Xubua 1937: 9.7) in place of r-e[n]-k and m[o]-ur-s respectively. At the same time, however, a contrary development arose whereby high vowels could be dropped in final position, and this applies even to vowels that might have been expected to provide grammatically significant information. Thus, in place of k’ocˇ-i [man-NOM] ‘man’ and id-u [go-S3SG.PST] ‘X went’ one can find k’ocˇ and id, showing the omission of a case marker and a verb suffix respectively. To complicate matters further, it is even possible to find both of these processes operating at once, with the result that a grammatical suffix consisting of a high vowel is abandoned for a euphonic vowel: e.g. ga-g-a-k’et=j [PV-DO2-VAL-do=EV] (Cagareli 1880: 59.3) ‘X made you (SG) Y (e.g. rich)’ rather than expected ga-g-ak’et-u, whose S3SG.PST suffix -u has been dropped in favour of the ‘meaningless’ EV =i (> =j). Note that the choice of =i or =u is determined by front/back vowel harmony. ⁸ Full declensional paradigms can also be found in the source cited. ⁹ Klimov (1962: 23) refers to these elements as emphatic vowels, stating that ‘[t]he emphatic vowel in Megrelian most often occurs with the markers of the genitive and instrumental cases; less often it attaches to forms of the ergative and dative cases’ (translation mine).

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As a result of this complex situation, one can fairly claim that at this point, although in principle it is the marker of nominative case, word-final -i (alternating with -Ø after a vowel) is practically uninformative in terms of the expression of grammatical content, unlike the other core case markers DAT -s and ERG -k,¹⁰ which only very seldom undergo deletion.¹¹

8.3.2 Verbs As elsewhere in Kartvelian, the choice of case markers used to encode core arguments in the clause is determined jointly by the TAM series a verb appears in, by the class (a.k.a. conjugation) it belongs to, and by the presence or absence of inversion. Furthermore, the concept of inverted verbs plays a key role in the description of the phenomenon under discussion. Therefore, a brief overview of the Megrelian TAM and class systems is required, as well as an introduction to the morphosyntactic notion of inversion and the lexical notion of inverted verbs that proceeds from it.

8.3.2.1 The TAM system The finite TAM forms of Megrelian, and of Kartvelian in general, divide into socalled series (Harris 1991a: 343–50). Each series of TAM forms of a given verb is characterized by (i) using a specific set of cross-reference markers (Harris 1991a: 337–42);¹² (ii) using a specific stem to which these markers are attached, which itself may or may not feature identifiable TAM suffixes; and (iii) assigning a specific set of cases to the verb’s arguments, which ultimately depends on the class to which the verb belongs (see §8.3.2.2). The exact list of TAMs and their morphological makeup is available elsewhere (e.g. in Harris 1991a: 334–41; Rostovtsev-Popiel 2021: 540, 548ff.), so here I will simply state that Series I comprises present, imperfect, and future TAMs belonging to different moods; Series II contains aorists, imperatives, and optatives; Series III contains perfects and pluperfects of different moods; and Series IV largely replicates Series I, but with additional evidential and aspectual nuances (reflected in the English translations here by the wording ‘has/have evidently . . .’ ). ¹⁰ In a phenomenon that may be related, the vowel i can also optionally be added after a stemfinal consonant inside inflected nominal forms, with the effect of turning a consonantal stem into a vocalic stem; for example, alongside kocˇ’-k [man-ERG] we also find kocˇ’-i-k [man-EV-ERG] with the same meaning. For simplicity, I use the gloss EV in such cases as well. ¹¹ In Lomia and Gersamia’s (2012) text collection, comprising over 19,000 words, I have managed to find only eight omissions of the dative marker and seven omissions of the ergative marker, all tokenized as slips of the tongue corrected by the publishers (i.e. as [s] and [k] respectively). ¹² These are prefixal and suffixal markers on the verb that index the core arguments of the clause. I return to argument indexation in the discussion of morphosyntactic inversion in §8.3.2.3.

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8.3.2.2 Verb classes Verbs in Kartvelian languages can be grouped into several classes on the basis of their inflectional morphology, valency properties, actionality characteristics, and case-marking alignment (see Harris 1991b: 55–6; Tuite 1998: 12, 15ff.). In Kartvelian in general and in Megrelian in particular, there is no single criterion or domain of linguistic structure which can ultimately be relied upon if one aims to draw exact borders between verb classes. Nonetheless, it is largely possible, and of great practical value, to treat Megrelian as featuring the four verb classes traditionally identified in Kartvelian grammar: (i) Class I, which contains most transitive and ditransitive verbs (e.g. eat, give); (ii) Class II, which largely consists of achievement unaccusatives (e.g. remain, rot); (iii) Class III, which contains activity unergatives (e.g. play, sing); (iv) Class IV, which consists of statives associated with inverted morphosyntax, to be discussed further below (e.g. love, lack). The assignment of cases to the arguments proper of a monotransitive Class I verb has been illustrated by examples (1a–d) of §8.1; the full system, as it operates across all four classes, is summarized in Table 8.1. For now, I will just pick out two striking features of the system, which are of importance for what follows. First, as statives, Class IV verbs are distinct from verbs of other classes because they do not possess a full TAM paradigm: for these verbs only Series I and IV forms exist. Second, unlike in other Kartvelian languages, every verb belonging to Classes I–III assigns the case conventionally labelled ‘ergative’ to one of its core arguments in Series II. That is, even intransitive verbs belonging to Class II assign this case to their subject in Series II, as illustrated in (3a–b), where the intransitive subject, marked with nominative in the context of Series I, appears in the ergative in Series II. It is thus a distinctive characteristic of Megrelian within the Kartvelian family that the ergative case is no longer as tightly related to transitivity as it is elsewhere in Kartvelian; in synchrony, it is better understood as a morphological identifier of Series II morphosyntax in general. This point is crucial for the diachronic interpretation of adverbial case-shift that I propose in §8.5.2. (3)

a. k’ocˇi ɣuru. k’ocˇ-i Ø-ɣur-u[n]-Ø man-NOM S3-die-SM.INACT-S3SG ‘The man dies.’ (Class II: Series I, PRS IND) b. k’ocˇk doɣuru. k’ocˇ-k do-Ø-ɣur-u man-ERG PV-S3-die-S3SG.PST ‘The man died.’ (Class II: Series II, AOR IND)

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The notion of verb classes will be important for the discussion to follow, because core case marking on adverbs (and the associated case-shift) is almost entirely restricted to constructions whose predicates are Class IV verbs, or certain verbs belonging to Class II. What genuinely distinguishes the verbs involved, however, is their status as inverted verbs. To understand the value of this category, an introduction is required to the concept of morphosyntactic inversion.

8.3.2.3 Morphosyntactic inversion The phenomenon of inversion represents one of the most challenging domains of Kartvelian morphosyntax; accordingly, this presentation aims only to treat it in sufficient detail for readers to appreciate its role in the story of case-shift on adverbs. For our purposes here, it is useful to begin by observing a key feature of Kartvelian clausal morphosyntax. Not only is there no one-to-one mapping between grammatical relations (such as the subject) and case marking on the argument in question; there is also no one-to-one mapping between either of these levels and the morphological means by which that argument is cross-referenced on the verb. For example, the subject of a Class I verb is assigned nominative case in Series I and IV, and ergative case in Series II, but in either series it will be indexed on the verb by means of ‘subject agreement’ morphology, glossed here as S (S-indexation). However, in Series III contexts, the subject is not only assigned dative case; it is also cross-referenced on the verb by means of different morphological material glossed here as IO (IO-indexation), which elsewhere is used for agreement with indirect objects. These glosses are thus helpful for understanding which sets of indexation affixes are in use on any given verb form; but in order to understand which argument they index, they must be interpreted together with information about the class of the verb and the series it is appearing in, as set out in Table 8.1. This switch in the function of cross-referencing morphology on the verb, which is always accompanied by the assignment of dative case to the subject, constitutes morphosyntactic inversion. The essence of inversion is captured in the following pair of examples: (4)

a. ma mencari sanis bʒirunk. ma mencar-i sani-s v-ʒir-un-k I:NOM scholar-NOMi Sunnie-DAT S1i -see-SM-S1SGi ‘I, a scholari , will see Sunnie.’ (Class I: Series I, PRS IND) b. ma mencarc sani miʒiru. ma mencar-s sani-Ø m-i-ʒir-u[n]-Ø I:DAT scholar-DATi Sunnie-NOM IO1i -VAL:PRF-see-PRF-S3SGii ‘I, a scholari , have apparently seen Sunnieii .’ (Class I: Series III, PRF IND)

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Notice that the shift from Series I to Series III is accompanied not only by caseshift, but also by a change in the indexing of the arguments on the verb form; in (4a) the 1SG argument ma mencari ‘I, a scholar’ is indexed by S markers (and in this morphological configuration the 3SG argument sanis ‘Sunnie’ is not indexed at all), whereas in (4b) the 1SG argument is indexed by an IO marker, and it is the 3SG argument that is indexed by the S marker. This happens although the semantic and syntactic properties of the two arguments in this monotransitive predicate have not altered in any way across the change in series. Verbs belonging to all classes other than Class IV and direct Class II show inversion in Series III. Additionally, however, there are certain verbs which show morphosyntactic inversion exclusively, throughout their entire paradigm. That is, the subject of these inverted verbs is always in the dative, and is always cross-referenced by IO agreement markers. Such verbs can belong either to Class II or to Class IV, and they share a semantic property: inverted verbs typically reflect a relative lack of control over the action or state referred to, and almost all can be identified as affective, i.e. they involve an experiencer as their most agentive argument. All verbs belonging to Class IV are inverted, and this class consists of statives whose subject is not conceptualized as fully in control, e.g. love. Meanwhile, inverted Class II verbs are often derived lexemes which add a nuance of lack of control to the meaning of the basic verb. Thus (5a) features an intransitive Class III verb meaning ‘hurry’; from this it is possible to derive an inverted Class II verb meaning ‘be in a hurry’, which appears in (5b). Semantically the essential difference lies in the amount of control attributed to the participant: the former sentence presents the boy as choosing to operate at speed, while in the latter he feels under pressure to do so as the result of external forces. A similar distinction can be drawn between the Class III verb meaning ‘cry’ in (6a) and the inverted Class II verb derived from it in (6b), which in effect locates the driving force outside the child itself. (5)

a. boši ˇckarens. boš-i Ø-cˇkar-en-s boy-NOM S3-hurry-SM-S3SG ‘The boy hurries.’ (Class III: Series I, PRS IND) b. bošis ocˇkaru. boš-i-s Ø-o-cˇkar-u[n]-Ø boy-EV-DAT IO3¹³-VAL-hurry-SM.INACT-S3SG ‘The boy is in a hurry.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, PRS IND)

¹³ Note that the zeros in the person prefixal slot of the forms cited are not identical. In (5a) and (6a), the S3 zero is opposed to S2 zero (Ø-cˇkarenk ‘you (SG) hurry’, Ø-ingark ‘you (SG) cry’) and S1 v- with its allomorphs (p-cˇkarenk ‘I hurry’, v-ingark / i-b-gark ‘I cry’), whereas in (5b) and (6b) the IO3 zero

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(6)

a. baγana ingars. baγana-Ø Ø-i-ngar-s child-NOM S3-VAL-cry-S3SG ‘The child cries.’ (Class III: Series I, PRS IND) b. baγanas angaruapu. baγana-s Ø-a-ngar-u-ap-u[n]-Ø child-DAT IO3-VAL-cry-AUG-AUX-SM.INACT-S3SG ‘The child cannot help crying/is about to cry.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, PRS IND)

However, inverted Class II verbs can also be derived from Class IV verbs, which are already inverted. In this case, the derived Class II verb differs from its base in being dynamic rather than stative, as seen in the difference between Class IV love (7a) and Class II fall in love (7b): (7)

a. baγanas uɁors marozˇni. baγana-s Ø-u-Ɂor-s marozˇni-Ø child-DAT IO3-VAL-love-S3SG ice.cream-NOM ‘The child loves ice cream.’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND) b. baγanas eɁoropebu marozˇni. baγana-s Ø-e-Ɂor-op-eb-u[n]-Ø child-DAT IO3-VAL-love-MSD-SM.INACT-SM.INACT-S3SG marozˇni-Ø ice.cream-NOM ‘The child falls in love with ice cream.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, PRS IND)

In some instances this results in the existence of pairs of verbs, one in Class IV and one in Class II, which are so close in their semantics that effectively the dynamic Class II verb can stand in for the Class IV verb in Series II and III, for which no true Class IV forms exist. We will see an example of such a ‘Class IV/II paradigm’ immediately below.

8.3.3 TAM-related case-shift With all this in mind we are now in a position to appreciate the intricacies of Megrelian case-shift. As ordinarily understood, case-shift applies to any nominal has different paradigmatic counterparts, viz. IO2 g- (g-ocˇkaru ‘you (SG) are in a hurry’, g-angaruapu ‘you (SG) cannot help crying’) and IO1 m- (m-ocˇkaru ‘I am in a hurry’, m-angaruapu ‘I cannot help crying’).

