Post on 23-Apr-2023
SUPPLETION IN THE LANGUAGES OF THE CAUCASUS
Thomas R. Wier, Free University of Tbilisi
Caucasian languages are well-known for their often baroque systems of
morphology, but when it comes to suppletion very little is known both
about how often Caucasian languages have suppletion, what features
undergo processes of suppletion, and whether patterns of suppletion show
areal or phylogenetic tendencies. This paper surveys various systems of
suppletion in Caucasian languages and finds both little evidence of
language contact resulting in suppletion, but also that suppletion arises only
in preexisting grammatical categories, and does not create new ones.
Once relegated to a theoretical periphery, studies of suppletion have increasingly come to
the fore in recent years. This results from several changes in the field. First, more and more
descriptive grammars and corpora of widely diverse languages have been published and become
widely available in recent years, so that statistically less frequent morphological phenomena are
now more visible to scholars than they used to be. But it arguable that another second change
has occurred, and this is that students of morphology increasingly realize the importance of
liminal morphological constructions for understanding how whole morphological systems work
in general.
The study of suppletion in Caucasian languages clearly exemplifies both trends. The
widely diverse languages from the Caucasus have long been by-words for morphological
complexity, but more often because of the number and organization of their inflectional
categories. As more and more grammars of Caucasian languages come to light, we have an
increasingly better idea of where the Caucasus fits in the typology and areal distribution of
morphological systems.
§1. What is suppletion? Problems of definition
Traditionally, scholars have defined suppletion diachronically: suppletive stems are
paradigms characterized historically by roots from more than one lexical item mixed together1.
Thus we regularly see examples cited like those in (1):
(1) a. English: go vs. went (< OE gān vs. wendan)
b. French: vais /ve/ allons /alõ/ (< L vadere vs. ambulare)
c. Georgian: mi-di-s mi-vid-a (< PK *din- vs. *wed-/wid-)
PVB-go.PRES-3SG PVB-go.AOR.3-3SG
‘he goes’ ‘she went’
1 See Conway (1909: 19) and Gray (1933: 84).
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
Though the word suppletion itself is only a little over a century old, this now traditional
definition of suppletion captures the intuition that indeed an individual root within a suppletive
paradigm often coexists with separate lexical items where that same root constitutes a fully
regular stem. Thus English went is historically related to a separate verb wend, and the
Georgian root დი- di- used in the present tense of ‘go’ exists alongside the verb დინება dineba
‘flow’, still in use.
However, in recent decades, scholars of suppletion (Melchuk 1994, Veselinova 2006)
have begun to question this diachronic definition, for at least three reasons. First, even in the
best documented language families, etymologies of individual roots are often disputed, and at
times entirely unknown. Thus nononomatopoetic words like askance or turmoil in English or
even a truly basic word like bad may have no certain origin (XX). Imposing diachrony on
synchronic facts likewise can lead to spurious descriptions of living languages, as famously in the
Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky and Halle 1965) when the facts of the Great Vowel Shift
were recapitulated in the form of synchronic phonological rules. Finally, typologically speaking,
we understand the history of too few languages to have a comparable understanding of their
etymological origins. An example of these facts that is close to home comes from a comparison
of the English vs. German present tense forms of the verb ‘be’/ ‘sein’:
(2) English vs. German ‘be’
ENGLISH GERMAN
SG PL SG PL
1 am are bin sind
2 are are bist seid
3 is are ist sind
From a synchronic perspective, all the forms of these verbs in both languages are highly
irregular, and cannot be predicted by the morphological facts of the contemporary spoken
languages; children learning to speak their first language must simply memorize them. Yet
historically, they were formed in quite distinct ways: despite their current irregularity, all the
forms of the English verb be go back to a single Indo-European root *es-, while the German
forms of sein go back to two distinct Indo-European roots (XX): *bheu- (for first and second
person singular forms) and *es- (for the other four forms). Thus Rudes (1980) calls the English
pattern ‘pseudo-suppletive’, while only the German pattern is truly suppletive. Melchuk (1994)
objects to the contradictions such a definition imposes, since not only does it make constructions
that are usually not considered suppletive into suppletive patterns, it also imposes the inverse of
not finding suppletion where a synchronic analysis might suggest that there is. Such a case is
the Russian feminizing suffix –ica/-ixa:
(3) Russian feminizing suffix –ica/-ixa (Melchuk 1994: 362)
‘elephant’ ‘tiger’ ‘donkey ‘cow’
MASC slon tigr osël byk
FEM slon-ixa tigr-ica osl-ica korova
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
In this case, a suffix has been added to masculine forms to create feminine forms, which creates
what appears to be a nice derivational paradigm. However, words such as byk ‘bull’ and korova
‘cow’ which have the same semantic relationship as slon ‘elephant’ and slonixa ‘elephantess’ are
usually not considered to stand in a suppletive relationship with each other on the grounds that
we know historically they existed in the Russian lexicon long before the appearance of the
feminizing suffix. Thus suppletion has often been in the eye of the beholder.
Besides such cases where the two stems share little or no phonological material, there is
also the problem of cases where two roots within one paradigm have some partial phonological
similarity, and how much similarity can vary greatly from one lexeme to another, and even
within lexemes. Thus English good is strongly suppletive with respect to better, but better is
itself only weakly suppletive with respect to best. In his 1985 article ‘Suppletion in Word-
formation’, to address such issues, Wolfgang Dressler articulated an eight-fold typology of
phonological transparency, depending on what kind of (morpho)phonemic processes given
forms undergo. [More discussion?]
