Lecture | LUCL Colloquium - Series '24/'25
Discourse in contact: an areal study of wish formulae in Daghestan
- Date
- Thursday 10 October 2024
- Time
- Serie
- LUCL Colloquium - Series '24/'25
- Address
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.16
Abstract
Research in the domain of language contact and areal studies so far has focussed on the diffusion of lexical, phonological and grammatical elements, and to a smaller extent - lexical semantics (Koptjevskaja-Tamm et al. 2022). Much less is known about the spread of discourse forms, although the mechanisms through which discourse units spread are presumably different from that characterizing the lexicon, phonology and grammar.
In this talk, I will look at the diffusion of two discourse formulas across the East Caucasus (46 languages from four families), using elicitation, grammars and dictionaries as source: commemorative formulas and farewell wishes. I look at instances of pattern and matter copying across the languages of the East Caucasus, and analyze their areal distribution.
The case studies show that the formulas are diverse (there is great variation across the area), and that both matter and pattern copying are abundant. Some formulas cover very large areas and cross genetic boundaries. In both studies the same spread zones influenced by large lingua francas - Avar (in Central Daghestan) and Azerbaijani (in South Daghestan) - were attested. The distribution of discourse formulas thus shows a very strong areal signal; I cannot come up with any phonological or grammatical phenomena which are spread in the East Caucasus to the same extent. This means that discourse areas (in terms of Beier et al. 2002; also called pragmatic areas in de Vries 2006) have different properties than the areas of grammatical phenomena, covering larger territories and being less susceptible to genetic borders.