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expression that functions as a core argument, and therefore applies to nouns, adjectives, numerals, and pronouns (the last three only when used as heads) without known exceptions. The examples below illustrate case-shift for the ditransitive Class I verb meaning ‘feed’ (8a–d). (8)

a. dida sk’uas malamalas ušk’urs ˇcans. dida-Ø sk’ua-s malamalas ušk’ur-s Ø-cˇ-an-s mother-NOM child-DAT often apple-DAT IO3-feed-SM-S3SG ‘The mother often feeds an apple to her child.’ (Class I: Series I, PRS IND) b. didak sk’uas ušk’ur malamalas kocˇu. dida-k sk’ua-s ušk’ur-[i] malamalas mother-ERG child-DAT apple-[NOM] often ko-Ø-cˇ-u PFV-IO3-feed-S3SG.PST ‘The mother often fed an apple to her child.’ (Class I: Series II, AOR IND) c. didas sk’uaša ušk’ur malamalas kucˇam. dida-s sk’ua-ša ušk’ur-[i] malamalas mother-DAT child-ALL apple-[NOM] often k[o]-Ø-u-cˇ-am-[un]-Ø PFV-IO3-VAL:PRF-feed-AUG-PRF-S3SG ‘Apparently the mother has often fed an apple to her child.’ (Class I: Series III, PRF IND) d. dida sk’uas malamalas ušk’urs nocˇamue. dida-Ø sk’ua-s malamalas ušk’ur-s mother-NOM child-DAT often apple-DAT no-Ø-cˇ-am-u-e[n]-Ø EVID-IO3-feed-AUG-PTCP-EVID.SM-S3SG ‘Evidently the mother has often fed an apple to her child.’ (Class I: Series IV, EVID PRS-IMPF IND)

Examples (9a–e) illustrate the principle that the missing parts of a Class IV stative paradigm can effectively be filled by related Class II forms, and the ‘IV/II paradigm’ that results also shows case-shift (see §8.3.2.3). Note that here the experiencer argument (the girls) is assigned dative case throughout, but the stimulus (the scent of the flowers) appears in the nominative except in Series II, which as always is distinctively characterized by featuring ergative assignment as part of its case frame.

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(9)

a. ʒɣabeps tavistavo moc’ona q’vavilepiš šuri. ʒɣab-ep-s tavistavo[t] mo-Ø-c’on-a[n] q’vavil-ep-iš girl-PL-DAT obviously PV-IO3-like-IO3PL flower-PL-GEN šur-i scent-NOM ‘The girls obviously like the scent of the flowers.’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND) b. ʒɣabeps tavistavo kimec’onebuna q’vavilepiš šuri. ʒɣab-ep-s tavistavo[t] girl-PL-DAT obviously ko-m[o]-Ø-e-c’on-eb-un-a[n] q’vavil-ep-iš PFV-PV-IO3-VAL-like-SM.INACT-SM.INACT-IO3PL flower-PL-GEN šur-i scent-NOM ‘The girls will obviously like the scent of the flowers.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, FUT IND) c. ʒɣabeps tavistavo mec’ones q’vavilepiš šurk. ʒɣab-ep-s tavistavo[t] m[e]-Ø-e-c’on-es q’vavil-ep-iš girl-PL-DAT obviously PV-IO3-VAL-like-IO3PL.PST flower-PL-GEN šur-k scent-ERG ‘The girls obviously liked the scent of the flowers.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) d. ʒɣabeps tavistavo kumoc’onebna q’vavilepiš šuri. ʒɣab-ep-s tavistavo[t] ko-mo-Ø-c’on-eb-[u]n-a[n] girl-PL-DAT obviously PFV-PV-IO3-like-SM.INACT-PRF-IO3PL q’vavil-ep-iš šur-i flower-PL-GEN scent-NOM ‘The girls have obviously liked the scent of the flowers.’ (Class II inverted: Series III, PRF IND) e. ʒɣabeps tavistavo munoc’onebuena q’vavilepiš šuri. ʒɣab-ep-s tavistavo[t] girl-PL-DAT obviously mo-no-Ø-c’on-eb-u-en-a[n] PV-EVID-IO3-like-SM.INACT-PTCP-EVID.SM-IO3PL q’vavil-ep-iš šur-i flower-PL-GEN scent-NOM ‘Evidently the girls have obviously been liking the scent of the flowers.’ (Class IV: Series IV, EVID PRS-IMPF IND)

A summary of the details of case assignment and indexation on the verb across the four TAM series for all Megrelian verb classes is provided in Table 8.1.

Table 8.1 The three-way relationship between grammatical relations (e.g. SBJ), case marking (e.g. NOM), and type of indexation on the verb (e.g. S)

Note: The asterisks show which argument controls case marking on adverbs displaying case-shift, in the context of verbs belonging to each series. The notation [- - -] signals that no case marking/indexation is applicable in this position.

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8.4 Adverbs There are many ways in which one might want to classify adverbs in Megrelian. In terms of their origins, for example, adverbs represent a rather heterogeneous part of speech. The adverb class encompasses elements inherited from (i) Common Kartvelian, e.g. zˇi ‘up(ward), above’; (ii) Common Georgian-Zan, e.g. a(n)c’i ‘from now on’; (iii) Zan, e.g. tudo ‘down(ward), beneath’. Certain expressions are (iv) Megrelian innovations, e.g. gime ‘down(stairs)’. Furthermore, there are (v) items calqued from Georgian, e.g. goγac’ox ‘the day before yesterday’ (cf. Georgian gušinc’in); (vi) borrowings accommodated from Georgian, e.g. zust’as ‘exactly’ (cf. Georgian zust’ad); (vii) words directly borrowed from Georgian, e.g. p’irdap’ir ‘straight on’; and (viii) items borrowed from Russian via Georgian, e.g. p’rost’a ‘just’ (cf. Russian prosto ‘simply’). Equally, one might wish to consider adverbs in terms of their function (as spatial, temporal, causal etc.); for a classification of this kind, see Rostovtsev-Popiel (2021: 539). A further type of classification concerns synchronic relationships within the lexicon: here it is worthwhile to distinguish between adverbs proper and those which are derived from corresponding adjectives, and the latter significantly predominate. To derive this second type, Megrelian largely makes use of a suffix labelled ADV which also appears in the nominal paradigm, e.g. ǯgir- ‘good’ > ǯgir-o(t) [good-ADV] ‘well’, martal- ‘true’ > martal-o(t) [true-ADV] ‘truly’, did- ‘big’ > did-o(t) [big-ADV] ‘greatly’, ˇc’icˇ’e- ‘small’ > ˇc’icˇ’e-t [smallADV] ‘a little (bit)’. The instrumental case form of the corresponding adjective is also found, e.g. brel- ‘many’ > brel-it [many-INS] ‘greatly’. There are also a few adverbs which resemble dative forms of a coexisting adjective, in that they end in an invariable -s; but this is not a productive formation, and in some cases the form of the adverb is not exactly what one would expect from the dative of the relevant adjective, e.g. did-as ‘greatly’, cf. adjective did-i-s [big-EV-DAT].¹⁴ At the same time, an important handful of adverbs are identical with the corresponding adjective, such as ʒalam- ‘very much, very’ alongside ʒalam- ‘strong’: these are the ones that are liable to take on TAM-sensitive case marking, and are thus central to the story here. In the context of this chapter, however, the most important feature of adverbs is their synchronic inflectional behaviour. From this point of view, three distinct types can be identified, treated in §8.4.1–§8.4.3; the phenomenon of case-shift is relevant only to the last of these.

¹⁴ Note that where two expressions are derived from the same adjective, as with dido(t) and didas ‘greatly’, there need be no functional difference between them: the choice of one option or the other usually depends on speakers’ local and/or individual preferences.

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8.4.1 Invariable adverbs The majority of adverbs in Megrelian are morphologically invariable: their form is entirely insensitive to the morphosyntax of the clause in which they appear. Examples have appeared in (8a–d) and (9a–e), which featured the adverbs malamalas ‘often’ and tavistavo(t) ‘obviously’ respectively in the context of verb forms belonging to all four series; the case-shift on the verbal arguments was not accompanied by any variation in the form of the adverbs. A third set of examples, this time illustrating the behaviour of the invariable adverb malas ‘quickly’ in the context of a Class III verb across series, is provided here. (10)

a. šon sumar malas sxap’uns. šon s[t’]umar-[i] malas Ø-sxap’-un-s Svan guest-[NOM] quickly S3-dance-SM-S3SG ‘The Svan guest dances/is dancing quickly.’ (Class III: Series I, PRS IND) b. šon sumark malas kosxap’u. šon s[t’]umar-k malas ko-Ø-sxap’-u Svan guest-ERG quickly PRF-S3-dance-S3SG.PST ‘The Svan guest danced quickly.’ (Class III: Series II, AOR IND) c. šon sumars malas usxap’u. šon s[t’]umar-s malas Ø-u-sxap’-u[n]-Ø Svan guest-DAT quickly IO3-VAL:PRF-dance-PRF-S3SG.PST ‘The Svan guest has apparently danced quickly.’ (Class III: Series III, PRF IND) d. šon sumar malas nosxap’ue. šon s[t’]umar-[i] malas no-Ø-sxap’-u-e[n]-Ø Svan guest-[NOM] quickly EVID-S3-dance-PTCP-EVID.SM-S3SG ‘The Svan guest has evidently been dancing quickly.’ (Class III: Series IV, EVID PRS-IMPF IND)

Such adverbs may or may not be derivationally complex. All adverbs derived by the addition of the adverbial case suffix to an adjectival base belong here.

8.4.2 Adverbs marked for spatial case A limited number of Megrelian adverbs bear ‘live’ case marking in the sense that the case suffixes involved retain their ordinary meanings, which concern spatial direction. Examples include šor-iše(n) ‘from afar’ in (11) and xolo-ša ‘near to’ in (12), bearing ablative 1 and allative case marking, respectively. These forms exist alongside locative counterparts šors ‘far’ and xolos ‘near’, featuring an etymological

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dative suffix which evidently retains enough independence to be dropped in favour of meaningful case suffixes. (11)

kuɁunes k’ocˇi šoriše. k[o]-Ø-u-Ɂon-es k’ocˇ-i šor-iše[n] PFV-IO3-VAL-follow-S3PL.PST man-NOM far-ABL1 ‘[The king’s men] dispatched a man to follow [and watch Bego] from afar.’ (Class I: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 103.7–8)

(12) ʒγabik kimertu xološa do k’itxu . . . ʒγab-i-k ko-me-Ø-rt-u xolo-ša do Ø-k’itx-u girl-EV-ERG PFV-PV-S3-go-S3SG.PST near-ALL and IO3-ask-S3SG.PST ‘The girl went near [to the daeva] and asked [him] . . .’ (Class III: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 8.7) The case marking on these forms is semantically transparent, and parallels are seen on nouns, cf. the ablative 1 k’vinǯ-iše(n) ‘from the bottom’ in (13) and allative mindor-iša ‘to a meadow’ in (14). (13)

gercˇkindǝ caši k’vinǯiše ˇc’icˇ’e munapak. ge-Ø-rcˇkin-d-u ca-ši k’vinǯ-iše[n] cˇ’icˇ’e PV-S3-appear-INTR-S3SG.PST sky-GEN bottom-ABL1 small munapa-k cloud-ERG ‘A small cloud appeared from the bottom of the sky.’ (Class II: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 101.4)

(14)

gišelǝ begok arti didi mindoriša. giša-Ø-i-[w]l-u bego-k art=i did=i mindor-iša PV-S3-VAL-go-S3SG.PST Bego-ERG one=EV big=EV meadow-ALL ‘Bego came out to one big meadow.’ (Class III: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 99.4)

The exact distribution of spatial case markers on adverbs and the rules determining their obligatoriness or optionality await further research.

8.4.3 Adverbs sensitive to case-shift In contrast to the preceding two types, we are now able to appreciate the special morphosyntactic status of the adverbs which form the subject of this article. Examples (2a–b) showed ʒalam- ‘very much’ in the context of an inverted Class II verb in Series I and Series II respectively: these examples are provided again below, together with the corresponding sentences illustrating Series III and IV, as (15a–d).

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(15) a. gios ʒalams eɁumenuapu c’q’ari. gio-s ʒalam-s Ø-e-Ɂumen-u-ap-u[n]-Ø Gio-DATi very.much-DATi IO3i -VAL-thirst-MSD-AUX-SM.INACT-S3SGii c’q’ar-i water-NOMii ‘Gioi gets thirsty for waterii very much.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, PRS IND) b. gios ʒalamk maɁumenu c’q’ark. gio-s ʒalam-k m[o]-Ø-o-Ɂumen-u Gio-DATi very.much-ERGii PV-IO3i -VAL-thirst-S3SG.PSTii c’q’ar-k water-ERGii ‘Gioi got thirsty for waterii very much.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) c. gios ʒalams maɁumenapu c’q’ari. gio-s ʒalam-s mo-Ø-[a]-Ɂumen-ap-u[n]-Ø Gio-DATi very.much-DATi PV-IO3i -VAL:PRF-thirst-AUX-PRF-S3SGii c’q’ar-i water-NOMii ‘Gioi has apparently got thirsty for waterii very much.’ (Class II inverted: Series III, PRF IND) d. gios ʒalams munoɁumenue c’q’ari. gio-s ʒalam-s mo-no-Ø-Ɂumen-u-e[n]-Ø Gio-DATi very.much-DATi PV-EVID-IO3i -thirst-PTCP-EVID.SM-S3SGii c’q’ar-i water-NOMii ‘Gioi has evidently been getting thirsty for waterii very much.’ (Class II inverted: Series IV, PRS IND) Here ʒalam-, which appears in the dative in (15a, c–d) but in the ergative in (15b), is clearly behaving unlike both of the morphological types of adverb listed so far. It is not invariable, but neither does it use case-marking alternation for semantic purposes. Instead, it shows an alternation between suffixes whose usual function is to mark core cases on nominal arguments, as if in some way the adverb is itself operating as an additional argument of the clause. What is more, it is notable that while ʒalam- displays what can be labelled as case-shift by analogy with the well-established Kartvelian phenomenon affecting nominals, it does so in a remarkable way: it does not track the case marking of one argument in particular as it shifts from one series to another. Instead, ʒalams in (15a, c–d) patterns with the experiencer (Gio), but ʒalamk in (15b) patterns with the stimulus (water). The restricted set of adverbs that have been observed to behave in this way includes almost all adverbs of degree identical in form to corresponding

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adjectives: besides ʒalam- ‘very much’ (cf. adjective ʒalam- ‘strong’), they also include did- ‘greatly’ (cf. adjective did- ‘big’), ˇc’icˇ’e- ‘a little’ (cf. adjective ˇc’icˇ’e‘small’), namet’an- / nabet’an- ‘very much, excessively’, (cf. adjective namet’an- / nabet’an- ‘excessive’).¹⁵ A reason for this restriction to adverbs of degree will be suggested in §8.5, which addresses Megrelian adverbial case-shift in the light of all we have established so far.

