Correlatives in Languages of the Caucasus

This chapter gives an overview of the landscape of correlatives in the languages of the Caucasus, identifying a bifurcation in the typology of correlatives. We show that one group of languages (e.g., Georgian) has correlatives that share certain properties with other relativization strategies available to these languages, such as the use of relative pronouns distinct from interrogative pronouns, while another group of languages (e.g., Lezgian) has correlatives that feature interrogative pronouns. Regarding the latter group of languages, we propose that interrogative pronouns in their correlatives are not syncretic forms that function as relative pronouns but have the same semantic import that they have in wh-questions. We develop an analysis of interrogative-based correlatives that is built on the semantics of wh-questions (cf. Rawlins, 2013), arguing that interrogative-based correlatives can be a subtype of universal concessive constructions also known as unconditionals. Empirically comparing our compositional analysis for interrogative-based correlatives to the analysis of Srivastav (1991) for relativization-based correlatives, we argue that a cross-linguistic typology of correlatives is well grounded.