Causative verb alternation in Christian Urmi Neo-Aramaic
https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2024-5-110-140
Abstract
The article is devoted to causative verb alternation in Christian Urmi Neo-Aramaic. I have analyzed the formal types of 31 causal/noncausal verb pairs developed by M. Haspelmath (1993). Field data were collected during the fieldtrip to the village of Urmiya, Krasnodar Krai, Russia. I show that Haspelmath’s ordering of verb meanings according to the likelihood of spontaneous occurrence is valid for Urmi Neo-Aramaic. Events that are most likely to arise spontaneously, such as ‘boil’ or ‘dry’, are encoded by non-derived verbs in Christian Urmi, and their causative counterparts (‘boil’, ‘dry’) are morphologically marked. Labile verbs are used in Christian Urmi to denote situations that usually require an external agent, such as ‘break’ or ‘split’. The latter have replaced the anticausative encoding, which was preserved in Classical Syriac. Both Urmi Neo-Aramaic and Classical Syriac show predominance of the causative type of marking, so this type is diachronically stable. Urmi labile verbs can be divided into two groups: some were already labile in Syriac while the lability of others is an innovative Neo-Aramaic feature.
Supporting agencies: This work was supported by RFBR, project no. 20-012-00312 “Documentation of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic spoken in Russia”. I express my gratitude to Sergey Say and Alina Russkikh for inspiring discussions of the research and their help in writing the article. I also thank Peter Arkadiev, the editors of the Moscow Journal of Linguistics and the anonymous reviewer for their attentive reading and valuable critical comments. I am grateful to Ekaterina Rusinova for her help with visualizations, as well as to all the participants of the Assyrian expedition and to our consultants from the village Urmiya, who have made this research possible.
About the Author
E. E. Shvedova
HSE University; Institute for Linguistic Studies, RAS
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Elena E. Shvedova
21/4, Staraya Basmannaya St., Moscow, 105066; 9, Tuchkov Line, Saint-Petersburg, 199053
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Review
For citations:
Shvedova E.E. Causative verb alternation in Christian Urmi Neo-Aramaic. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin: “Literary Teory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies”, Series. 2024;(5):110-140. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2024-5-110-140
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