8.5 Investigating adverbial case-shift It is now time to bring together in one place the key features of the phenomenon under discussion. These are as follows. Megrelian demonstrates case-shift not only on nominal arguments, as is seen elsewhere in Kartvelian, but also on certain clause-modifying adverbs. Specifically, what we observe is an alternation in core case marking that affects adverbs of degree and measure existing alongside quasiidentical adjectives. The two case suffixes involved are ergative -k and dative -s, and the alternation is sensitive to the distinction between TAM series in the context of inverted verbs. In this alternation, ergative -k appears with verbs in Series II, and dative -s appears elsewhere. This section will approach this remarkable phenomenon from various angles. I first look at what previous scholarship has had to say on the topic (§8.5.1): it is instructive to see how the analysis has developed over time, but no existing treatment has yet captured all the relevant facts. §8.5.1 will also allow us to see various instances of the phenomenon as identified by earlier scholars, justifying the overview just provided. To these examples I add some more found in extant texts, before providing my own account of how case-shift on these adverbs emerged in Megrelian (§8.5.2). This is followed by the results of an elicitation study I carried out to determine whether contemporary Megrelian speakers are still likely to show the behaviour of interest here (§8.5.3): the results are intriguing, as they suggest that while the pattern identified on the basis of twentieth-century textual material is still in some sense real in modern-day Megrelian, it forms part of the idiolect of some speakers but not others.

8.5.1 Existing treatments The phenomenon of adverbs inflecting for core cases in Megrelian has been noted previously by Georgian scholars, and is also touched upon in Harris’s (1991a) comprehensive linguistic description, the first one available to the ¹⁵ The source of this expression is Georgian namet’an.

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English-speaking reader. However, none of the existing treatments have captured all of the relevant facts just listed. Harris does in fact begin her section on adverbs by pointing out that they can be found to bear core case marking which is sensitive to the distinction between Series I and Series II; she is also aware from the work of K’acˇ’arava (see below) that the use of ergative -k on adverbs is associated ‘only with affective verbs and with two others, all inversion verbs’ (Harris 1991a: 375). However, she does not underscore the typological strangeness of this phenomenon, and, most likely drawing from K’acˇ’arava’s account (see example (22b) below), she confuses the issue by discussing at the same time adverbs which appear to end in a nominative case marker -i, failing to recognize that what looks like a nominative suffix need not in fact be taken as a case suffix at all (see §8.3.1.2) and should not be treated as a third alternant in the TAM-based opposition shown by dative -s and ergative -k. Of the following examples cited by Harris (1991a: 375), the first neatly illustrates the phenomenon we are interested in here, but the second involves neither an adverb based on an adjective, nor an inverted verb: (16)

ek didik axiolǝ mevales. e-k did-i-k Ø-a-xiol-u DEM.PROX-ERG big-EV-ERG IO3-VAL-become.happy-S3SG.PST mevale-s debtor-DAT ‘The debtor was greatly pleased at this.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 193.26)¹⁶

(17)

kidnaɁotes didi kua dini. ko-d[i]no-Ø-o-Ɂot-es did-i kua-Ø PFV-PV-DO3-VAL-throw.PL-S3PL.PST big-NOM stone-NOM din-i inward-‘NOM’ ‘They threw a big stone inside.’ (Class I: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 3.8)

The final vowel seen on din ‘inward’, interpreted by Harris as a case marker, should instead be treated as a euphonic vowel carrying no grammatical information, as on the temporal adverb geγan ‘(on) the day after tomorrow’ in example (18), drawn from the same collection of texts. Note that adverbs that end in a vowel, e.g. ˇc’ume ‘tomorrow’ in (18), cannot attach a euphonic vowel, thus behaving similarly to vowel-final nominal stems.

¹⁶ Unfortunately, Harris cites this example in the abbreviated form ek didik axiol ‘S/he was greatly pleased at this’, and thus does not show the case marking found on the experiencer in this construction.

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(18)

meula amudγa, ˇc’ume, geγani. me-Ø-ul-a[n] amudγa cˇ’ume geγan=i PV-S3-go-S3PL today tomorrow day.after.tomorrow=EV ‘They keep on going today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.’ (Class III: Series I, PRS IND) (Xubua 1937: 7.19)

The original Georgian scholarship on which Harris’s description relies also paints an incomplete picture of the phenomenon. Within the Kartvelianist tradition, I have been able to identify three principal works that sought to describe and (to some extent) explain the phenomenon of inflecting adverbs in Megrelian, all of them only available in the Georgian language, albeit with brief summaries in Russian. The earliest of these, Uridia (1960), is the least detailed. Uridia sets out to discuss a number of syntactic properties of Megrelian in which it differs notably from Georgian, especially with respect to the use of the ergative case marker, and among these he mentions inflection on adverbs in passing: he states (1960: 172) that ‘this occurs in instances where the verb is in Series II and the adverb occupies the position of the grammatical subject’ (translation mine), by which he means the argument indexed by S-indexation. However, the author only explores examples in which no overt stimulus is present, as for example in (19)—where in fact the experiencer of the inverted verb meaning ‘became happy’, namely the boar, is not expressed overtly either. Clearly the examples provided by Uridia do not capture the phenomenon in its entirety. (19)

koʒiru levanini, axiolu ʒalamk. ko-Ø-ʒir-u levan-i=ni PFV-DO3-see-S3SG.PST Levan-NOM=COMP Ø-a-xiol-u ʒalam-k IO3-VAL-become.happy-S3SG.PST very.much-ERG ‘When [the boar] saw Levan, it became very happy.’ (Class I: Series II, AOR IND; Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 9.19)

Almost a decade later, K’acˇ’arava (1969) took up the discussion on the status of the core case-marked adverbs addressed here. He was the first to point out explicitly that this phenomenon is associated with adverbs which are identical in form with adjectives, specifically mentioning the items did- ‘big; greatly’, namet’an- ‘excessive; very much, excessively’, and ʒalam- ‘strong; very much’, which, alongside the adverbial use treated here, also retain their adjectival function in the text collections available to K’acˇ’arava (as well as in the modern language), as in example (20) where ʒalami is unambiguously the adjective ‘strong’.

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ʒalami k’ocˇi koɁopek. ʒalam-i k’ocˇ-i ko-Ø-Ɂop-e[n]-k strong-NOM man-NOM AFFM-S2-be-PRF-S2SG ‘You (SG) are apparently (lit. have apparently been) a strong man.’ (Class II: Series III, PRF IND) (Xubua 1937: 57.8)

As noted by Harris and mentioned above, K’acˇ’arava also made the important observation that the presence of ergative -k on adverbs is associated with inverted verbs,¹⁷ as in the following example he cites: (21)

begos nabet’ank ec’q’inu. bego-s namet’an-k Ø-e-c’q’in-u Bego-DAT excessive-ERG IO3-VAL-take.offence-S3SG.PST ‘Bego took offence greatly.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 99.31, cited by K’acˇ’arava 1969: 507)

K’acˇ’arava’s analysis is also to be credited with mentioning not only the appearance of the ergative marker -k on adverbs in Series II constructions, but also the appearance of dative -s (or ‘nominative’ -i) in Series I and III constructions, as for example in (22b) here, exemplifying Series III: (22)

a. ʒalamk axiolu tis tik. ʒalam-k Ø-a-xiol-u ti-s strong-ERG IO3-VAL-become.happy-S3SG.PST DEM.DIST-DATi ti-k DEM.DIST-ERGii ‘Xi was greatly pleased at Yii .’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (K’acˇ’arava 1969: 506) b. ʒalami / ʒalams xiolebu tis tina. ʒalam-i/=i / ʒalam-s Ø-xiol-eb-u[n]-Ø strong-‘NOM’/=EV / strong-DAT IO3-become.happy-SM-PRF-S3SG ti-s tina-Ø DEM.DIST-DATi DEM.DIST-NOMii ‘Xi has apparently been greatly pleased at Yii .’ (Class II inverted: Series III, PRF IND) (K’acˇ’arava 1969: 506)

¹⁷ K’acˇ’arava’s verb list contains the following items: axiolu ‘X became happy (about Y )’, ec’q’inu ‘X took offence (at Y )’, eorcu ‘X became amazed (at Y )’, guuk’virdu ‘X became surprised at Y’, aškurinu (modern ašk’urinu) ‘X became scared of Y’, keɁoropu ‘X fell in love with Y’, meɁumenu ‘X became thirsty (for Y )’, maaškirenu (modern maašk’irenu) ‘X became hungry (for Y )’, gaaʒicinu ‘X couldn’t help laughing’, kodarulu ‘X couldn’t help falling asleep’, kaagarinu ‘X burst into tears’, gaaǯogu ‘X came to hate Y’ (all counted as experiencer verbs); and additionally aɁu ‘Y arose for X (as a Z), i.e. X came to have Y (as a Z)’ and daak’ordu ‘X came to lack Y’ (1969: 505–6). The latter two verbs express a possessive relation between the two arguments, bringing them close to experiencer verbs too.

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However, K’acˇ’arava does not explicitly draw a connection between verb series and the inflection seen on adverbs; thus he does not aim to explain how and why the change in case marking correlates with the case-shift that applies to the verb’s core arguments, nor why this pattern only occurs with inverted verbs. In the meantime, the only attempt at an explanation the author provides is that the process of developing adverbs from adjectives is not yet complete: at most this connection with adjectives accounts for the presence of case markers on adverbs, but it does not give any rationale for the rules that apply to the choice of marker in any particular series. Finally, K’iziria (1978) picked up the baton of K’acˇ’arava’s research a further decade later. In particular, he added to the list of adverbs based on adjectives which have been found to display this behaviour: the following examples (23) and (24) feature case-marked expressions of degree respectively meaning ‘so loudly’ and ‘how’ in the sense of ‘how greatly, to what extent’ (the latter itself based on a derived adjective meaning ‘of what kind’). (23)

tical maγalc γurcˇ’ulandu . . . ti-cal maγal-s Ø-γurcˇ’ul-an-d-u DEM.DIST-kind tall-DAT S3-twitter-SM-EM-S3SG.PST ‘X was twittering so loudly (lit. tall) . . .’ (Class III:¹⁸ Series I, IMPF IND) (K’iziria 1978: 42)

(24)

mucˇ’oms axioludes? mucˇ’o-m-s Ø-a-xiol-u[n]-d-es how-ADJ-DAT IO3-VAL-become.happy-SM.INACT-EM-IO3PL.PST ‘How would they rejoice?’ (Class II inverted: Series I, PRS SBJV) (Q’ipšiʒe 1914: 29.17, cited by K’iziria 1978: 41)

In the course of discussing this phenomenon, K’iziria also draws attention to another interesting morphosyntactic context in which items of the kind we are concerned with bear core case marking somewhat unexpectedly. This is seen in expressions which appear to show a case-marked NP in reverse order (with the head noun preposed) and, as a corollary, feature case marking on both head and dependent (for more details, see K’art’ozia et al. 2010: 314), as in examples (25) and (26). (25)

iɁuː mugdeni anbek ʒalamk. Ø-i-Ɂ-u mugden=i ambe-k ʒalam-k S3-VAL-be-S3SG.PST some=EV story-ERG strong-ERG ‘A great thing took place (lit. became).’ (Class II: Series II, AOR IND) (Q’ipšiʒe 1914: 27.23)

¹⁸ Exceptionally, in this example adduced by K’iziria the verbal predicate does not display morphosyntactic inversion: γurcˇ’ulandu is an ordinary Class III intransitive whose subject, if overt, would appear in the nominative case. This raises the question whether (23) truly represents an example of the phenomenon under discussion, or on the other hand whether the limits of adverbial case-shift came to spread beyond those we have suggested here, a possibility which requires further investigation. However, practically all the attested examples do belong to inversion contexts, which are undoubtedly central to this phenomenon.

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iɁuː diarak ʒalamk. Ø-i-Ɂ-u diara-k ʒalam-k S3-VAL-be-S3SG.PST feast-ERG strong-ERG ‘A great feast took place (lit. became).’ (Class II: Series II, AOR IND) (Q’ipšiʒe 1914: 29.1)

However, beyond noting the existence of such examples, K’iziria does not explore how this idiomatic phenomenon could have given rise to case marking on adverbs of the kind I treat here. As these instances seem to be in some sense intermediate between the topic of this study and the normal situation in which an uninflected adjective modifies an inflected noun, it is somewhat surprising that he did not investigate the possibility of a connection further.

