We discuss the concept of "pronominal series" and some principles that can be used for distinguishing pronominal series from similar phenomena. These principles are further applied to demonstratives in West Circassian (a polysynthetic language of the West Caucasian family) as represented in a large corpus including texts of various genres. We show that West Circassian displays at least eleven series of demonstratives but also make additional observations on how the principles defining pronominal series can be used in complex cases.

This chapter describes applicative constructions in the polysynthetic Northwest Caucasian languages, which are typologically unusual in several respects. First, these languages possess an extraordinarily rich system of applicatives whose semantic functions range from benefactive, comitative and malefactive to fairly specialized spatial meanings. Second, the Northwest Caucasian applicatives invariably introduce indirect objects, thus almost never affecting the ergative-absolutive alignment of core arguments and serving as important and often only means of integrating peripheral participants into clausal structure. We describe the morphology, syntax and semantics of applicatives, as well as a range of non-trivial phenomena such as the semantically empoverished and morphosyntactically special "dative" applicative and the uses of applicatives in agent demotion and clause combining.

This paper considers dislocated topics in living West Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe) languages, i.e. in West Circassian, Kabardian, Abkhaz, and Abaza. Despite the fact that previous studies on morphosyntactic properties of the representatives of this language family denied the existence of dedicated topic constructions in any of them, the results of the present study allow us to assert that there are at least two grammaticalized patterns that introduce topics without integrating them into the subsequent related clause. The first construction containing simple dislocated topics either leaves them unmarked or (in West Circassian and Kabardian) marks them with the absolutive case. The second construction marks the dislocated topic or a combination of the topic with a copula with a conditional marker. These two strategies are typologically widespread and are attested in other - indigenous Caucasian and Turkic - languages of the area. However, even though both patterns under consideration can be described as left dislocation, they differ in terms of their distribution. In particular, only the construction marking the topic with a conditional suffix allows indefinite and quantified topics (which are in general unexpected in such constructions). Besides, we discuss specific constructions in which the topic expression defines the situation mentioned further (also referred to as "predicate clefts" and "predicate topicalization" in the literature). While in most cases described so far this phenomenon involves the obligatory repetition of the predicate (or its replacement with a proform in the clause), at least West Circassian does not show any requirement of this kind. The data include both examples retrieved from corpora (for West Circassian, Kabardian and and obtained elicitation.

This chapter describes the expression of number in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language of the Northwest Caucasian family. In West Circassian, nouns contrast between non-specific deficient forms undefined for number, unmarked forms which usually - but not always - express the singular meaning, and forms which explicitly mark plurality (either by a simple plural affix or by a cumulative case-number suffix). Notably, the plural morphology attaches both to count nouns and to mass nouns, sometimes triggering various semantic shifts. The contexts where a form without a plural marker may have plural denotation include not only nominals with non-specific reference but also possessives and non-locutor definite pronominal phrases. Number can also be expressed by a dedicated associative plural suffix (whose use is however severely restricted) and by indexing outside the noun whose use has a predominantly semantic basis. The language further displays some minor constructions, such as the honorific use of indexing, a dyadic construction based on reciprocal morphology, and a pattern close to inclusory constructions.

Le tcherkesse occidental, une langue polysynthétique appartenant à la famille des langues ouest-caucasiennes, a un système d’impératifs et optatifs très ramifié, qui comprend au moins un Impératif Fort, un Impératif Faible, un Optatif Fort, un Optatif Faible et, en plus, une stratégie indirecte d’expression d’un impérative causatif, basée sur l’Impératif Fort. Leur distribution dépend de divers facteurs tels que le contrôle du locuteur sur la situation, la performativité, la personne en position de topique, et le type de prédicat. Par ailleurs, certaines formes, à l’exclusion des autres, peuvent se combiner avec les temps morphologiques. Le système dans son intégralité peut être décrit en référence à l’Impératif Prototypique universel, qui est représenté par un faisceau de propriétés liées aux paramètres mentionnés ci-dessus, et il reflète la grammaticalisation d’une certaine fonction discursive. L’impératif proprement dit (Impératif Fort) est utilisé dans la plupart des contextes prototypiques, tandis que les autres catégories expriment différentes déviations par rapport à ce prototype.