Table 1. Dressler’s Eight levels of morphological transparency
I II III IV
Intrinsic PR intervene Neutralizing PRs Morphophonemics
allophonic PR: e.g. resyllabification e.g. flapping (no fusion)
excite+ment exist+ence writ+er electric+ity
V VI VII VIII
Morphophonemics MR intervene Weak Suppletion Strong suppletion
(w/ fusion) e.g. English Great childr+en (no rules)
conclusion vs. Vowel shift child be, am, are, is, etc.
conclude decide vs. decision
Thus what appears to be a discrete phenomenon is in fact considerably more gradient
than it first appears, since it is not clear that a principled distinction can be made between
weakly and strongly suppletive stem forms. What remains then is a definition of suppletion
along the lines of Melchuk (1994: 343):
(4) “Suppletion is a relation between signs X and Y such that the semantic difference... between
X and Y is maximally regular...while the phonological difference is maximally irregular.”
Hippisley et al. (2004) argue that suppletion on this definition has at least three properties
relevant for our study. First, suppletion typically occurs in high frequency tokens such as
copulas or verbs of possession. Second, perhaps less obviously, suppletion tends to occur for
categories that are inherent properties of a lexical item, rather than contextually determined by
syntax (Boiij 1996). Thus inherent categories typically found in nouns would be number or
definiteness or gender, while tense, aspect or mood are categories that typically inhere in verbs.
Case on the other hand is a property of nouns that nouns acquire from their syntactic context,
just as number and person usually do for verbs. Lastly, suppletion typically also only occurs in
preexisting categories or paradigmatic patterns that exist in a language; new instances of
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
suppletion will not create new categories or new paradigms de novo. All of these properties will
come to the fore in the following discussion of Caucasian suppletive patterns.
§2. SURVEY SOURCES
Figure 1. Map of Caucasian languages. (XX)
Some seventy or so languages are found in the Caucasus, and for increasingly many of
them extensive descriptive grammars exist. However, many grammars do not discuss suppletive
paradigms, and if they do, they do not always use an explicit definition, or do so for all parts of
speech, or distinguish weak or marginal forms of suppletion from the stronger, less controversial
types. Thus it is not always straight-forward to identify instances in the literature.
Another issue is even more basic: what is a Caucasian language? At least six language
phyla have considerable speaker populations in the modern Caucasus: Abkhaz-Adyghean,
Altaic, Kartvelian, Indo-European, Nakh-Daghestanian, and (somewhat marginally) Semitic. In
some cases, languages are known not to be indigenous to the region and arrived relatively
recently: there were virtually no large numbers of Russian or Ukrainian speakers before the end
of the 18th century. In other cases, as with Armenian or Ossetic, nonautochthonous language
communities arrived many centuries before the establishment of a historical tradition in the
region, to such an extent that their languages have come in many ways to resemble the
languages already spoken in the Caucasus. So for purposes of this survey, we will somewhat
arbitrarily restrict ourselves to instances of apparent suppletion from those languages claimed to
be ‘autochthonous’ to the region: Abkhaz-Adyghean (AA), Kartvelian (K) and Nakh-
Daghestanian (ND). Languages included in the survey are:
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
LANGUAGE SOURCE
Abkhaz (Abkhazic; AA) Chirikba (2003), Chirikba (2008)
Archi (Lezgic; ND) Hippisley (2004); Chumakina et al. (2007);
Avar (Avar-Andic; ND) Forker (classnotes)
Chechen (Nakh; ND) Molochieva (2011)
Georgian (K) Aronson (1982), Aronson (1998), Aronson (p.c.), Hewitt (1995),
Wier (fieldnotes)
Godoberi (Avar-Andic; ND) Forker (classnotes)
Ingush (Nakh; ND) Nichols (2011)
Kabardian (Adyghean; AA) Colarusso (1992)
Khinalug (Khinalug; ND) Forker (classnotes)
Khwarshi (Tsezic; ND) Khalilova (2009)
Kryts (Lezgic; ND) Authier (2009); Forker (classnotes)
Laz (Zan; K) Lacroix (XX);
Lezgian (Lezgic; ND) Haspelmath (1993)
Megrelian (Zan; K)
Svan (K) Schmidt (1991), Palmaitis and Gudjedjiani (1986)
Tsez (Tsezic; ND)
Tsova-Tush (Nakh; ND) Holisky & Gagua (1994)
Ubykh (AA) Chirikba (2008), Chirikba (p.c.)
Udi (Lezgic; ND) Schülze-Fürhoff, Wolfgang (1994)
The rest of this survey will be organized as follows. We will examine different kinds of
suppletion by part of speech: first verbs, then nouns, and any other salient syntactic categories.
For each part of speech, we will also examine constructions feature by feature. After that we
will examine whether there are any systematic gaps in the distribution of features, or families,
and ask if any such tendencies result from language contact, or more general cross-linguistic
typological tendencies.