8.5.2 Towards an account of adverbial case-shift The textual examples brought forward by the three Georgian scholars just discussed, some of them later reproduced by Harris, are far from the only ones that demonstrate the phenomenon of adverbial case-shift in Megrelian. Dozens more could be provided on the basis of our few published textual sources for the language. Here I add just a few further examples, in order to emphasize the point that they are readily found in our material and indicate a principled pattern of behaviour in contexts of morphosyntactic inversion. Examples (27) and (28) feature the ergative form ʒa(la)mk ‘very much’, as expected in association with inverted verbs in Series II; meanwhile, (29) and (30) feature the corresponding dative ʒa(la)ms, because the verbs involved are Series I forms. Finally, example (31) illustrates agreement of the same kind but on a different item, ˇc’icˇ’e- ‘small; a little’, and in the context of the verb meaning ‘(come to) lack’, showing the use of inverted morphosyntax to express (the absence of ) possession rather than affectivity. (27)

osurc xolo keɁoropǝ te ndemk ʒalamk. osur-s xolo k[o]-Ø-e-Ɂor-op-u te woman-DAT ADD PFV-IO3-VAL-love-MSD-S3SG.PST DEM.PROX ndem-k ʒalam-k daeva-ERG very.much-ERG ‘The woman, in addition (to that), fell greatly in love with this daeva.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 96.23, cited by Rostovtsev-Popiel 2021: 559)

(28) ʒamk maxiolu te ambek. ʒa[la]m-k m-a-xiol-u te ambe-k very.much-ERG IO1-VAL-become.happy-S3SG.PST DEM.PROX story-ERG ‘I greatly enjoyed this story.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Kaǯaia 2002: III, 374)

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(29)

ate baγana ʒalams uɁorc te vezirc. ate baγana-Ø ʒalam-s Ø-u-Ɂor-s DEM.PROX child-NOM very.much-DAT IO3-VAL-love-S3SG te vezir-s DEM.PROX vizier-DAT ‘This vizier loves this child very much.’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND) (Xubua 1937: 87.28)

(30)

ʒams mik’virs, mut vabγuri. ʒa[la]m-s m-i-k’vir-s mu-t very.much-DAT IO1-VAL-be.surprised-S3SG what-INS va-b-γur-i-Ø NEG-S1-die-IND-S1 ‘I’m very much surprised that (lit. by what) I didn’t die.’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND; Class II: Series II, AOR IND) (Gudava 1975: I, 51, cited by Kaǯaia 2002: III, 374)

(31)

mara gamocdilebak dak’ordu ˇc’icˇ’ek muhambis. mara gamocdileba-k do-Ø-o-k’or-d-u but experience-ERG PV-IO3-VAL-lack-INTR-S3SG.PST cˇ’icˇ’e-k muhambi-s a.bit-ERG Muhambi-DAT ‘But Muhambi came to lack experience a little bit.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Xubua 1937: 31.18)

Elicitation of the counterparts of (27) in other series yields three sentences (32a–c) in which the adverb bears the dative rather than the ergative case suffix, thus undergoing case-shift. In these sentences the bare stem ʒalam- would be somewhat frowned upon by native speakers, and the ergative form ʒalamk entirely ruled out. The use of ergative case on the adverb thus remains restricted to Series II constructions. (32)

a. osurc xolo eɁoropebu te ndem ʒalams. osur-s xolo Ø-e-Ɂor-op-eb-u[n]-Ø woman-DAT ADD IO3-VAL-love-MSD-SM.INACT-SM.INACT-S3SG te ndem-[i] ʒalam-s DEM.PROX daeva-[NOM] very.much-DAT ‘The woman, in addition (to that), falls greatly in love with this daeva.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, PRS IND) b. osurc xolo koɁoropebu te ndem ʒalams. osur-s xolo ko-Ø-Ɂor-op-eb-u[n]-Ø woman-DAT ADD PFV-IO3-love-MSD-SM.INACT-PRF-S3SG

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te ndem-[i] ʒalam-s DEM.PROX daeva-[NOM] very.much-DAT ‘The woman, in addition (to that), has apparently fallen greatly in love with this daeva.’ (Class II inverted: Series III, PRF IND) c. osurc xolo noɁoropebue te ndem ʒalams. osur-s xolo no-Ø-Ɂor-op-eb-u-e[n]-Ø woman-DAT ADD EVID-IO3-love-MSD-SM.INACT-PTCP-EVID.SM-S3SG te ndem-[i] ʒalam-s DEM.PROX daeva-[NOM] very.much-DAT ‘The woman, in addition (to that), has evidently been falling greatly in love with this daeva.’ (Class II inverted: Series IV, EVID PRS-IMPF IND) Given the clear textual evidence for this remarkable phenomenon of adverbial case marking and case-shift, as well as the attention that has been paid to it in earlier literature, one might also have expected to find some previous attempt at an explanation for its emergence. However, beyond the fact that K’acˇ’arava, later supported by K’iziria, explicitly underscored the relevance of the formal connection between the adverbs involved and existing adjectives—which in itself does not go far towards accounting for what we have observed—it seems that nobody has attempted to provide such an explanation. But although the material at our disposal does not allow us to say for certain how this situation arose, the details we have established above do appear to point to a particular diachronic scenario, which I will lay out tentatively here. The crucial observations concern the nature of the items that take this unexpected core case marking, namely expressions of degree, and the context in which they are affected, namely morphosyntactic inversion, a pattern predominantly associated with verbs that select an experiencer rather than a fully agentive subject argument. In practice, from a semantic point of view the phenomenon thus centres on clauses which encode the extent to which a human (or humanlike) participant is seized by a given emotional state, as in most of the examples seen above. This is exactly the kind of context in which one might expect to find speakers innovating strategies to emphasize the emotive force of what is being expressed. In this connection it is important to mention that a number of innovative characteristics of Megrelian, at various linguistic levels, have already been explained in terms of reinforcement, i.e. the underscoring of pragmatically significant information in the discourse; such features begin life as optional expressions and only later undergo obligatorification. Examples include the pragmaticalization and concurrent morphologization of adverbs and discourse particles as bound verbal prefixes, discussed at length in Rostovtsev-Popiel (2012, 2017). Thus in the contemporary language there are grammatical contexts in which it is only possible to use what is

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historically the reinforced form of a verb rather than the simpler form on which it is based.¹⁹ I interpret the emergence of case marking on adverbs of degree in a similar light. In the discourse contexts in which I assume it to have emerged, the underlying motivation was pragmatic: to lay emphasis on the item expressing the degree of emotion ascribed to the experiencer participant. Doing this by means of the addition of case marking was merely an opportunistic strategy, in the sense that case happened to be morphologically available on the relevant adverbs thanks to their formal identity with adjectives, which are able to inflect for the full range of nominal cases. While functionless in semantic terms, this additional morphological material originally enhanced the discourse salience of the adverbial expression when it was used. Only later was it reinterpreted as a conventional feature of clausal morphosyntax associated with the verbs involved; and one aspect of this conventionalization must have been the spread of the behaviour beyond experiencer verbs, such as love and be surprised at, to the remaining verbs characterized by inverted morphosyntax, such as (come to) lack. In my view, then, core case marking on adverbs did not develop for reasons directly related to grammatical semantics in the domain of morphosyntax. For example, I do not propose a reanalysis scenario whereby case-marked adjectives of degree, modifying a particular core argument, could sometimes be plausibly reinterpreted as modifying the entire clause, thus opening the door for the spread and grammaticalization of adverbs appearing to agree with core arguments in case. I rule this out because it is not clear what the ambiguous contexts might have looked like, but also because the case-marked adverb ‘agrees’ with different arguments of the verb depending on the series in which it appears (§8.4.3). I can see no reasonable way in which this inconsistency could have arisen via reanalysis. So what does explain the inconsistency? I suggest that it is a side effect of the opportunistic use of case morphology for pragmatic purposes. Most likely, the phenomenon began in Series II contexts: as discussed in §8.3.2.2, in effect the ergative case in Megrelian is simply an identifier of Series II morphosyntax in general, and for that reason the ergative marker -k (which already appeared on the argument encoding the stimulus) was an obvious source of semantically empty but pragmatically salient morphological material to apply to degree expressions, giving rise to examples such as (28), repeated here as (33). (33)

ʒamk maxiolu te ambek. ʒa[la]m-k m-a-xiol-u te ambe-k very.much-ERG IO1-VAL-become.happy-S3SG.PST DEM.PROX story-ERG ‘I greatly enjoyed this story.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Kaǯaia 2002: III, 374)

¹⁹ Compare the situation in Modern English, where the phenomenon of ‘do-support’ seems to have begun life as a matter of pragmatic emphasis (preserved in affirmative statements: cf. emphatic I do know him with unmarked I know him) but is now grammatically obligatory in certain contexts (e.g. polar questions: Do you know him vs ∗ Know you him?).

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In the other three verbal series, however, ergative marking is not part of the case frame assigned by the verb, and accordingly it was never applied to the adverb either. What material should be used instead? The structural counterpart to the ergative case, characterizing the stimulus in Series I, III, and IV, is the nominative. However, as we have seen in §8.3.1.2, nominative morphology is very low in informational value in Megrelian: formally it is either zero or indistinguishable from the meaningless euphonic vowel. By contrast, the other case appearing in the case frame of the relevant verbs is the dative, reliably expressed by the suffix -s. What is more, as discussed in §8.3.2, the use of the dative on the subject is practically the defining feature of inverted morphosyntax. Outside Series II contexts, the dative suffix -s was therefore treated as the most fitting analogue to ergative -k and was taken on by the same adverbs of degree in the relevant contexts in all other series. The overall result is the asymmetry noted above: outside Series II the adverb shows the case marking proper to the experiencer (dative), while in Series II it patterns with the stimulus (ergative). It is worth noting that elsewhere in the Kartvelian family, we can point to evidence—albeit of a very different kind—for the idea that underpins the account above, i.e. that speakers can treat particular core case markers as salient morphological markers characterizing entire case frames. The relevant evidence relates to the acquisition of Standard Georgian. Like Megrelian, Georgian displays an inverted morphosyntactic pattern which is associated with verbs of Class IV (and Class II inverted), as illustrated here by (34a). Here the subject dedik’o-s [mumDAT] ‘mum’ appears in the dative and is indexed by indirect object marking on the verb, as in the analogous Megrelian construction. However, as observed through personal experience, children acquiring Georgian initially tend to produce such sentences without any case marking, as in (34b). And thereafter, but before beginning to formulate the construction correctly as in (34a), they begin to produce sentences featuring dative marking on both core arguments, as in (34c): (34)

Georgian (own data) a. dedik’os unda q’ava. dedik’o-s Ø-u-nd-a q’ava-Ø mum-DATi IO3i -VAL-want-S3SGii coffee-NOMii ‘Mumi wants a coffeeii .’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND) b. dedik’o una q’ava. dedik’o Ø-u-n[d]-a mumi IO3i -VAL-want-S3SGii ‘Mumi wants a coffeeii .’

q’ava coffeeii

c. dedik’os una q’avas. dedik’o-s Ø-u-n[d]-a mum-DATi IO3i -VAL-want-S3SGii ‘Mumi wants a coffeeii .’

q’ava-s coffee-DATii

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In children’s speech this ‘ungrammatical’ generalization of dative case marking to both arguments is only observed in clauses headed by verbs which are associated with inverted morphosyntax in Standard Georgian.²⁰ I view this as evidence that the dative is taken as the salient feature of the whole case frame of such verbs. This makes it more plausible that Megrelian speakers could have done a similar thing in identifying particular case suffixes as characteristic of entire case frames; these suffixes were then the obvious morphological elements to use for the purposes of pragmatic reinforcement. Naturally, it is unlikely that we will ever be able to demonstrate the truth of this scenario given the nature of our Megrelian textual material, in which the system appears already fully formed. However, I find it the most plausible chain of events to explain the presence of unexpected core case marking, and especially this highly unusual type of case-shift, in clauses with inverted morphosyntax. The comparative material presented in §8.6, which features other languages in which core case marking can be applied to adverbial expressions, highlights the typological strangeness of the Megrelian data. In Megrelian, this case marking is inconsistent—not only in terms of the case assigned, but even in terms of the core argument to which that case marking corresponds. The fact that the case marking on adverbs is inconsistent across series suggests that the choice of a particular case is not entirely driven by grammatical semantics. However, before presenting these extra-Megrelian data, I will close out my description of the Megrelian phenomenon by considering its status in the contemporary language.

8.5.3 Case study The discussion above has focused on written examples gleaned from classic Megrelian textual sources. However, considering that these materials were recorded and transcribed relatively long ago for an unwritten and unstandardized language, it is of interest to know whether, and how, the pattern under discussion still functions in modern-day Megrelian. Internet searches suggest that in the contemporary language the phenomenon of core case marking on adverbs is still employed productively, and we are even able to add to the list of adverbial items involved, as in (35) and (36), which feature case-marked expressions meaning ‘so much’ and ‘greatly’ respectively: the first is drawn from a 2014 verse translation ²⁰ Note that the use of the dative suffix -s to mark two distinct arguments also occurs in Standard Georgian (as in the rest of Kartvelian except for Art’ešen Laz, which has lost all core case markers, see Harris 1985: 385–9, 422–3) in two instances: (i) Class I and III verbs, Series I and IV: direct object dative -s, indirect object dative -s, as in ‘X NOM gives Y DAT ZDAT ’, and (ii) Class IV and Class II inverted verbs, in all series available: subject dative -s and indirect object dative -s, as in ‘X DAT prefers X NOM to Y DAT ’. In both instances, however, we are dealing with trivalent verbs (with one of the core arguments marked distinctively), not bivalent ones as in (34a–c).

