The Mehweb language
Essays on phonology, morphology and syntax
Michael Daniel, Nina Dobrushina, Dmitry Ganenkov (editors)
Cite as
.
2019.
The Mehweb language
: Essays on phonology, morphology and syntax.
(
1).
Berlin:
Language Science Press.
@book{1,
editor = {Daniel, Michael and Dobrushina, Nina and Ganenkov, Dmitry },
title = {The Mehweb language: Essays on phonology, morphology and syntax},
year = {2019},
series = {},
number = {1},
address = {Berlin},
publisher = {Language Science Press}
}
Proofreaders
- Andreas Hölzl
- Ahmet Bilal Özdemir
- Eva Schultze-Berndt
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- Jeroen van de Weijer
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- Havenol M. Schrenk
About this book
This book is an investigation into the grammar of Mehweb (Dargwa, East Caucasian also known as Nakh-Daghestanian) based on several years of team fieldwork. Mehweb is spoken in one village community in Daghestan, Russia, with a population of some 800 people, In many ways, Mehweb is a typical East Caucasian language: it has a rich inventory of consonants; an extensive system of spatial forms in nouns and converbs and volitional forms in verbs; pervasive gender-number agreement; and ergative alignment in case marking and in gender agreement. It is also a typical language of the Dargwa branch, with symmetrical verb inflection in the imperfective and perfective paradigm and extensive use of spatial encoding for experiencers. Although Mehweb is clearly close to the northern varieties of Dargwa, it has been long isolated from the main body of Dargwa varieties by speakers of Avar and Lak. As a result of both independent internal evolution and contact with its neighbours, Mehweb developed some deviant properties, including accusatively aligned egophoric agreement, a split in the feminine class, and the typologically rare grammatical categories of verificative and apprehensive. But most importantly, Mehweb is where our friends live.
About Michael Daniel
Michael Daniel is a professor at School of Linguistics and a researcher at the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, HSE (Moscow). He mostly worked on description and documentation of East Caucasian languages and on typology of nominal categories and morphosyntax and participated in various international typological projects such as WALS. Another domain of his interests is sociolinguistics of dialects and minority languages.
About Nina Dobrushina
Nina Dobrushina is a researcher at the Linguistic Convergence Laboratory and a professor at School of Linguistics, HSE (Moscow). Her field experience is mostly with East Caucasian, including fine-grained analysis of modal categories in languages like Bagvalal, Cahur, Aghul, Mehweb, Rutul. She took part in international typological projects such as WALS. Another domain of her interests is sociolinguistics of dialects and minority languages, with a special focus on traditional multilingualism in small language communities.
About Dmitry Ganenkov
Dmitry Ganenkov is a researcher at the University of Bamberg, Institute of Linguistics (Moscow) and the Laboratory of the Languages of the Caucasus at HSE (Moscow). His language expertise includes various East Caucasian languages of the Lezgic and Dargwa branches, especially Udi, Aghul and Chirag. He has vast experience in language documentation, the typology of expressing topological relations in East Caucasian and formal syntactic analysis of the data of East Caucasian, especially agreement and ergativity.
Chapters
The language and people of Mehweb
The Mehweb assertive copula gwa
a sketch of a portrait
Relative clause and resumptive pronouns in Mehweb
The self-pronoun in Mehweb
General converbs in Mehweb
Specialized converbs in Mehweb
Case and agreement in Mehweb
Periphrastic causative constructions in Mehweb
Nominal morphology of Mehweb