PART I: QUALITATIVE EVIDENCE: VARIETIES OF SUPPLETION IN THE CAUCASUS
§3. Verbal suppletion
3.1 Tense
One language from the region that is particularly rich in tense suppletion is Georgian,
and this is both because of the sheer number of suppletive verbs as well as their paradigmatic
properties. In comparison to some Nakh-Daghestanian languages, Georgian is not particularly
well-endowed with tense oppositions (present, future, imperfect, aorist, and perfect), and
suppletion only occurs in a subset of these. However, the relationships these verbs have with
one another bear inspection, because they provide hints to the ways suppletion can arise.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
Table 2. Georgian Suppletive Tense Forms. (Aronson 1998: 374-75; Hewitt 1995: 446-494)
Present Future Aorist Perfect
‘be’ ar-is i-kn-eb-a i-q’-o q’op-il-a
‘have INAN’ a-kv-s e-kn-eb-a stem missing2 h-kon-i-a
‘have ANIM’ h-q’-av-s e-q’ol-eb-a e-q’ol-a h-q’ol-i-a
‘go (away)’ mi-di-s mi-v-a3 mi-vid-a mi-sul-a
‘go’ da-di-s da-i-vl-i-s da-iar-a da-u-vl-i-a
‘say’ amb-ob-s i-t’q’v-i-s tkv-a u-tkv-am-s
‘tell’ e-ubn-eb-a e-t’q’v-i-s u-txr-a u-tkv-am-s
‘drink’ sv-am-s da-l-ev-s da-l-i-a mi-sv-am-s/da-u-l-ev-i-a
‘carry’ mi-a-kv-s mi-i-t’an-s mi-i-t’an-a mi-u-t’an-i-a
‘take INAN’ mi-a-kv-s c’a-mo-i-ğ-eb-s c’a-mo-i-ğ-o c’a-mo-u-ğ-i-a
‘take ANIM’ mi-u-q’av-s mi-u-q’van-s mi-u-q’van-a mi-u-q’van-i-a
‘be lying’ c’ev-s i-c’v-eb-a i-c’v-a c’ol-il-a
‘lie down’ c’v-eb-a da-c’v-eb-a da-c’v-a da-c’ol-il-a
‘give’ a-dzl-ev-s mi-s-c-em-s mi-s-c-a mi-u-c-i-a ‘do’ švr-eb-a i-zam-s kn-a u-kn-i-a
‘do to’ u-švr-eb-a u-zam-s u-q’-o u-kn-i-a
‘see’ xed-av-s nax-av-s nax-a u-nax-av-s
To see this, we must break apart this interlocking web of verbal roots. In most cases, a
given root is found in more than one tense form, usually resulting in just a two-way opposition:
carry, take, give, see. Other verbs have a three-way opposition (say but not tell, do but not do to, go) or a four-way opposition (be, go away, tell), but what is really interesting is how patterns
of suppletion distinguish one verb from another. Go away and plain go have identical roots in
the present, but all other tenses have suppletive roots, and those roots not only differ from each
other but also in how suppletive they are. A similar difference exists between say and tell, except that in this case the perfect forms are actually fully identical in other morphology as well.
Some roots, such as kn- ‘be/have.INAN/do’ show up in multiple verb paradigms with rather
different basic meanings, q’- ‘be/have.ANIM/do to’, but not in consistent tenses across verb forms.
kn-, for example, marks future tense for be and have (something inanimate), while that same
root marks the aorist and perfect for do, but just the perfect for do to. The latter’s aorist is in
turn marked by q’-, which is also found in the aorist of be, but the present of have (something animate). In some cases, these patterns of suppletion have relatively clear historical
explanations: kn- and kon- were historically the same root distinguished by ablaut, and q’ol-
was originally q’- plus a participial suffix *-Vl (XX).
Georgian is not alone in the Caucasus in having extensive tense suppletion. Udi, a Nakh-
Daghestanian language of the Lezgic branch, has a wide array of tenses that rely on three
different stems, plus a fourth for imperatives:
2 This stem forms its past tense with the imperfect, which is also suppletive: h-kon-d-a, ‘he had it’, having the same stem as the
perfect. 3 This root might be argued to be the same as –vl-, as the third plural would be mi-vl-en. See (8) below.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
Table 3. Suppletion in Udi tense/mode forms (slightly modified from Harris 2002: 42)
TENSE/MOOD
FORM
‘come’ ‘go out’ ‘go’ ‘cook,
boil’
(INTR)
‘say’ ‘eat’ ‘die’
Present e-Ø č’e-Ø ta(y)-Ø box-Ø ex- uk- bi-
Imperfect e-Ø č’e-Ø ta(y)-Ø box-Ø ex- uk- bi-
Aorist I a-r- č’e-r ta-c- box-c- p- k- p’ur-
Aorist II a-r- č’e-r ta-c- box-c- p- k- p’ur-
Perfect a-r- č’e-r ta-c- box-c- p- k- p’ur-
Future I e-γ č’e-γ ta-γ- box-eγ- uk’- uk- bi-
Future II e-γ č’e-γ ta-γ- box-eγ- uk’- uk- bi-
Optative I e-γ č’e-γ ta-γ- box-eγ- uk’- uk- bi-
Optative II e-γ č’e-γ ta-γ- box-eγ- uk’- uk- bi-
Imperative e-k’e- č’e-k’e- ta-k’e- box-ek’e- up-/uk’- uk- ?
As with Georgian, some basic verb stems are extensively suppletive (‘come’, ‘go out’),
while others are less so (‘eat’, ‘die’). However Udi’s system of suppletion is rather different from
Georgian in at least two ways. First, while underived verbs stems in Georgian are, like most
languages, an open class, in Udi they are not. Instead, Udi uses a system of thirty or so light
verbs to which other elements (noun, verb, or other stems) are incorporated (Harris 2002: 65):
(n) a. pasčağ-on ğar-muğ-on lašk’o-q’un-b-esa
king-GEN son-PL-ERG wedding-3PL-DO-PRES
‘The king’s sons married [the girls they had rescued].’
b. nana-n tur-ex oc’-ne-k’-e
mother-ERG foot-DAT2 wash-3SG-LV-AORII
‘Mother washed her foot.’
c. k’al-le-p-e väkil-vazir-ğ-o
call-3SG-SAY-AORII counselor-vizier-PL-DAT1
‘He called his counselors…’
The interesting implication of this system is how it indirectly makes an extensive and
productive part of the Udi verbal lexicon suppletive, because new verbs can generally only be
formed from this limited set of light verbs, of which some are suppletive.