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into Megrelian, while the second is a comment found in a Megrelian-language Facebook group. (35)

tezmas morc’ons p’eulperepi . . . te-z[o]ma-s mo-g-c’on-s p’eul-per-ep-i DEM.PROX-size-DAT PV-IO2-like-S3SG flower-colour-PL-NOM ‘You (SG) like the colours of the flowers so much . . .’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND) (Ioseb Nonešvili, translated by Beǯit Ǯalaγonia; URL: https://wikisource.org/wiki/ნუმ_ხანტ [num_xant’ ‘Don’t paint’])

(36)

lamarak mangark mecod. lamara-k mangar-k m-e-cod-[u] Lamara-ERG great-ERG IO1-VAL-pity-[S3SG.PST] ‘I felt greatly sorry for Lamara.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (Comment in the Facebook open group ბჭარათ, ბრაგადუათ, იბიბრათ მარგალური დო ლაზური ნინაშა [bcˇ’arat, bragaduat, ibibrat margaluri do lazuri ninaša ‘Let’s write, speak, and sing in the Megrelian and Laz language’])

In light of the existence of such examples, I undertook an informal study on five Megrelian-speaking participants to gauge the level of vitality of the construction among current speakers of the language, and to see whether any further adverbial expressions could be identified which behave in the same way as those we have encountered above. The five speakers I consulted were from three different locations in Samegrelo; thus it was also a point of interest to see whether they displayed differences in their linguistic behaviour according to the location where they acquired Megrelian. These speakers were asked to provide Megrelian translations of 15 to 20 stimulus sentences in Georgian involving inverted verbs and featuring an adverb of degree, such as ‘The boy hardly knows Megrelian’, ‘The guest couldn’t help yawning a bit’, ‘The guest was a little late’, ‘The person greatly pitied another person’; these stimuli covered and extended the lexical material seen in the context of this construction in previous work. Each stimulus was represented in Series I, II, and III constructions, all of them shuffled in order to avoid direct repetition and possible slips, meaning that every consultant provided around 50 sentences in total. I will not present here a full account of the findings of this study, which by nature can only be suggestive. However, some unobvious observations do emerge. One general impression produced is that native speakers of modern Megrelian in fact appear to avoid the case-shifting adverbs in favour of alternatives; greater use is made of overtly ‘adverbialized’ forms featuring the adverbial suffix -o(t)/-t, such as mangar-o(t) ‘greatly’ < mangar- ‘great’ in (37), or adverbs unmarked for case, such as ˇc’icˇ’e ‘a bit’ in (38):

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baγanas mangaro aruluapu. baγana-s mangar-o[t] Ø-a-rul-u-ap-u[n]-Ø child-DAT great-ADV IO3-VAL-sleep-MSD-AUX-SM.INACT-S3SG ‘The child greatly wants to sleep.’ (Class II: Series I, PRS IND)

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sumars ˇc’icˇ’e gakionapu. s[t’]umar-s cˇ’icˇ’e go-Ø-o-kion-ap-u guest-DAT a.bit PV-IO3-VAL-yawn-AUX-S3SG.PST ‘The guest couldn’t help yawning a bit.’ (Class II: Series II, AOR IND)

For the lexical stems seen in the above examples, the pattern discussed so far would have required dative mangar-s and ergative ˇc’icˇ’e-k respectively. Nonetheless, every speaker consulted did provide some examples which show adjectival adverbs of degree taking dative or ergative case marking. This allows us to consider how well the behaviour elicited corresponds to the distributional principle presented above, whereby ergative marking is expected in the context of Series II and dative marking elsewhere. Interestingly, it emerges that among the five speakers, the relevant sentences elicited suggest that only three of them were potentially sensitive to TAM-based conditioning, while apparently two were not. One consultant, a middle-aged speaker from Čxoroc’q’u in the east of Samegrelo, provided an example that appears to use dative case marking ‘correctly’ on ʒa(la)m-s ‘very much’ in the context of a Series I verb form (39); but the same speaker also used the same dative form twice in Series II contexts, as in (40), and never used ergative case marking on the adverb as expected. This suggests that the speaker was not observing any distributional principle at all, and their grammar only made available a fossilized dative suffix (similar to the -s in šor-s ‘far’ and xolo-s ‘near’ mentioned in §8.4) on the relevant items. (39) vanos ʒams oadvil te davaleba. vano-s ʒa[la]m-s Ø-o-advil-[un]-Ø te Vano-DAT very.much-DAT IO3-VAL-ease-SM.INACT-S3SG DEM.PROX davaleba-Ø task-NOM ‘Vano finds this task really easy.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, PRS IND) (40) ʒams kimenat’r vaxos sopelk. ʒa[la]m-s ko-m[o]-Ø-e-nat’r-[u] vaxo-s sopel-k very.much-DAT AFFM-PV-IO3-VAL-miss-[S3SG.PST] Vaxo-DAT village-ERG ‘Vaxo became greatly homesick for the village.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) The same behaviour was shown by an elderly speaker from Jvari, in the western highlands of Samegrelo; this speaker provided many more sentences featuring

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core case marking on adverbs in the first place (nine in total), but again all of them made use of the dative case regardless of the verbal series involved, as illustrated in (41), where ergative marking might have been expected on the adverb. The behaviour of these two speakers suggests an awareness that core case marking is appropriate in the relevant contexts, but without the survival of the distributional principle to accompany it. (41)

arʒos ʒalamc kəmaɁumen. arʒo-s ʒalam-s ko-m[o]-Ø-o-Ɂumen-[u] all-DAT very.much-DAT AFFM-PV-IO3-VAL-thirst-[S3SG.PST] ‘Everyone became very thirsty.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND)

Given the existence of this degenerate pattern in two speakers, it is noteworthy that the other speakers did not violate the distributional principle presented above. Two of them (a middle-aged respondent from Zugdidi in the western lowlands, and an elderly speaker from Čxoroc’q’u, a Megrelian-language pedant and would-be guardian of the language) provided case-marked adverbs only in the context of Series II, making it impossible to comment on the possibility of case alternation across series; however, they ‘correctly’ showed ergative rather than dative marking in this context, meaning that their behaviour evidently differed from that of the two speakers just discussed. Finally, the fifth respondent, a middle-aged speaker from Jvari, did provide examples illustrating both the use of ergative marking in Series II, as in (42) and (43), and of dative marking elsewhere (44), and did not provide examples violating this pattern, clearly pointing to the survival of the distribution seen in the textual record. (42) ˇckimi ǯimak’ocˇis mutuni vautkualu, xvale ˇc’icˇ’ek axiolu vara. cˇkim=i ǯimak’ocˇ-i-s mutun-i 1SG.POSS=EV best.friend-EV-DAT something-NOM va=Ø-u-tkw-al-u[n]-Ø xvale cˇ’icˇ’e-k NEG=IO3-VAL:PRF-say-MSD-PRF-S3SG only a.bit-ERG Ø-a-xiol-u vara IO3-VAL-become.happy-S3SG.PST anyway ‘My friend apparently hasn’t said anything, [it’s] just [that] he cheered up a bit anyway.’ (Class I: Series III, PRF IND; Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) (43)

brelk dəmegvian. brel-k do-m-e-gvian-[u] much-ERG PV-IO1-VAL-be.late-S3SG.PST ‘I was very late.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND)

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(44) ˇc’icˇ’es demegvianebu. cˇ’icˇ’e-s do-m-e-gvian-eb-u[n]-Ø a.bit-DAT PV-IO1-VAL-be.late-SM.INACT-SM.INACT-S3SG ‘I’ll be a little late.’ (Class II inverted: Series I, FUT IND) Note that (43) adds another lexical item, brel- ‘much/many’, to our list of items sensitive to adverbial case-shift. It is hard to take anything conclusive from this preliminary study, but it points to an interesting situation in the modern language. The behaviour shown by these five speakers suggests that there remains at least the awareness that core case marking is available on adverbs of degree in the context of inverted verbs, but at the same time that not all Megrelian speakers observe the distributional principle identifiable on the basis of twentieth-century text collections. If this is the case, it could be explained in a number of ways. It may be that the situation seen in texts was never a universal characteristic of Megrelian, but was always geographically or sociolinguistically conditioned in some way that has not yet become clear; equally, in the present day we may merely be looking at the remnants of a phenomenon which thrived in an earlier period, but has since entered its decline. It is challenging to note that the little contemporary evidence we have does not provide strong support for the idea that this distinctively Megrelian phenomenon has survived best in the most linguistically ‘authentic’ part of the Megrelian-speaking area, as might have been expected: while the speaker who provided the best evidence for the survival of the distribution was indeed from Jvari in the western highland region, where the influence of the Georgian superstrate is felt least strongly (see §8.2), the older consultant from the same region showed no sign of ever using ergative case marking in the relevant contexts. Further research will certainly be required to elucidate the historical and contemporary details of this complex pattern of morphosyntactic behaviour.

8.6 Structural and typological comparisons This study has laid weight on the typological strangeness of the Megrelian phenomenon that is treated here. From this point of view, before closing it will be instructive to compare what we see in Megrelian with grammatical phenomena found elsewhere that might superficially appear similar. I begin by examining data from two of Megrelian’s sister languages, Laz and Georgian, and then turn to evidence of core case marking on adverbial expressions found outside the family, on the other side of the globe. This comparative material emphasizes the uniqueness of the state of affairs seen in Megrelian.

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8.6.1 Laz and Georgian Although all Kartvelian languages feature a morphological and functional distinction between adjectives and adverbs which is solid on the whole, both Laz and Georgian also allow case marking on adverbs, albeit in different ways. In Laz, I am aware of only one adverb which shows case alternation (leaving aside meaningful spatial marking of the type discussed in §8.4.2), namely mucˇ’o ‘how’, identical in form to its Megrelian equivalent. Unlike in Megrelian, Laz mucˇ’o has a formally distinct adjectival counterpart, viz. mucˇ’e ‘what kind of ’. But at the same time, the adverb mucˇ’o itself turns out to allow the attachment of case markers such as instrumental -te and genitive -ši (i.e. oblique case markers in the terms of §8.3.1.1): (45)

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Laz (Žγent’i 1938: 41.6, cited by Tandilava 2013: 551) kogicˇkin, ˇckwa keifi mucˇ’ote iven! ko-g-i-cˇk-in-Ø cˇkwa keif-i AFFM-IO2-VAL-know-SM.INACT-S3SG other feast-NOM Ø-i-[q’]v-en-Ø S3-VAL-be-SM.INACT-S3SG ‘You (SG) know for sure how others’ feast will be!’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND; Class II: Series I: FUT IND)

mucˇ’o-te how-INS

Laz (Čikobava 1936: 77 [2008: 313.3], cited by Tandilava 2013: 551) mucˇ’oši ipxonan? mucˇ’o-ši Ø-i-pxor-an how-GEN DO3-VAL-eat-S3PL ‘How (i.e. raw, fried, etc.) do they eat [anchovies]?’ (Class I: Series I, PRS IND)

Discussion with my consultants as to potential contexts suitable for mucˇ’o, mucˇ’ote, and mucˇ’oši failed to provide any information on the functional distribution of these expressions and resulted in the consensus that the distinction is a matter of dialect variation only, and not related to function or grammatical environment. Clearly in many ways this is far removed from the case alternation seen in Megrelian.²¹ A different picture is found in Georgian (both standard and colloquial), a language genealogically more remote from Megrelian than Laz is. Here we find nominative case marking on certain expressions that are traditionally described as adjectives but can sometimes be observed to operate as adverbs under specific ²¹ Meanwhile, the Georgian equivalents of (45) and (46) would most likely avoid the neutral expression for ‘how’, rogor, in favour of colloquial/dialectal ra-p[e]r-a(d) [what-colour-ADV] and standard ra-nair-ad [what-kind-ADV] respectively. Thus the Laz use of variation in case marking, rather than lexical resources, to express the semantic distinction does render Laz closer to Megrelian in this sense.

