[SynSem] Alexander Letuchiy (Maison des Sciences de l'Homme / SFL visiting scholar)

retour Séminaire Syntaxe et Sémantique

Alexander Letuchiy (Maison des Sciences de l'Homme / SFL visiting scholar)

Abaza masdar(s): differences and similarities (handout)

In this talk, I focus on the types and properties of masdars in Abaza (an Abkhaz-Adyghe language of Russia). A special feature of Abaza is that it has one marker of masdar (the suffix –ra) – however, masdars fall into several types, based on the person marking. Masdars can inherit the argument marking from the verb (the polyperson agreement with A and DO of transitive verbs, as well as S and IO of intransitive verbs), show possessive agreement with the argument of the masdar, take a definiteness marker a- or remain unmarked in the prefixal part.
The existence of these masdar types are very well compatible with the fact that nominalizations, including masdars in Caucasian languages, occupy an intermediate place in the system: on the one hand, they denote a situation and inherit many verbal properties; on the other hand, they get some nominal properties.
The distribution of masdar forms is regulated by several factors, including both syntactic (co reference of arguments of the matrix verb and the masdar) and semantic ones (the semantic type of the matrix verb, for instance, factive with a real complement, such as ‘know’ vs. modal with an non-real complement, such as ‘wish’). Sometimes the argument structure of the matrix verb is reflected in the masdar argument marking, which is reminiscent of control / restructuring phenomena.
The data, considered in the talk, are collected during fieldwork organized by the HSE University in 2018 and 2024, as well as my own fieldwork in 2019.

This talk is part of CauLaGeNet talk series organised by SFL SynSem group and LLING, (CNRS & U. Nantes).