A second unusual characteristic, related to the first, is that some suppletive stems have a
zero allomorph as one suppletive alternant: thus bo<ne>x-sa [boil.3SG-PRES] ‘it is boiling it’ vs.
box-eğ-al-le [boil-GO-FUT-3SG] ‘it will boil’.4 This thus creates the typologically unusual
situation in which a verb stem such as box- ‘boil’ can appear superficially to be underived and
nonsuppletive in the present and imperfect tenses, when an investigation of other verb tenses
4 bo<ne>x-sa also features endocliticization of the person marker –ne which, though fascinating, is not directly involved
in the suppletion process.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
would reveal that it in fact it is engaging in a more complicated system of paradigm formation
that indeed involves suppletion.
3.2 Aspect
Grammaticalized aspectual distinctions are found frequently in the languages of the
Caucasus (XX, YY, ZZ), but in many cases these aspectual contrasts are formed by the addition
of a preverb or some other part of morphology. In Georgian, for example, most verbs take one
of half a dozen or so perfectivizing preverbs, the absence of which indicates the action has not
been completed. As with Russian, the addition of present tense morphology renders a future
tense reading:
Perfective (Aorist) Imperfective (Present) Perfective (Future)
(n) a. da-c’er-a c’er-s da-c’er-s
PVB-write-AOR3SG write-3SG PVB-write-3SG
‘He wrote it’ ‘She’s writing it’ ‘He will write it’
b. ga-a-k’et-a a-k’et-eb-s ga-a-k’et-eb-s
PVB-PRV-do-AOR3SG PRV-do-TH-3SG PVB-PRV-do-TH-3SG
‘She did it’ ‘He’s doing it’ ‘She will do it’
Suppletion for such forms does exist, but it is rather rare. The clearest example is found
in (n), where the perfective/imperfective opposition is formed with different stems rather than
with the productive system of perfectivizing preverbs:
(n) nax-a xed-av-s nax-av-s
see.PF-AOR3SG see.IMPF-TH-3SG see.PF-TH-3SG
‘He saw it’ ‘She sees it’ ‘He will see it’
[Other Kartvelian examples?]
Outside Kartvelian, suppletion for aspectual distinctions is found most frequently in the
Nakh languages. Chechen has at least four different kinds of verbal aspect: imperfective,
perfective, second perfective (an evidential form for witnessed events), and iterative. In most
cases, the alternations between particular stems are indicated by ablaut patterns, though a larger
range of aspectual distinctions can be made by suffixation. As is clear from the examples in (n),
the distinction between weakly suppletive ablauting forms, such as ‘rub’, with those that are
more clearly strongly suppletive such as ‘hit’ and ‘carry’ is not always easy to pin down. This is
because the vowel matrix may be quite regular across several lexemes (e.g. the iterative
infinitive, the iterative imperative and the perfective iterative), while the ablauting pattern in
other parts of the same lexemes’ might differ greatly – not to mention the consonantal tier.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
(n) Chechen aspect suppletion (Nakh/Nakh-Daghestanian; Molochieva 2011: 104):
‘rub’ ‘hit’ ‘carry’ ‘lift’
Infinitive hwaaq- tuoxa- daa- ai’a-
Imperfective hwooq- tuux- dahwa- oi’u-
Perfective 1 hwaeq- toex- de’a- ai’i-
Perfective 2 hwaeq- tyyx- de’a- ai’i-
Inf Iterative hwieq- diett- qiehwa- ii’a-
Imp Iterative hwoeq- doettu- qoehw- yy’u Pf Iterative hwiiq- diiti- qiihw- ii’i-
Another Nakh language which shows the same generalization more strikingly is Tsova-Tush
(AKA Batsbi). Like Chechen, this language has a perfective/imperfective aspectual opposition
which is manifest partly in internal vowel change operations, but also in other unpredictable
changes to stem form. While some pairs, such as that for ‘read’ or ‘drink’ in (na-b) use only
vowel ablaut to distinguish perfective from imperfective stems, others such as (ne) or (ng) show
unpredictable insertion of consonants or gender agreement markers, making it difficult to
distinguish between ablaut proper and suppletion on traditional definitions.