This paper focuses on the noun phrase in Tanti Dargwa (East Caucasian) and presents evidence for the distinction between modifiers proper (adjectival phrases, participial relative clauses and non-genitive adnominal NPs) and determiner-like elements (demonstratives, indefinite pronouns, numerals and most quantity expressions) in this language. Crucially, this dichotomy, which presumably reflects the distinction between the determinative and descriptive components in the NP, is realized in Tanti Dargwa mostly morphologically – in the distribution of “attributive markers” and in the expression of number. Syntactically, in the most neutral constructions the order of elements other than the head is virtually free and does not display any scope-related effects, while the head occupies the final position. In addition, Tanti Dargwa shows marginal constructions (a right-periphery construction locating a modifier after the head and a construction showing quasi-incorporation of a modifier into the noun) which are restricted to modifiers. Tanti Dargwa data support the idea that the description/determination distinction is gradual rather than discrete, as there are elements that show behavior intermediate between modifiers proper and determiner-like elements: possessor NPs, contrastive modifiers and the expressions like ‘other’.

The paper describes expressions with the meaning ‘other’ in East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) languages. It is shown that four main strategies can be distinguished: i) the ‘one’-based strategy: ‘other’ includes the numeral ‘one’; ii) the demonstrative-based strategy: ‘other’ includes a demonstrative pronoun; iii) the mixed demonstrative-based + ‘one’- based strategy: ‘other’ includes both a demonstrative and the numeral ‘one’; and iv) the lexical strategy: ‘other’ is a dedicated adjective (pronoun), not necessarily derived from any other clearly discernable source.

This chapter describes the major features of the Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adyghe) language family, comprising Abkhaz, Abaza, West Circassian (Adyghe), East Circassian (Kabardian), and the now extinct Ubykh. Starting with the sociolinguistic setting of the Northwest Caucasian varieties and the history of linguistic research on them, the discussion then proceeds to a description of the most important features of their phonology, morphology, and syntax, concluding with a brief discussion of a number of typologically outstanding features. The chapter, based both on published sources and the authors’ fieldwork data, covers issues such as exuberant consonantism, lexical category underspecification, polysynthetic morphology, expression of spatial meanings in the verb, rich systems of tense, aspect and mood categories, finite and non-finite verbal forms, non-trivial noun phrase syntax, relativization, and complexities of clause-combining. Besides describing the features common for all the languages of the family, we focus on important points of variation among the Northwest Caucasian languages and their dialects, aiming at an adequate representation of the wealth of phenomena they present and highlighting the challenges they offer for typology and linguistic theory.

Udi (East Caucasian) possesses several means of expressing the meaning “other”, namely (i) the combination of a (usually distal) demonstrative with a numeral (usually “one”), arguably calqued from Azerbaijani, (ii) the expression originating from a combination of a demonstrative with the noun “arm, side”, and (iii) borrowed adjectives. It is shown that the morphological properties of some of these expressions suggest a kind of grammaticalization. The semantic differences between the expressions mostly fit into the contrast between the types of “other” expressions proposed by Cinque (2015), but also display additional remarkable contrasts.

Abstract The five languages of the Northwest Caucasian family (also known as West Caucasian or Abkhaz-Adyghe), namely West Circassian, Kabardian, Ubykh, Abkhaz, and Abaza, are remarkable for their high degree of polysynthesis. This manifests itself in complex words that bear a lot of information on arguments and the characteristics of a situation, and which presumably can be constructed in the course of speech. Content words usually consist of several morphological zones within which certain permutations of morphemes are possible. Both prefixes and suffixes occur, with some morphemes being capable of appearing either as a prefix or a suffix, depending on the form. The predicate shows ergative-based cross-reference of core arguments and indirect objects introduced by applicatives, extensive use of the causative (including double causativization), highly developed means of expressing locational semantics within the predicate, and intricate tense-modality-aspect and polarity systems. Although classical noun-to-verb incorporation does not occur, there are constructions akin to incorporation, especially in the nominal domain. Nouns constitute a subclass of a broad class of predicates (both morphologically and syntactically) and hence may take the basic predicate morphology. At the same time, they form word-like nominal complexes with their attributes, and show specific head-marking possessive morphology (in West Circassian even distinguishing alienable and inalienable possession). Definiteness/specificity is regularly expressed either by articles (in Abkhaz, Abaza and Ubykh) or by the presence/absence of core case marking (in West Circassian and Kabardian). Morphemes demonstrate features that are not typical of morphemes in Standard Average European languages, including a high degree of autonomy reflected in affix order variation, widespread morphological recursion, occasional reduplication and even the ability to attach to complex syntactic constituents.

