Suvremena lingvistika, Vol. 36 No. 69, 2010.
Izvorni znanstveni članak
Variation in stem formation in Tsezic languages
Diana Forker
; Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Sažetak
The Tsezic languages are a group of five closely related languages that form one
subbranch within the Nakh–Daghestanian language family. They can be divided into
East Tsezic, comprising Hunzib and Bezhta, and West Tsezic, comprising Khwarshi,
Tsez and Hinuq. All Tsezic languages are spoken on the territory of Daghestan, in
Southern Russia. The Tsezic languages are morphologically ergative. The most frequent
word order is SOV. Tsezic nouns can be marked for number and case. As in other
Daghestanian languages, the case formation itself is rather straightforward and regular.
The main difficulty in the nominal morphology of the Tsezic languages is the formation
of the oblique stem from the base stem. In this paper two main points are made: first,
a detailed description of the stem formation mechanisms is given. Second, it is shown
that gender affixes are not an important source of oblique and/or plural formatives
presented. In the conclusion it is stressed that the Daghestanian languages including
the five Tsezic languages treated in this paper have a cross–linguistically unusual
system of stem formation that is, however, typical for these Daghestanian languages.
Outside the Caucasus only South Dravidian languages seem to have a similar system,
but to a much lesser extent. The Tsezic stem formation system is highly complex with
its ten patterns of stem formation. It has also shown that there are problems with all
proposed diachronic analyses and some proposed synchronic ones. The stem formation
of Tsezic system originated in Proto–Daghestanian and Proto–Nakh–Daghestanian, but
unfortunately there are no widely accepted reconstructions of it, so the topic deserves
further research.
Ključne riječi
word formation; stem formation; Tsezic languages; Didoian lanugages; Dagestanian languages
Hrčak ID:
55663
URI
Datum izdavanja:
13.7.2010.
Posjeta: 1.351 *