(n) Tsova-Tush (im)perfective verb stems (Nakh/Nakh-Daghestanian; Holisky and Gagua
1994: 161; 179):
Gloss Perfective Imperfective a. ‘read’ xat:ar xet:ar
b. ‘drink’ małar mełar
c. ‘pour out’ d-ot:ar d-et:ar
d. ‘put in’ d-ol:ar d-eblar
e. ‘hit, strike’ toxar tepxar
f. ‘see (sth)’ d-agar guar
g. ‘break (sth)’ d-ʕogar q’egar
h. ‘buy, take (sth)’ ecar ev-d-ar
3.3 Person
Inflection for person features differs considerably from one family to another in the
Caucasus. While agreement for person is found in a rather straightforward form in Abkhaz-
Adyghean languages, and person inflection is fundamental in all Kartvelian languages, person
plays a relatively limited role in Nakh-Daghestanian languages, whose agreement systems
mostly involve the gender and number of arguments. It is thus not surprising then that
suppletion for person features is most prominent in Kartvelian and much less well-established in
the other two families; no person-based suppletive patterns were found in the other two families
within the sample. To see this, we should examine the Kartvelian system a little further. In
inflectional morphology, Kartvelian languages all feature an opposition between first and second
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
persons taken as a natural class (here, depicted as the top of the pyramid), and third person
singular and third person plural (the left and right feet of the pyramid respectively):
(n) Georgian present and future person/number suffixes (Aronson 1982: 470)
-Ø -i
-s -en, -an -a, -is -ian
(trans. and unerg. verbs) (unaccusative verbs)
(n) Georgian aorist and optative person/number suffixes (Aronson 1982: 471)
AORIST OPTATIVE
-e -o
-a, -o -nen -os -on
(trans. and unerg. verbs)
Given this robust pattern that occurs in paradigm after paradigm, and in language after
language within the family, it is not surprising that suppletive patterns also follow it. For
example, we have already seen examples of weak suppletion in tense formation in Georgian, but
in some cases those same roots also participate in person-based suppletive constructions. In (n)
we see one such case, in which the root v- in the third person singular occurs alongside two
other roots vl-, in the third person plural, and val-, in the first and second persons.
(n) Future Paradigm for misvla ‘go (away)’ vs. dasvla ‘go (about)’
SG PL SG PL
1 mi-val mi-val-t da-v-i-vl-i da-v-i-vl-i-t
2 mi-x-val mi-x-val-t da-i-vl-i da-i-vl-i-t
3 mi-v-a mi-vl-en da-i-vl-is da-i-vl-ian
This construction is interesting not only for the pattern of suppletion it presents – the suppletion
matches the general inflectional pattern exactly – but also because one of these roots, vl-, exists
as the consistent root of a different verb with a slightly different meaning, which on its own
cannot be said to show any kind of suppletion at all. Perhaps the most suppletive verb in terms
of person is jdoma ‘be seated’, which features multiple kinds of cross-cutting suppletion across
tense, mood, person and number:
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
(n) Paradigm of jdoma ‘be seated’ (Hewitt 1995: 454)
PRESENT FUTURE AORIST OPTATIVE
1SG v-zi-var v-jd-eb-i v-i-jek-i v-i-jd-e
2SG zi-xar i-jd-eb-i i-jek-i i-jd-e
3SG zi-s i-jd-eb-a i-jd-a i-jd-es
1PL v-sxed-var-t v-i-sxd-eb-i-t v-i-sxed-i-t v-i-sxd-e-t
2PL sxed-xar-t i-sxd-eb-i-t i-sxed-i-t i-sxd-e-t
3PL sxed-an i-sxd-eb-ian i-sxd-nen i-sxd-nen
This verb presents a number of complications. The root zi- appears in the present
singular, and does not supplete for person as such, but does belong to an unusual cluster of verbs
which synchronically have special person suffixes historically related to the verb qopna ‘be’.
These verbs thus may have multiple exponence of the person feature, as they still make use of
the v- first person prefix. When we move to the plural, we find a completely different root
sxed-, and so we might be lead to believe this verb is suppletive only in number. In fact, when
we move to other tenses, we find that this verb alternates suppletively in other ways. In the
future, we see a root jd- and another root sxd-, which also occur in the aorist, except whereas
these roots occur in all persons in the future, they only occur in the third person in the aorist.
In the aorist first and second persons, instead we see roots jek- and sxed-. Jdoma ‘be seated’ is
not the only verb that has such patterns; dajdoma ‘sit down’, dgoma ‘be standing’, adgoma
‘stand up’, c’ola ‘be lying’, and dac’ola ‘lie down’ also feature person splits. What’s interesting
about these patterns is that, like the forms of ‘go’ in (n), they conform to generalizations that
already exist in the language; there are no suppletive forms based on person which distinguish,
say, first or third person as opposed to the second person.
Before we leave our discussion of person-based suppletive patterns, it’s worth pointing
out that other aspects of the Georgian verbal system also show suppletive-like patterns for
person. Although preverbs are usually not considered prime fodder for discussions of lexical
semantics, in Georgian they often carry an array of meanings above and beyond their most basic
meanings of directionality. Beyond also perfectivizing certain roots, they frequently carry lexical
meanings and nuances of the verb that cannot be entirely disentangled from the root, as can be
seen in (n):
(n) a. da-c’er-s (da-, indicating neutral or downward movement)
PVB-write-3SG
‘He will write it.’
b. ağ-c’er-s (ağ-, indicating upward movement)
PVB-write-3SG
‘He will describe it.’
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
c. gada-c’er-s (gada-, indicating movement across something)
PVB-write-3SG
‘He will copy it.’