Kabardian (Northwest Caucasian) displays two associative plural constructions. The first pattern exploits the suffix which is also used for the expression of additive plural: it is added to proper names and normally provides a reference to the family of the focal referent. Within the second pattern, a specific associative plural marker follows a syntactically autonomous nominal. The latter pattern possesses several specific properties: the associative plural marker governs the case of the focal nominal, which can be represented even by inanimate, non-specific and coordinate NPs. To describe the Kabardian associative plural system, we would suggest using not only a simplified version of Animacy Hierarchy (as is often done in typological literature) but involving several other hierarchies including those of definiteness/referentiality, number individuation, and morphosyntactic autonomy.

East Caucasian relative clause constructions (RCCs) are sometimes viewed as con-structed mainly on the basis of semantic and pragmatic information. In this paper, we consider RCCs in Mehweb and argue that, despite the fact that the interpre-tation of some of them may rely exclusively on semantics, syntactic mechanisms may also come into play in their organization. We present evidence that Mehweb has grammaticalized the resumptive use of reflexive pronouns, which thus can be contrasted with other uses of reflexive pronouns due to the restrictions on animate antecedents observed only in RCCs.

In polysynthetic West Caucasian languages, the morphological verbal complex amounts to a clause with all kinds of participants cross-referenced by affixes. Relativization is performed by introducing a relative affix in the cross-reference slot that corresponds to the relativized participant. However, these languages display several crosslinguistically rare features of relativization. Firstly, while under the view of the verbal complex as a clause this affix appears to be a relative pronoun, it is an unusual relative pronoun because it remains in situ. Secondly, relative affixes may appear several times in the same clause. Thirdly, relative pronouns are not expected to occur in languages with prenominal relative clauses. Fourthly, in the Circassian branch, relative pronouns are identical to reflexive pronouns. These features are explained by considering relative prefixes to be resumptive pronouns. This interpretation finds a parallel in the neighboring East Caucasian languages, where reflexive pronouns also show resumptive usages. Finally, since in some West Caucasian languages the relative affix is a morpheme with a dedicated relative function but still shows properties of a resumptive pronoun, our data suggest that the distinction between relative pronouns and resumptive pronouns may not be as clear as is usually assumed.

Abstract This paper surveys valency-changing operations in West Circassian (Adyghe), a polysynthetic language of the Northwest Caucasian family. This language has an amazing number of means to increase valency, which include various kinds of applicativization and causativization. In this paper we also present processes which may look valency-decreasing and argue that they do not necessarily remove arguments, even though some of them change transitivity. This implies, in particular, the need for distinguishing between valency change and transitivity change.

Adyghe, a polysynthetic language of the West Caucasian family, shows the typological characteristics of ergativity, left-branching word order, and the flexibility of the lexical categories. Its word has a high degree of morphological complexity and consists of five ordered morphological zones, within which the order of affixes can vary, and recursion is possible. The information encoded in the predicate includes the argument structure, causation, and various aspectual and modal characteristics. Many meanings can be expressed, either with a combination of morphemes, or a combination of words, or with both simultaneously. There are structural asymmetries at the clause level and the principle C violations in cross-clausal syntax—the phenomenon that has been recorded also in many polysynthetic languages of America.

The paper presents a description and an analysis of the nominal complex, a peculiar construction which includes a noun and its modifiers, in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language of the Northwest Caucasian family. The nominal complex shows properties of a single word and tends to follow the template proposed for the word in West Circassian. However, its parts may themselves have a complex structure based on a similar template. This is argued to result from a principle that requires these subparts to be interpreted without appealing to a broader morphological context. In addition, the nominal complex may contain complex syntactic constituents as its proper parts. It is shown that the nominal complex in West Circassian is currently undergoing demorphologization and syntacticization.