Language Typology and Universals · 2008 · 161 citations · 0 references
Language StudiesLinguisticsComparative LinguisticsMorphologySyntaxAgreement MorphologyAgreement TypologyClause TypologyMorphological FeaturesMorphosyntactic AnalysisPerson AgreementContrastInflectional Morphology VariationMorphosyntactic FeaturesPerson AlternationsPerson Marking Typology
Abstract In the Nakh-Daghestanian language family, person agreement is considered a recent innovation of a few isolated languages. Person variations in Akhvakh verb morphology are limited to the perfective positive and follow a typologically rare pattern, in which the same couple of verbal endings encodes a 1st person vs. 2nd/3rd person contrast in declarative clauses, and a 2nd person vs. 1st/3rd person contrast in questions. A comparison of the verb forms concerned by this distinction with other Akhvakh verb forms not involved in this mechanism suggests that, in Akhvakh, the emergence of this atypical pattern resulted from the reanalysis of a TAM distinction.