This is relevant for our discussion of suppletion, because at least in the case of one verb, cema
‘give’, the preverbs change depending on the person of the primary object. For first and second
person primary objects, we see the preverb mo- (indicating motion toward a deictic center),
while for third person primary objects, we see the preverb mi- (indicating motion away from a
deictic center):
Table 3. Aorist Screeve Paradigm of cema ‘give’
Obj. →
Subj. ↓ 1st sg Pl 2
nd sg Pl 3
rd sg pl
1st
sg mo-g-e-c-i mo-g-e-c-i-t mi-v-e-c-i mi-v-e-c-i-t
Pl mo-g-e-c-i-t mo-g-e-c-i-t mi-v-e-c-i-t mi-v-e-c-i-t
2nd
sg mo-m-e-c-i mo-gv-e-c-i mi-e-c-i mi-e-c-i-t
Pl mo-m-e-c-i-t mo-gv-e-c-i-t mi-e-c-i-t mi-e-c-i-t
3rd
sg mo-m-c-a mo-gv-c-a mo-g-c-a mo-g-c-a-t mi-s-c-a mi-s-c-a
Pl mo-m-c-es mo-gv-c-es mo-g-c-es mo-g-c-es mi-s-c-es mi-s-c-es
Now, there is a clear reason why these particular preverbs might be found with these featural
specifications, as speech-act participants are clearly in some sense close to a deictic center (the
speech act), while nonspeech act participants might not be. However, other verbs in Georgian
do not have this pattern; this is restricted to the verb cema ‘give’. So do these count as
‘suppletive’ patterns both because of the way preverbs contribute to verbal lexical semantics,
and because of their highly grammaticalized, not to say fossilized, morphological patterning? If
so, they would clearly constitute a noncanonical case of suppletion not involving lexical roots, in
Corbett’s (2007) terms.
3.4 Number
In contrast to person, number is a category that is manifest in just about all languages in
all three indigenous families of the Caucasus; all the languages in the sample manifest it in some
part of their nominal or verbal agreement systems. In many cases, this extends to suppletion of
stems so that some argument (a subject for intransitive verbs, usually the direct object for
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
transitive verbs) will select a specific stem depending on the number of participants5, as for
example in Ubykh (n) and Tsova-Tush (n).
(n) Ubykh (Abkhaz-Adyghean; Chirikba 2008, Chirikba p.c.)
GLOSS SG PL
a. ‘sit’ s(ə)- ž˚a-
b. ‘stand, be somewhere’ t˚- x a-
c. ‘give’ t˚a- q’a-
(n) Tsova-Tush (aka Batsbi; Nakh/Nakh-Daghestanian; Holisky and Gagua 1994: 178)
GLOSS SG PL
a. ‘come’ d-aʔar d-axk’ar
b. ‘sit’ xaʔar xabžar
c. ‘put’ d-il:ar d-ixk’ar
d. ‘put down’ d-ol:ar d-oxk’ar
e. ‘hang something’ qoc’-d-ar qoxk’-d-ar
Usually such suppletion reflects both the semantic and the syntactic number of arguments, but
some cases are not so clear. In Ingush, for example, verbs inflect for the number of the
absolutive argument, and in cases where verbs have different stems for the number of that
argument, that is reflected in agreement, as in (n):
(n) Ingush (Nakh/Nakh-Daghestanian; Nichols 2011: 313)
a. Yz wa-xeira
3SG down-sit.WP
‘He sat down’
b. Yzh wa-xeishar
3PL down-sit.PL.WP
‘They sat down’
However, as with many languages of the Caucasus and around the world, quantified NPs are
morphologically singular, which creates the possibility of a conflict between the number of
semantic arguments and their syntactic encoding. In these contexts in Ingush, only the singular
verb stem is selected for:
(n) Yzh pxi sag wa-xeira / *wa-xeishar
DEM.PL five person down-sit.WP down-sit.PL.WP
‘Those five people sat down.’ (ibid.)
Ingush thus appears to be a language in which the stem selection is based on the overt
manifestation of syntactic features of the arguments, rather than the semantic properties of
those arguments. Georgian is another such language. We have already seen a number of such
5 Note that languages might supplete either for the number of participants or the number of events. See below for
further discussion.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
stems above that suppleted for tense such as zi-/sxed- ‘be seated (SG/PL)’, and a number of others
supplete for the number of their object:
(n) Georgian SG/PL objects (Kartvelian; Aronson 1982: 406)
GLOSS OBJ SG OBJ PL
a. ‘throw, scatter’ gada-gd-eb-s gada-q’r-i-s
b. ‘set, put down’ da-sv-am-s da-sx-am-s
c. ‘slaughter’ da-k’l-av-s da-xoc-av-s
d. ‘put down’ da-d-eb-s da-a-c’q’-ob-s
e. ‘break’ ga-t’ex-s da-a-mt’vr-ev-s
Like Ingush, Georgian quantifiers induce singular morphology on the both the nouns and the
verbs they agree with, and this is true both of distributive and nondistributive quantifiers, as in
(n):
(n) a. q’vela k’ac-i (*k’ac-eb-i) dga-s (*dga-nan) ezo=ši
all.NOM man-NOM (*man-PL-NOM) stand-3SG (*stand-3PL) courtyard=in
‘All the men are standing in the courtyard.’
b. titoeul-i k’ac-i (*k’ac-eb-i) dga-s (*dga-nan) ezo=ši
each-NOM man-NOM (*man-PL-NOM) stand-3SG (*stand-3PL) courtyard=in
‘Each man is standing in the courtyard.’
However, there is some evidence that this suppletion is not for surface syntactic features, but
something more like a semantic conceptualization of distributivity. When we test such
quantification facts in (n) by adding a layer of syntactic structure, the suppletive stems manage
to control the possible outcome of quantification from within the embedded tough-construction
(Wier 2011: Ch 2):
(n) a. q’vela did-i kva ʒnel-i=a gada-sa-q’r-el-ad
all.NOM big-NOM stone.NOM hard-NOM-be.3SG PVB-FUT.PART-throw.PL-PART-ADV
‘All the big stones are hard to throw.’
b. *titoeul-i did-i kva ʒnel-i=a gada-sa-q’r-el-ad
each-NOM big-NOM stone.NOM hard-NOM- be.3SG PVB-FUT.PART-throw.PL-PART-ADV
‘Each of the big stones is hard to throw.’
c. *q’vela did-i kva ʒnel-i=a gada-sa-gd-eb-l-ad
all.NOM big-NOM stone.NOM hard-NOM- be.3SG PVB-FUT.PART-throw.SG-TH-PART-ADV
‘All of the big stones are hard to throw.’
d. titoeul-i did-i kva ʒnel-i=a gada-sa-gd-eb-l-ad
each-NOM big-NOM stone.NOM hard-NOM- be.3SG PVB-FUT.PART-throw.SG-TH-PART-ADV
‘Each of the big stones are hard to throw.’