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circumstances. Thus, K’iziria provides an example from Georgian literature featuring what appears to be an adjective in the nominative case that fails to agree with its head noun and can thus be interpreted as an adverb: (47) Georgian (Nik’o Lortkipanidze, in K’iziria 1978: 42) es raγaa?—nac’q’eni hk’itxa mγvdelma tavis cols. es raγa=a nac’q’en-i h-k’itx-a DEM.PROX:NOM what.on.earth=COP offended-‘NOM’ IO3-ask-S3SG.PST mγvdel-ma tavis col-s priest-ERG 3.POSS wife-DAT ‘What on earth is this?—the priest asked his wife offended(ly).’ (Class I: Series II, AOR IND) Today’s native speakers do not accept the form nac’q’eni in this instance, and would instead suggest either c’q’en-it [offence-INS] ‘with offence’ or nac’q’en-ma [offended-ERG] ‘offended’ (in order to form an NP with mγvdel-ma [priest-ERG] ‘priest’). However, the following examples given by Boeder (2005b: 218–19) do appear to be grammatically acceptable in contemporary Georgian. The author cites two instances featuring topicalized heads alongside adjectives whose natural interpretation is adverbial: (48) Georgian (Iak’ob Gogebašvili, in K’vacˇ’aʒe 1996: 222, cited by Boeder 2005b: 218) [t’orolam] ganabva ost’at’uri icis. t’orola-m ganabva-Ø ost’at’ur-i Ø-i-c-i-s lark-ERG nest.building-NOM masterful-NOM DO3-VAL-know-SM-S3SG ‘A s for nest-building, [the lark] can do it masterfully.’ (Class I:²² Series I, PRS IND) (49)

Georgian (Boeder 2005b: 219) simγera k’argi gcodnia. si-mγer-a-Ø k’arg-i g-c-od-n-i-a MSD-sing-MSD-NOM good-NOM IO2-know-EM-MSD-PRF-S3SG ‘To sing well is what you (SG) evidently can do (, but let us see how you dance).’ (Class I: Series III, PRF IND)

Such examples are of uncertain value, because it is possible to interpret the items involved as depictive adjectives. However, one can observe a productive construction in Georgian that features the nominative of certain adjectives expressing measure and attitude in clearly adverbial function. This pattern, frequent in modern-day colloquial Georgian, is thought to originate in the vernacular speech of central Tbilisi. ²² The verb icis ‘X knows Y’ (MSD codna) is a somewhat irregular member of Class I, in that it features the exceptional case frame ERG–NOM in Series I.

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Georgian (own data) es pilmi magari momec’ona. es pilm-i magar-i mo-m-e-c’on-a DEM.PROX:NOM movie-NOM great-NOM PV-IO1-VAL-like-S3SG.PST ‘I liked this movie a lot.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND)

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Georgian (own data) magari daviγale. magar-i da-v-i-γal-e-Ø great-NOM PV-S1-VAL-tire-IND-S1 ‘I (have) got tired a lot.’ (Class II: Series II, AOR IND)

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These cannot be treated as depictive adjectives, and in both instances cited, the standard language prefers the adverb magrad ‘greatly’ in place of magari (note the etymological connection between Georgian -ad and Megrelian -ot). Likewise, in the following example, Standard Georgian favours the adverb zedmet’ad ‘excessively’ instead of adjectival namet’ani (which here modifies the adjective mok’le ‘short’ and does not form an NP with k’aba ‘gown’). However, in the colloquial language the use of the nominative case here is fully acceptable. (52)

Georgian (own data) namet’ani mok’le k’aba gacvia. namet’an-i mok’le k’aba-Ø g-a-cv-i-a excessive-NOM short gown-NOM IO2-VAL-wear-STAT-S3SG ‘You (SG) are wearing much too short a gown.’ (Class IV: Series I, PRS IND)

More or less the same applies to standard uecˇ’vel-ad [undoubted-ADV] and colloquial uecˇ’vel-i [undoubted-NOM], the latter being perfectly able to appear in adverbial function: (53)

Georgian (own data) uecˇ’veli c’avedit / unda c’avidet! uecˇ’vel-i c’a-[v]-ved-i-Ø-t / unda c’a-[v]-vid-e-Ø-t doubtless-NOM PV-[S1]-go-IND-S1-PL / DEONT PV-[S1]-go-OPT-S1-PL ‘We definitely leave (lit. left)/must leave.’ (Class II: Series II, (AOR IND(:HORT)/OPT)

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Georgian (own data) uecˇ’veli magan gamik’eta! uecˇ’vel-i maga-n ga-m-i-k’et-a doubtless-NOM DEM.MED-ERG PV-IO1-VAL-do-S3SG.PST ‘There is no doubt that X did it! (lit. X undoubtedly did Y to me).’ (Class I: Series II, AOR IND)

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Georgian (own data) es uecˇ’veli misi gak’etebulia! es uecˇ’vel-i m-is=i DEM.PROX:NOM doubtless-NOM DEM.DIST-GEN=EV ga-k’et-eb-ul-i=a PV-do-SM-PTCP-NOM=COP ‘There is no doubt that this is his/her doing! (lit. this is undoubtedly his/her done).’ (Class I: PST PTCP)

Finally, it is worthy of note that the adjective cot’a ‘little’, corresponding (though not cognate) to Megrelian ˇc’icˇ’e above, can be used as an adverb in two different inflectional forms, with an unexpected difference between them. The nominative form, which is identical with the bare stem as this ends in a vowel, appears in example (56a) while the instrumental form is used in (56b); notice that the two forms produce slightly different meanings in what are otherwise identical sentences. (56) Georgian (own data) a. besos lap’arak’i cot’a ar momec’ona. beso-s lap’arak’-i cot’a ar mo-m-e-c’on-a Beso-GEN talk-NOM little:NOM NEG PV-IO1-VAL-like-S3SG.PST ‘I did not like Beso’s talk somehow.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) b. besos lap’arak’i cot’ati ar momec’ona. beso-s lap’arak’-i cot’a-ti ar mo-m-e-c’on-a Beso-GEN talk-NOM little-INS NEG PV-IO1-VAL-like-S3SG.PST ‘I did not like Beso’s talk with respect to some minor points.’ (Class II inverted: Series II, AOR IND) Svan, the fourth language in the Kartvelian family, is not known to display anything comparable to what has been shown here for Megrelian, Laz, or Georgian. But it should be clear that the types of case marking on adverbial expressions just seen in Laz and Georgian can themselves hardly be compared to the Megrelian phenomenon. For one thing, the cases involved are different; but just as strikingly, in Laz and Georgian the use of a particular case is not dependent on the grammatical context in which it is found, as regards either the nature of the predicate or the verbal series which it instantiates (cf. §8.4.3). Instead, where two different cases are available to be used, this can give rise to a semantic distinction between them, as in the pair of examples just demonstrated. There is thus no reason to treat these other Kartvelian behaviours as especially close, either genealogically or typologically, to that seen in Megrelian. I now turn to a language outside Kartvelian which makes use of adverbs overtly inflecting for a core argument case in specific circumstances. While this is in some

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ways more reminiscent of what we see in Megrelian, it does not represent a close parallel either.

8.6.2 Warlpiri A preliminary but substantial survey suggests that the existence of core case marking on adverbs has been documented outside Kartvelian in three languages of Australia: Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan, Northern Territory), Martuthunira (Pama-Nyungan, Western Australia; Dench 1988, cited by Himmelmann & Schultze-Berndt 2005), and Diyari (South Australia; Austin 1981); and in one Panoan language spoken in South America, Shipibo-Konibo (spoken in Peru and Brazil; Valenzuela 2005; Cardenas & Zeman 2018). However, in terms of agreement-oriented mechanisms, only the Warlpiri data appear at all comparable with the data found in Megrelian. Therefore, the discussion below is restricted to Warlpiri. Like Megrelian, Warlpiri has a case labelled the ergative, and its use is not canonical in the sense that it is not restricted to marking the subject of a transitive verb. Among other things, it can also appear on nominals used in adverbial function. But notably, the use of ergative case marking in this way in Warlpiri is dependent on the transitivity of the clause. The ergative suffix appears when the verb is transitive, as in (57a), but it is not found in the context of an intransitive verb, as in (57b).²³ (57)

Warlpiri (Simpson 2005: 82) a. turlka-ni kapi=rna=ngku wakurturdu-rlu. pinch-NPST FUT=1SGS=2SGO hard-ERG ‘I’ll pinch you hard.’ b. yankirri=ji ka wakurturdu-nyayirni jukajuka-parnka emu=TOP PRS fast-very head.back.forth-run.NPST ‘The emu runs fast with head going back and forth.’

We might therefore wish to interpret this as agreement in case with the subject of the clause, just as in Megrelian we could interpret case marking on adverbs as agreement with one of the clause’s core arguments;²⁴ although the following pair of examples feature an adverb of manner that is ergative-marked in a transitive context even when the subject itself is not (58a). ²³ Simpson’s (2005) analysis draws on data from Hale (1959, 1966), and entries from a Warlpiri dictionary shared by Mary Laughren. Discussion of these sources can be found in Simpson (2005: 70). A recent encyclopaedic dictionary of Warlpiri is Laughren et al. (2022). ²⁴ Simpson remarks that such nominals ‘still receive case marking in agreement with the subject . . . tulkani’s subject has Ergative case’ (2005: 82). I could not verify the latter statement due to the physical unavailability of the source cited.

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Warlpiri (Simpson 1991: 124)²⁵ a. kurdu yaruju-rlu ka paka-rninja-ya-ni maliki. child quick-ERG PRS hit-INF-GO-NPST dog b. kurdu-ngku yaruju-rlu ka paka-rninja-ya-ni maliki. child-ERG quick-ERG PRS hit-INF-GO-NPST dog ‘The child is hitting the dog quickly.’

The following sentences illustrate the transitivity alternation between ergativemarked and bare forms of manyu ‘play’ used adverbially: (59)

Warlpiri (Simpson 2005: 76) a. maliki-jarra-rlu ka=pala=nyanu manyu-ngku yarlki-rni. dog-two-ERG PRS=3DUS=REFL play-ERG bite-NPST ‘The two dogs are biting each other in play.’ b. ngula-piya=jala ka=lu manyu ngari yangka that-like=CONTR PRS=3PLS play just ANAPH junpurr-ma-ni. flap.lips-do-NPST ‘Like that they playfully blow (flap their lips).’

The same effect can be observed on temporal adverbials, which might be expected to show no special connection with the subject argument. Thus, in (60) the ergative case marking appears on tarnnga ‘always’. (60)

Warlpiri (Simpson 2005: 76) kirdanyanu-kirdanyanu-rlu kala=lu=nganpa father:POSS-father:POSS-ERG used.to=3PLS=1PL.EXCLO wankaru-rlu=wiyi yujuku ngurrju-ma-nu tarnnga-ngku. alive-ERG=before hut good-cause-PST always-ERG ‘Our fathers when they were still alive used always to build us huts.’

The pair of sentences (61a–b) shows the same alternation on pirrarni ‘yesterday’. (61)

Warlpiri (Simpson 2005: 82) a. nya-ngu=rna=ngku pirrarni-rli. see-PST=1SGS=2SGO yesterday-ERG ‘I saw you yesterday.’ b. pirrarni nyurnu-jarri-ja kurdu. yesterday sick-become-PST child ‘The baby got sick yesterday.’

In this respect Warlpiri is reminiscent of Megrelian, because the presence of particular core case marking on the clause-modifying adverb does not influence the ²⁵ Certain native speakers accept examples such as (58b) ‘only with a topicalized reading of the first element’ (Simpson 1991: 125).

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semantics of the adverb itself; instead it is conditioned by the nature of the verbal predicate, and specifically its transitivity. In typological terms, the Warlpiri phenomenon is thus far closer to the topic of this chapter than the examples of adverbial case marking found elsewhere in Kartvelian are. However, even Warlpiri does not fully replicate the Megrelian state of affairs, because it is missing the further degree of complexity represented by case-shift. For Warlpiri, there is no suggestion that the choice of case marking on the relevant expressions is conditioned by TAM series or by any other factor besides the transitivity of the verb. Therefore there is no opportunity for case-shift of the Megrelian type to arise, let along the inconsistency in behaviour shown by case-marked adverbs in Megrelian, which appear to agree with different arguments of the verb in different TAM series. This crucial factor marks out the Megrelian system, in which the case marking is not assigned in a morphosyntactically coherent way.

8.7 Conclusions This study has investigated a cross-linguistically unusual—and most likely unique—pattern of case agreement on adverbs, identifiable from textual attestations of twentieth-century Megrelian. In contexts of morphosyntactic inversion (semantically associated with low agency), we find that certain adverbs derived from adjectives can inflect for ergative or dative case to pattern with an argument of the clause they modify. As elsewhere in Kartvelian, case assignment on clausal arguments themselves depends on the TAM series of the verbal predicate; but remarkably, the agreeing adverb does not turn out to track the case marking assigned to one particular argument across series, nor is it able to choose its controller on semantic grounds. Instead, it bears ergative or dative inflection according to a predictable but synchronically unmotivated alternation without parallel elsewhere in the language. As a result, it agrees with different clausal arguments in the context of different series. In this way the Megrelian phenomenon treated here is strikingly unlike instances of case marking on clausal adverbs identified elsewhere, both inside the Kartvelian family and beyond, where we never observe controllers of agreement whose identity is sensitive to the TAM or case assignment properties of the verb. Although examples illustrating this distinctive adverbial case-shift have been discussed in Kartvelian scholarship before, I have shown here that these earlier treatments do not come close to providing a comprehensive description of the system; accordingly, they do not properly appreciate its typological novelty either. The present chapter has attempted to rectify this by laying out the full, complex

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range of conditions involved, in the context of a more general presentation of the language’s clausal morphosyntax. Bringing together the complete picture in this way has also made it possible to suggest a scenario for the emergence of this phenomenon, where what matters is the salience of a given case form as an identifier of the construction as a whole: the ergative is most salient in the context of a Series II predicate, and the dative is most salient in contexts of morphosyntactic inversion otherwise. Relatedly, it is an important part of this account that nominative case marking itself is of low informational value in Megrelian, thanks to the ambiguous nature of the suffix involved. By emphasizing that the presence of alleged nominative marking on adverbs should be kept distinct from the caseshift phenomenon under discussion, this study brings conceptual clarity which has been lacking from the discussion so far. Besides providing a novel description and analysis of a morphosyntactic peculiarity of Megrelian that has proven challenging for Kartvelianists in the past, this study is thus also of much wider interest, because correctly appreciating the behaviour of the adverbs treated here broadens our knowledge of what is possible in human language. Like several other chapters in this volume, it shows that linguists’ preliminary characterization of adverbs as a non-inflecting part of speech is only accurate in relative terms, at best; but it also details a previously unrecognized way in which morphosyntactic paradigmatic relations can emerge and operate. The suggestion that speakers can, under the right circumstances, come to associate a specific construction with a type of case marking that is grammatically salient within it, and then use that case as a kind of ‘landmark’ orienting the behaviour of other expressions introduced into the construction, is one which may prove fruitful in the analysis of synchronic and diachronic puzzles elsewhere. At the same time, there is still much to discover about adverbial case-shift in Megrelian itself. In §8.5.1 (fn. 18) the possibility was raised that while contexts of morphosyntactic inversion are without doubt central to this phenomenon, it may also have spread beyond them—a development that would not be unexpected, as there is no reason why only predicates headed by inverted verbs should be subject to pragmatic reinforcement (or, later, become susceptible to morphologized casemarking alternation based on this reinforcement). The evidence of contemporary Megrelian usage could elucidate this, and also the status of adverbial case-shift in general in the modern language. The preliminary case study reported on in §8.5.3 seems to show that this phenomenon has survived to the present day, but does not form part of the grammar of all Megrelian speakers. It remains to be seen how exactly this variability is conditioned across the linguistic community; gaining a better understanding of the sociolinguistics of adverbial case-shift would shed light on the possibility that it may have resulted from a ‘Megrelianizing’ impulse among speakers, favouring distinctively Megrelian linguistic behaviour foreign to the superstrate language, viz. Georgian.

