From construction to suffix: Grammaticalization and areal diffusion of jussives and optatives based on ‘say’ in Daghestan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60923/issn.2785-0943/22030Keywords:
jussive, optative, grammaticalization, reported speech, Nakh-Daghestanian family, diffusionAbstract
In Nakh-Daghestanian languages (Northern Caucasus), one of the most common sources of the jussive (indirect command such as ‘Let him go’) are grammaticalized from reported speech constructions with the imperative of the main verb followed by the imperative of the verb ‘say’: e.g., literally go.imp say.imp. In some languages, the imperative of the verb ‘say’ is reduced to a suffix. Suffixes coming back to the verb ‘say’ can also be found in optatives (forms that express the wish of the speaker, such as ‘May God bless you’). The aim of this paper is to model the process of grammaticalization of reported speech constructions into jussive or optative, exploring the accompanying morphosyntactic restructuring and semantic changes in a dozen of languages of the Nakh-Daghestanian family. The paper also discusses possible scenarios of the diffusion of the forms with the ‘say’-element spanning the whole territory where languages from different branches of the family are spoken.
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