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Part of
Language Contact in the Territory of the Former Soviet Union
Edited by Diana Forker and Lenore A. Grenoble
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 50] 2021
► pp. 15–34

Nominal borrowings in Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Daghestanian, Georgia) and their gender assignment

| Goethe University Frankfurt

In this article, the adaptation of borrowed nouns into Tsova-Tush, an endangered Nakh language spoken in Georgia, is described in terms of phonology, morphology and in particular gender assignment. It is shown that Tsova-Tush features a large number of borrowed nouns (44% of a representative wordlist, similar to percentages for other Caucasian languages in Haspelmath & Tadmor (2009)), the vast majority being from Georgian origin. Furthermore, it is shown that borrowed nouns follow the same complex set of semantic and phonological tendencies when it comes to assigning their gender as native nouns do, which in line with Corbett (1991). Finally, it is observed that one of the genders had stopped being productive.

Keywords: Tsova-Tush, Georgia, gender, language contact
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Lexical borrowing
    • 2.1Basics
    • 2.2Integration
    • 2.3Semantic domains and parts of speech
    • 2.4Russian
  • 3.Gender system
    • 3.1Basics
    • 3.2Gender assignment in Tsova-Tush
    • 3.3Inquorate genders
  • 4.Gender of borrowed nouns
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.50.01wic
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Cited by (1)

Cited by 1 other publications

Bellamy, Kate & Jesse Wichers Schreur
2022. When semantics and phonology collide: Gender assignment in mixed Tsova-Tush–Georgian nominal constructions. International Journal of Bilingualism 26:3 ► pp. 257 ff. DOI logo

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