In each sentence in (n), a tough-construction is formed by adding a tough-predicate ‘to be hard’
with a subordinate predicate marked as a future participle in the adverbial case. Because each of
the nouns is quantified, both the number of the noun and the upper verb (here a clitic form of
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
‘be’, =a) are singular in each example. However, only two rather than three of the examples are
ungrammatical: the distributive quantifier titoeuli ‘each, every’ is incompatible with the
suppletive verb form gadaq’ra ‘throw PL’ that selects plural objects, while the nondistributive
quantifier q’vela ‘all’ is incompatible with the suppletive verb form gadagdeba ‘throw SG’ that
selects singular objects. What these two examples show is that the suppletion for number is not
so much concerned with the surface syntactic number of the arguments – (na) is grammatical
despite being formally singular – as their semantic distributivity: gadaq’ra selects for masses of
objects, while gadagdeba selects for individualizable objects. Masses of objects just happen often
to be plural in number, while individualizable objects are often depicted as singulars. Such facts
may also extend to other languages of the Caucasus, though the relevant tests have not been
done.
3.5 Mood
Of Caucasian languages in the sample, a great many have dedicated paradigms to mark
predicates that do not make truth-assertions about the world as it currently is, was or will be.
This is true of all three indigenous families, although the number and use of modal forms varies
from family to family and language to language. Kartvelian languages typically have optatives
and evidential forms of verbs, while Abkhaz-Adyghean languages have a diverse array of modal
affixes, including (in Abkhaz) optatives, detrimentals, subjunctives, nonvolitionals, inferentials,
and obligatives. Only in Nakh-Daghestanian, however, do we see strong suppletion in modal
forms. Ingush for example distinguishes immediate from distant imperatives with special
suppletive forms in the verb ‘come’, which may be considered both suppletive from their
respective indicative forms, and from each other:
(n) Ingush paradigm for ‘come’ (Nakh/Nakh-Daghestanian; Veselinova 2006: 137, citing
Nichols p.c.)
INDICATIVE IMPERATIVE
PRES d-oagha d-iel (come right now!)
FUT d-oaghaddy d-oula (come sometime later!)
In Kryz (Lezgic/Nakh-Daghestanian; Authier 2009) a number of verbs supplete in a variety of
different moods. One class of verbs form their negative forms with a prefix da- before the root,
and in at least two cases the root that follows is specific to the negative (ibid. 152):
POSITIVE NEGATIVE
(n) a. manger [eat] ugul-a-yc de-yl-ic
b. laver [wash] zim-a-yc da-zn-ic
Kryz has a prohibitive mode to indicate injunctions not to do a particular action (i.e., distinct
from a negated imperative). Such forms are usually formed morphomically from the
imperfective stem plus a prefix m- (ibid. 154). Compare the regular forms in (n) with the
suppletive forms in (n):
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
IMPERFECTIVE PROHIBITIVE
(n) a. prendre [put] ğa-n-i ğa-ma-nu(/-vay)
b. traîner [pull] si-ç-i si-ma-çu(/-vay)
(n) a. faire [do] yiyi mi’u(ay)
b. dire [say] liyi mi’u(ay)
3.6 Animacy and Gender
Caucasian languages differ greatly when it comes to lexical categories like animacy or
gender. Kartvelian languages show almost no evidence of animacy or gender at any level, while
among Abkhaz-Adyghean languages only the Abkhaz-Abaza branch shows any inflection for
gender or nominal class of any kind, and here it is clearly an innovation. In most Nakh-
Daghestanian languages, by contrast, gender is the life and soul of morphosyntax, with most
languages having at least four and some languages having as many as eight grammatical genders.
These genders are reflected in verbal, adjectival and in some languages adverbial agreement.
Surprisingly, however, verbal suppletion for gender among these languages is quite rare; most
cases would be qualified as weak rather than strong suppletion, e.g. the paradigm of ‘go’ in Kryz
(Authier 2009: 159):
(n) PAST PERF. PAST PERF. NEG.
M/N yi-xh-i di-xh-i
F/Hpl yi-p-i di-p-i
In this paradigm, an original feminine sequence *yi-b-xh-i with a root xh- ‘go’ and a feminine
agreement suffix –b has undergone internal assimilation, so that now the root p- indicates both
gender and lexical information6. Outside Nakh-Daghestanian, in the Caucasus there are only
two apparent cases of suppletion for gender or nominal class, both coming from Georgian:
(n) Georgian
GLOSS INANIMATE OBJ ANIMATE OBJ
a. ‘have’ a-kv-s h-q’-av-s
b. ‘carry, take’ mi-i-t’an-s c’a-i-q’van-s
In these two cases, if the object of the verb is either semantically animate or motile, then the
animate verb hq’avs or c’aiq’vans must be used, while if the object is neither animate or motile,
then akvs or miit’ans must be used (see Wier 2011 Chs 2 and 5 for more discussion).