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Whether or not this metalinguistic consideration did have a part to play, caseshift in Megrelian adverbs is, to the best of our current knowledge, unique in purely linguistic terms. The Kartvelian family, and the languages of the Caucasus more generally, are notorious as a locus of typological rarities at all levels of structure, and as these rarities have become better known to the wider world of linguistic scholarship, they have reshaped our ideas of what is possible in human language. As an instance of what is possible in the domain of agreement, one of the most intricate and puzzling aspects of our linguistic capacity, the topic explored by this chapter shows us a kind of behaviour that has never been seen before, and one which invites us to rethink our ideas yet again; working out how to integrate this remarkable phenomenon with existing conceptions of morphosyntactic structure is the task of future research.

Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Merab Čuxua (Chukhua), George Hewitt, Jurij (Yury) Lander, Vazˇa Šengelia (Vazha Shengelia), Edward Vajda, and the editors of this volume for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter, especially Steven Kaye for his exceptional contribution.

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Author Index Ackema, Peter 3, 4, 21, 30–1, 43 Ahmed, Tafseer 17, 132 Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 63 Alexiadou, Artemis 2, 4 Alisultanova, Mesedu A. 11, 54, 82 Andrews, Avery D. 63, 68 Antonov, Anton 1 Antrim, Nancy Mae 16, 45 Austin, Peter K. 301 Babby, Leonard H. 3 Baker, Mark 3, 5–6, 9, 18, 49 Bakker, Dik 9, 41, 181, 248 Bárány, András 1, 4, 7 Barðdal, Jóhanna 63–4 Béjar, Susana 1 Belokon, Alexander 53 Belyaev, Oleg 99 Benedetti, Marina 189 Bhaskararao, Peri 63 Bickel, Balthasar 64–5 Bjorkman, Bronwyn B. 4 Bobaljik, Jonathan D. 2 Boeckx, Cedric 4 Boeder, Winfried 265–6, 298 Bolina, Dar’ja S. 134 Bond, Oliver 1–47, 49, 92, 99, 107, 132, 146, 156, 158, 181, 196, 244, 256, 259, 262 Borsley, Robert D. 4, 24–5, 42 Branan, Kenyon 49 Bresnan, Joan 2, 68 Brown, Dunstan 2, 4, 14, 21, 35, 92 Brown, Lea 21 Brykina, Maria 153 Burroni, Francesco 156, 182 Butt, Miriam 17, 132 Cagareli, Aleksandre 267, 269 Canava, Apolon 268 Can Pixabaj, Telma A. 2 Cardarelli, Luigino 158, 185–6 Cardenas, Ronald 301 Cardinaletti, Anna 50 Carey, Stephen M. 64 Carstens, Vicki 3, 17 Castrén, Matthias Alexander 134

Cercvadze, Ilia I. 54 Chomsky, Noam 3 Christian, Imanuel 29 Chumakina, Marina 1–47, 49–51, 56, 85, 87–8, 92, 96, 132–56, 181, 196, 198–242, 244, 256, 259 Ciabattoni, Eligio 175 Čikobava, Arnold 297 Cinque, Guglielmo 3, 145, 182 Clem, Emily 50 Comrie, Bernard 34, 44, 66–7, 76, 84, 123, 262, 268 Coon, Jessica 35 Corbett, Greville G. 1–5, 7, 14, 17, 21–2, 31, 35, 49, 51, 92, 96, 144, 156, 160, 165, 188, 246, 249 Creissels, Denis 19, 34 Croft, William 65 Cxadaia, Taia 286 D’A lessandro, Roberta 156, 162, 172, 176–7, 179, 181–2, 188 Dalrymple, Mary 68 Danelia, Korneli 268 Daniel, Michael A. 59 Danon, Gabi 3 De Cesare, Anna-Maria 186 de Hoop, Helen 63 Dench, Alan 301 de Swart, Peter 63–4 Diercks, Michael 6, 17 Dirr, Adolf M. 54 Dixon, R. M. W. 69, 71 Dobrushina, Nina 53 Dryer, Matthew S. 21 Eaton, Helen 20 Egan Nungarrayi, Jeannie 301 Egidi, Francesco 156 Evans, Nicholas 243 Fábregas, Antonio 16, 182 Falk, Yehuda N. 68–9, 71, 76–7 Fedden, Sebastian 56, 203, 246 Fennig, Charles D. 53 Ferrari-Bridgers, Franca 162 Foley, Steven 19

AUTHOR INDE X Foley, William A. 65 Forker, Diana 35, 44, 65–7, 76, 84, 205–6, 218, 220–1, 241 Forner, Werner 174 Franco, Ludovico 2, 4, 21 Gagliardi, Annie 35, 216, 220, 223–4, 226 Gamq’reliʒe, Tamaz 267 Ganenkov, Dmitry 35, 38, 65, 99, 106–7 Garcı´a, Fray Bartholomé 49 Gaspari, Gianluigi 168 Gersamia, Rusudan 268, 270, 286 Goncalves, Michael 35, 216, 220, 223–4, 226 Gudava, T’ogo 267, 288 Gu¨ldemann, Tom 6 Gusev, Valentin 153 Haegeman, Liliane 6–7 Hagège, Claude 9 Haiman, John 240 Hale, Kenneth L. 255, 301 Harder, Andreas 46, 156, 168, 170, 175–6, 181–2, 187–8, 192, 195 Harizanov, Boris 199 Harris, Alice 265, 270–1, 282–3, 292 Hartmann, Katharina 2 Haspelmath, Martin 2, 65–6, 68, 123 Haug, Dag T. T. 2, 4 Hermon, Gabriella 64 Hewitt, B. George 9 Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 244, 250–1, 253, 255–6, 258, 301 Hiraiwa, Ken 1 Hoogenraad, Robert 301 Hook, Peter 16, 29–30 Huddleston, Rodney 8 Hummel, Martin 16, 182 Ibragimov, Garun X. 85, 91 Idiatov, Dmitry 6–7, 43 Idone, Alice 156–7 Jaberg, Karl 168 Jangala, Marlurrku Paddy Patrick 301 Janhunen, Juha 141 Jones, Samantha 176 Jordanoska, Isabella 156, 182 Joshi, Dayashankar 16, 29–30 Jud, Jakob 168 K’acˇ’arava, Giorgi 283–5 Karimova, Raisat Š. 201 K’art’ozia, Guram 286 Kathol, Andreas 6

325

Kawasha, Boniface 6–7 Kaye, Steven 1–47, 48–90, 99, 107, 132, 146, 156, 158, 181, 188, 196, 198, 244, 262 Kazenin, Konstantin I. 220, 222, 229, 241 Kaǯaia, Otar 287–8, 290 Keenan, Edward L. 30, 64, 68 Khalilov, Madzˇid Š. 67, 205 Khalilova, Zaira 40, 44, 66–7, 76, 84, 123, 199–201, 205–7, 211–12, 233 Khanina, Olesya 132, 134–42 Kibort, Anna 96 Kibrik, Aleksandr E. 19, 50, 65, 85 Killian, Don 209 Kim, Aleksandra 153 Kiss, Tibor 2, 4 K’iziria, Ant’on 286–7, 298 Klimov, Georgij 269 Kodzasov, Sandro V. 50 Komen, Erwin R. 96 Koopman, Hilda 22 Koryakov, Yuri B. 38, 93 Kulikov, Leonid 64 K’vacˇ’aʒe, Leo 298 Lakshmi Bai, B. 64 Lambertelli, Giulio 158 Lander, Yury A. 38–40, 45, 93, 99, 101, 104, 126 Laughren, Mary 301 Lechner, Winfried 215 Ledgeway, Adam 3, 16, 28, 43, 45, 132, 156, 172, 174, 176–7, 179, 181–4, 188 Lehmann, Christian 5, 21 Libert, Alan R. 9 Lindstro¨m, Eva 249 Lomia, Maia 268, 270, 286 Loporcaro, Michele 46, 156–7, 160–1, 165, 167–9, 175–6, 181–2, 188 Lowe, John 68 Lu¨dtke, Helmut 156, 168, 170 Lyutikova, Ekaterina A. 17–8, 35, 40, 44, 46, 56, 198–242 Magomedova, Patimat A. 11, 54, 82 Magomedova, Patimat T. 210 Maiden, Martin 167 Maling, Joan 63–4 Mancini, Anna Maria 156, 181 Marchis Moreno, Mihaela 2, 4, 21 Matasovi´c, Ranko 4–6, 21, 49, 51, 85 Mchombo, Sam A. 2 Meghani, Jhaverchand 29 Merchant, Jason 215 Michael, Lev 7 Molochieva, Zarina 96

326

AUTHOR INDE X

Moore, John 64 Moravcsik, Edith A. 249 Mosel, Ulrike 15, 49 Mu¨ller, Gereon 2, 4 Mursell, Johannes 2 Mycock, Louise 68 Næss, Åshild 57, 65, 67 Narrog, Heiko 65 Nash, David 301 Nedjalkov, Vladimir P. 19–20 Neeleman, Ad 3–4, 21, 30–1, 43 Nevins, Andrew 1 Nichols, Johanna 2, 66, 96 Nikitina, Tatiana 2, 4 Nikolaeva, Irina 1, 3–4, 7, 13, 16, 30–3, 44, 133, 146, 148, 150–2 Norris, Mark 3, 30 Olovjannikova, Irina P. 50 Olsson, Bruno 10, 22, 42, 46–7, 243–63 Onishi, Masayuki 63, 65 Otaina, Galina A. 19–20 Paciaroni, Tania 8–9, 12–13, 16, 28, 42, 44–6, 49, 56, 62, 156–97 Pană Dindelegan, Gabriela 86 Panfilov, Vladimir Z. 20 Parrino, Flavio 46, 156, 168, 188 Pat-El, Na’ama 64 Pellegrini, Giovan Battista 162, 168 Pérez-Jiménez, Isabel 16, 182 Perlmutter, David M. 64 Pescarini, Diego 156–7 Plank, Frans 249 Plaster, Keith 199 Polinsky, Maria 1, 3–4, 14, 16, 18, 35, 37, 44, 50–1, 77, 85, 87–8, 103, 123, 145, 198–9, 206, 216, 220, 223–4, 226 Poole, Ethan 68 Potsdam, Eric 1, 37, 103, 123 Preminger, Omer 3–4, 213, 235 Pullum, Geoffrey K. 8 Pustet, Regina 249

Rizzi, Luigi 6 Roberts, Ian 176 Rochant, Neige 53, 60, 80 Rohlfs, Gerhard 179, 182 Romagnoli, Serena 156–7 Rossi, Alfredo 158, 165, 195 Rostovtsev-Popiel, Alexander 17–8, 43, 47, 264–305 Rott, Julian A. 65 Rudnev, Pavel 50, 198, 216 Sag, Ivan 4 Saidov, Magomedsajid Dzˇ. 91 Sakel, Jeanette 256–7 Salimov, Xangerej S. 4, 44, 53, 72–3, 82 Salvi, Giampaolo 180 Samedov, Dzˇalil S. 50 Schultze-Berndt, Eva 244, 250–1, 253, 255–6, 258, 301 Sells, Peter 21 Serzˇant, Ilja A. 64 Shluinsky, Andrey 132, 134–42, 146 Siegl, Florian 134–5, 140–1, 144 Siewierska, Anna 2, 10 Sigurðsson, Halldór Á. 225 Silvestri, Giuseppina 16, 182 Simons, Gary F. 53 Simpson, Jane 301–2 Smith, Peter W. 2 Sorokina, Irina P. 134, 140–1 Souag, Lameen 10, 27–8, 42 Staferova, Daria 53 Starke, Michal 50 Steele, Susan 1 Steeman, Sander 20 Stolper, Matthew W. 15 Subbarao, Karumuri V. 63 Sulejmanov, Jakub G. 54 Sulger, Sebastian 17, 132 Sumbatova, Nina 17, 34, 38–40, 44–5, 85, 91–131, 188, 241 Suter, Edgar 263 Svenonius, Peter 8, 42 Szeverényi, Sándor 153

