Chapter published in:
Antipassive: Typology, diachrony, and related constructions
Edited by Katarzyna Janic and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich
[Typological Studies in Language 130] 2021
► pp. 515–548

Chapter 16
Antipassives in Nakh-Daghestanian languages

Exploring the margins of a construction

| University of California, Santa Barbara
| Friedrich Schiller University Jena
| Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
| Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
Several Nakh-Daghestanian languages present constructions that are candidate antipassives, in that the construction is intransitive and is (at least sometimes) related to a corresponding transitive construction, with A of the transitive construction appearing as S of the intransitive, and P of the transitive either corresponding to an oblique in the intransitive or being omitted. All Nakh-Daghestanian antipassives are lexically restricted, and their function is typically to shift aspectual value in the direction of durativity, atelicity, iterativity, etc. However, only Dargwa restricts the construction to transitive verbs, while other languages also allow it with intransitive verbs, in which case there is no change in argument structure. We explore the implications of this for the definition of “antipassive” from the perspective of canonical typology.
Keywords: antipassive, Nakh-Daghestanian languages, transitivity, aktionsart, canonical typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Avar-Andic-Tsezic languages
    • 2.1Godoberi
    • 2.2Tsezic
      • 2.2.1Tsezic: Syntactic properties
      • 2.2.2Tsezic: Semantics and pragmatics
    • 2.3Avar
      • 2.3.1Avar: Syntactic properties
      • 2.3.2Avar: Semantics
  • 3.Dargwa languages
    • 3.1Akusha and Sanzhi Dargwa: Syntactic properties
    • 3.2Akusha and Sanzhi Dargwa: Semantics and pragmatics
    • 3.3Antipassives in other Dargwa languages
  • 4.Antipassives and other detransitivizing operations in Nakh-Daghestanian languages
  • 5.The main tenets of the antipassive constructions in Nakh-Daghestanian
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 23 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.130.16com
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