Q’ipšiʒe, Ioseb 268, 286–7 Radkevich, Nina 14, 35, 44, 50–1, 85, 87–8, 198, 216, 220, 223–4, 226 Rahman, Mutee U. 17, 132 Rákosi, Gyo¨rgy 62 Reeve, Matthew 2, 4, 21 Rezac, Milan 1 Ritchie, Sandy 1, 7

Tandilava, Ali 297 Terešcˇenko, Natal’ja M. 134 Terrill, Angela 23–4, 41 Testelets, Yakov G. 49, 199–201, 210–11, 222, 225 Thornton, Anna M. 160 Þráinsson, Ho¨skuldur 63–4 Tolskaya, Maria 3

AUTHOR INDE X Troike, Rudolph C. 8, 48–9, 86 Tuite, Kevin 271 Uridia, Otar 284 Usher, Timothy 263 Valenzuela, Pilar M. 18, 301 Valera, Salvador 16 van den Berg, Helma 11, 66, 99, 205–6 van der Meer, Geart 7 van Koppen, Marjo 4, 6–8, 25, 42–3 Van Valin, Jr., Robert D. 65 Verhees, Samira 80–2 Vigolo, Maria Teresa 168, 175 Volkova, Sofja 156, 182 Wagner-Nagy, Beáta 146, 153

Wechsler, Stephen 3–4 Weise, Oskar 8 Weiß, Helmut 8 Winchester, Lindley 3 Wurmbrand, Susi 236 Xubua, Mak’ar 268–9, 280, 283–5, 287–8 Yadava, Yogendra P. 1, 7 Zaenen, Annie 63–4 Zakharko, Taras 156–7 Zanini, Chiara 156–7 Zeijlstra, Hedde 4 Zeman, Daniel 301 Zwart, Jan-Wouter 7 Žγent’i, Sergi 297

327

Language Index The ISO 639-3 code is given where available. Abkhaz [abk] 9 Abruzzese 158, 162, 176–8, 182 Amahuaca [amc] 50 Andi [ani] 4, 11–15, 33, 44–5, 48–90 Aqusha Dargwa 38–9, 99, 106 Archi [aqc] 3, 14, 16, 19, 26–7, 30–1, 35–7, 43, 49–52, 85, 87–8, 91–2, 96, 216, 220, 244, 256, 259 Avar [ava] 4, 10, 26, 33, 50, 53, 91, 199, 203, 210–11, 220 Bagwalal [kva] 19, 59, 229 Bavarian [bar] 8 Belhare [byw] 64 Bezhta [kap] 66–7, 205, 208, 220 Chechen [che] 96, 220 Coahuilteco [xcw] 8, 12, 48–9, 62, 85–6 Coastal Marind [mrz] 9, 10, 22, 42, 46–7, 243–63 Cosentino 3, 16, 28, 30, 43 Diyari [dif ] 301 Elamite [elx] 14–15 English [eng] 6, 8, 63, 71–3, 76–7, 182, 254, 290 Finnish [fin] 141, 249 Forest Enets [enf ] 17, 31, 44–5, 132–55 Genoese 174 Georgian [kat] 264, 266–8, 278, 282, 284, 291–3, 296–300, 304 German [deu] 236–7 Godoberi [gdo] 66, 123, 220 Gujarati [guj] 16, 29–31, 43 Hinuq [gin] 205–6, 208, 220 Hungarian [hun] 62 Hunzib [huz] 205–6, 208 Icari Dargwa 39–40, 220 Icelandic [isl] 63–5, 68 Imbabura Quechua [qvi] 64, 66, 68, 77

Ingush [inh] 1–2, 66, 96, 220 Irish [gle] 42 Italian [ita] 28, 158–60, 162–3, 168, 173, 177, 179–80, 187, 189 Jula of Samatiguila [dyu] 7 Khwarshi [khv] 17–18, 40–1, 46, 56, 123, 198–242 K’iche [quc] 2 Kinande [nnb] 6 Kuot [kto] 249 Kwarandzyey [kcy] 10, 27–8, 42 Lak [lbe] 49, 216, 220, 223–4 Lakota [lkt] 249 Latin [lat] 168 Lavukaleve [lvk] 9, 23–4, 41–2, 249 Laz [lzz] 292–3, 296–7, 300 Lezgian [lez] 6, 65–6, 68, 77 Lubukusu [bxk] 17 Martuthunira [vma] 301 Megrelian [xmf ] 17, 43, 47, 264–305 Mosetén [cas] 256–7 Nanti [cox] 7 Nepali [npi] 64 Nganasan [nio] 133, 153–4 Nivkh [niv] 19–21 Northern Akhwakh [akv] 19, 34 Proto-Samoyed 141 Proto-Uralic 140 Punjabi [pan] 249 Ripano 8, 9, 12–13, 16, 28, 43–6, 49, 56, 62, 156–97 Romanian [ron] 86, 160 Russian [rus] 53, 64, 134, 199, 241, 267, 278 Sandawe [sad] 20–1, 43 Selkup [sel] 133, 153 Shipibo-Konibo [shp] 301 Standard Dargwa [dar] 10–11, 66, 99 Svan [sva] 300

L ANGUAGE INDE X Tamil [tam] 64 Tanti Dargwa 17, 34, 38–40, 45, 91–131, 241 Teop [tio] 15, 49–50 Tindi [tin] 210–11 Tsakhur [tkr] 12, 18–19, 49, 85–7, 91, 241 Tsez [ddo] 18, 37–9, 103, 123, 199, 203, 205–6, 208, 216, 220, 223–6 Tundra Enets [enh] 31, 45, 132–55 Tundra Nenets [yrk] 13, 16–17, 31–3, 44–5, 133, 148, 150–2

Udihe [ude] 3–4, 9 Urdu [urd] 16–7, 33 Walman [van] 21 Warlpiri [wbp] 18, 255–6, 301–3 Welsh [cym] 4, 6, 9, 24–5, 33, 42 West Flemish [vls] 7–8 West Frisian [fry] 7 Yaqay [jaq] 243, 249, 257, 262

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Subject Index absolutive case 10–14, 35–41, 97–9, 103–7, 111–13, 116–30, 198–201, 216–20, 229–32, 235, 238, 256 accusative case 63–4, 86 adjuncts 5, 10–13, 42, 47, 62, 109–10, 157, 185, 188, 192–5, 202, 229, 244, 249–63, 268 see also depictive adjuncts adposition agreement 3–4, 8–11, 15, 23–8, 33, 40–3, 45–7, 56, 61, 91, 96–7, 109, 135, 141, 153, 156, 161, 167–8, 179–81, 196, 198, 202–6, 243–4, 246, 248–50, 252–4, 256–9, 261–3 adverb agreement 15–18, 28–33, 36, 43–4, 56, 96, 109–10, 139–54, 156–7, 163–4, 178, 182–6, 200, 203–18, 226, 230–2, 237, 256–7, 264–6, 277, 280–96, 300–5 adverbial case 268, 278–9, 293–4, 297, 299 affective case 4–5, 11–13, 44, 52, 56, 59–62, 66–71, 75–6, 78–80, 82, 84, 86–9 affective construction 4, 12–13, 44, 52–3, 59–62, 66–8, 70–2, 75–6, 78–9, 82–5, 89, 105–6, 128, 220, 225, 232, 273, 283 Agree 50–1, 87 agreement alternation see flexible agreement, biabsolutive construction, long-distance agreement, backward control agreement controller 4–5, 7–11, 13, 16–17, 19–47 agreement domain 1–2, 4–5, 10, 17, 21–44, 46, 56, 89, 104–6, 144, 157, 169–70, 188, 192, 195–7, 214, 236, 245 agreement target 1–10, 14, 16, 19, 22–7, 33–6, 41–7 allocutive agreement 1, 210 anaphoric agreement 2, 9, 24 Area Mediana 165 backward control 37–41, 45, 100, 104–7, 114–22, 126, 128–30 biabsolutive construction 35–7, 46, 106–7, 217–31 case agreement 3, 17–18, 43, 47, 264–6, 277, 280–96, 300–5 case-shift 47, 264–305 c-command 5, 113 clause-external agreement 19, 23, 34

clause-level agreement 5, 25–30, 34–41, 89 clause-level concord 30–4 complementizer agreement 4, 6–8, 24–5, 42–3, 156, 161, 188 concord 3, 17–18, 22, 26, 30–4, 43–4, 46, 48–9, 151–2, 242 conditional clause 115, 121–2, 128, 211, 230, 240 conjoined noun phrases 29, 173, 176, 207 conjunction agreement 7–8, 20–1, 43, 46 control 37–41, 44, 64–6, 68–9, 76–9, 98–100, 103–7, 110–30, 223–5 see also backward control coordinator agreement 20–1 CopP 45, 101–4, 112–22, 125 dative case 14, 27, 49, 50, 58, 63, 65–6, 72, 75, 85, 87, 92, 94, 103–8, 135–6, 140, 200, 220, 224–5, 232, 240, 265, 268, 272–3, 275, 281–3, 285–8, 291–2, 294–6 default agreement 16, 29–30, 40–2, 98, 123–4, 128, 164–5, 170, 176–8, 180, 183–7, 206–7, 213–14, 232, 235–9, 246, 251, 258–60 depictive adjuncts 47, 244, 250–61, 298–9 discourse marker agreement 18 domain of association 186 ergative case 14, 37–9, 45, 50, 74, 94, 255, 271–2, 284, 288, 294, 301–2 essive adverbials 17, 39–40, 45, 91–3, 98–9, 107–31 euphonic vowel 269, 283, 291 experiencer 12–14, 44–5, 52–3, 60–72, 75–6, 78–80, 82, 84, 87, 89, 94, 103, 105, 118, 128, 189–91, 200, 202, 220, 232, 240, 273, 275, 281, 283–5, 289–92 extended intransitive 57, 62, 66, 70 external agreement 5, 10, 23, 34, 42, 46, 153, 158, 198–242, 244, 249, 257, 262 feature spreading 3, 15, 30 flexible agreement 114–5, 118, 121–2, 128 flexible control 99, 117, 122, 125 functional head phrase 234–5, 238–9

SUBJECT INDE X genitive case 50, 58, 63, 106, 109, 200, 212, 224, 234, 268, 297 Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) 25, 92 head-modifier agreement 3, 56, 58, 92, 99, 134–5, 169, 175, 202, 247, 249, 261–2, 286–7 imperative clause 44, 69–72, 115–16, 152, 182–3, 193, 207 infixal agreement 36, 46, 196, 208–11 inverted verb 47, 265–6, 270–4, 277, 280–96, 303–4 left-dislocation 127, 174 Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) 68, 92 linear adjacency 25–6, 42–3 local agreement 5, 43, 232–5, 238 locative agreement 10–13, 39–40, 92, 96, 107–14, 182, 255–8, 262 long-distance agreement (LDA) 93, 98, 122–4, 212, 231–9, 242 Minimalism 92 negation 230, 232 negative concord 3 nominative case 63, 136, 144, 264, 268, 270–2, 275–6, 283–6, 291, 297–300, 303–4 non-canonical subject 52, 63–7, 70–1, 75–6, 78–80, 82–4, 89, 202, 220–1, 225, 232 noun agreement 4–5, 10–13, 39–40, 44–6, 48–9, 52, 59–62, 76, 84–9, 92, 96, 98, 108–14, 116–21, 127, 129–30, 135–7, 156–7, 161–2, 188–96 particle agreement 18–19, 85–6, 91 phi-feature 1, 43 phrase-level agreement 23–5, 179

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possessor agreement 1, 7, 24–5, 106–7, 135–7, 142–5, 249 postposition agreement 4, 9–11, 23–4, 26–7, 33, 40–1, 45–6, 56, 61, 91, 96–7, 109, 135, 141, 153, 198, 202–6, 243–4, 246, 248–50, 252–4, 256–9, 261–3 predicative noun 13, 134–5, 189–91, 195 preposition agreement 4, 8–10, 15, 24–8, 33, 42, 47, 156, 161, 167–8, 179–80, 196 pronoun agreement 3, 9, 14–15, 49–51, 70–1, 85, 88, 92, 96–7, 99, 107, 164, 216 ‘quirky’ subject 63, 89 see also non-canonical subject reduced inflection 164, 166, 168, 171–2 reflexive construction 72–6, 183 relative clause 5, 12, 118–21, 151, 169, 187, 189–90, 212–13, 233, 253 restructuring 223, 236 right-dislocation 113, 129, 174 scope 19, 33, 90, 104, 106, 113–14, 129–30, 152, 233, 235, 268–9 secondary predicate 22, 47, 244–5, 250–61, 263, 298–9 separate agreement 216, 238 sequence-of-tense effects 3 sporadic agreement 56, 96–7, 142, 150, 203–4, 246 stimulus 12, 14, 44, 52, 60–2, 65, 70–1, 82, 84, 200, 275, 281, 284, 290–1 subjecthood diagnostics 12, 44–5, 52–3, 61–84, 89 successive agreement 216–17, 238–9 topic 18, 41, 66, 68, 138, 144–5, 152, 172, 174, 177, 224, 239–41, 253, 256, 298, 301 valuation 235 wh-word 156, 161, 169, 174, 178, 187, 196, 267