However, there are at least two reasons to believe that these suppletion patterns function
differently from those of Nakh-Daghestanian. Firstly, gender assignment in Nakh-Daghestanian
languages is for the most part wholly formal: nouns belong to discrete classes, and the
assignment of nouns to those classes combines semantic with morphological and phonological
criteria as in, say, French or German. Georgian nouns on the other hand do not clearly belong to
such discrete gender classes, as one and the same noun could in principle select for either the
6 As far as I know, such a process of assimilation is not general in Kryz.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
animate or inanimate verb depending on its interpretation (Rusudan Asatiani, p.c.; Wier 2011
Ch. 5):
(n) a. kalak-s h-q’-av-s or-i cxen-i moedan-ši
city-DAT 3DAT-have.ANIM-TH-3SG two-NOM horse-NOM square-in
‘The city has two [live, biological] horses in the square.’
b. kalak-s a-kv-s or-i cxen-i moedan-ši
city-DAT PRV-have.INAN-TH-3SG two-NOM horse-NOM square-in
‘The city has two [equestrian statues of] horses in the square.’
In the normal situation, ‘horses’ are biological entities and so speakers would by default use the
verb that selects for an animate object. However, if the horses in question are actually inanimate
(e.g. equestrian statues or toys), use of the verb selecting inanimate objects is possible. In fact,
this interpretive form of animacy can be systematic, as when live animals select for the animate
verb, while dead forms of the same animals select for the inanimate verb (Khizanashvili XX):
(n) a. bat’-i m-q’av-d-a sa-q’var-el cxovel-ad
goose-NOM 1SG-have.ANIM-IMPF-3SG FUT.PART-love-PART.ADV animal-ADV
‘I had a goose for a pet.’
b. bat’-i m-kon-d-a sadil=ze
goose-NOM 1SG-have.INAN-IMPF-3SG dinner=on
‘I had goose for dinner.’
Thus, as with suppletive pairs selecting for the number of objects, what seems to be relevant in
the Georgian case is not what formal syntactic features the nouns bear, but the cognitive
representation of events.
Secondly, another way in which these verbs differ from the Nakh-Daghestanian situation
is that the doublet akvs / hq’avs in particular is also used to form nonevidential resultative
perfect forms of verbs:
(n) a. m-a-kv-s es c’ign-i c’a-k’itx-ul-i samk’itxelo=ši
1SG-PRV-have.INAN-3SG this.NOM book-NOM PVB-read-PART-NOM reading.room=in
‘I have read this book in the reading room.’
b. m-q’-av-s es ʒağl-i na-nax-i kuča=ze
1SG-have.ANIM-TH-3SG this.NOM dog-NOM PART-see.PF-NOM street=on
‘I have seen this dog in the street.’
Thus, as in the case with Udi incorporated auxiliaries, because a suppletive contrast here has
acquired a grammaticalized function to mark resultative perfects, and all transitive and
unergative intransitive verbs use these verbs to form their resultative perfects, a suppletive
contrast has indirectly entered into the core of Georgian grammar contrary to an understanding
of suppletion as a peripheral morphosyntactic phenomenon.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
§4. Nominal suppletion
Cross-linguistically, nominal suppletion tends to pattern somewhat differently from
verbal suppletion for the simple reason that nouns tend to be marked for different inherent
categories than verbs do. While verbs tend to inflect for inherent categories like tense and
aspect, nominals tend to inflect for categories like number and gender, and only sometimes do
these categories present fertile ground for suppletive paradigm formation. Unlike verbs,
however, nominals frequently supplete for noninherent features such as case and possession,
categories which are commonplace across the region. Like verbs, suppletion among nominals
also tends to take place among high-frequency tokens, such as kinship terms, domesticated
animals, household tools, food, and among adjectival forms scalar descriptors like ‘good’, ‘big’,
etc.
4.1 Case
Although number is the most frequent form of nominal suppletion cross-linguistically
(Vafaeian 2013), within the region case seems to be at least as frequent. This is most obvious in
personal and demonstrative pronominal paradigms in Kartvelian and Nakh-Daghestanian,
where suppletion often distinguishes a more central ‘core’ stem from some kind of ‘oblique’
stem, though the actual definition of what constitutes a core stem and what constitutes an
oblique stem differs significantly from family to family and language to language. In all the
Kartvelian languages, the nominative, narrative (AKA ‘ergative’) and dative cases of pronouns all
share the same ‘core’ stem form (indeed, are indistinct), irrespective of their distribution in
syntax, which can vary greatly from one language to another; all other cases share a common
‘oblique’ stem.
Table X. Kartvelian pronominal forms.
1SG 2SG 1PL 2PL
CORE OBL CORE OBL CORE OBL CORE OBL
Georgian me čem- šen šen- čven čven- tkven tkven-
Mingrelian ma čkim- si skan- čki ckin- tkva tkvan-
Laz ma čkim-/škim- si skan- čku/šk’u čkun-/šk’un- tkva/t’k’va tkvan-,
t’k’van-
Svan mi mišgu, mišgwi si isgu näy, nä, nišgwe, sgäy, sgä, isgwe,
mišk’wi nay nišge sgay isge
Only in Georgian do we see a near complete collapse of this paradigmatic contrast, in the second
singular and first and second person plural. All the other forms show varying levels of weak or
strong suppletion.
Nakh-Daghestanian languages, too, regularly distinguish core from oblique stems of
(pro)nominals, but in these languages the contrast is almost always between an absolutive case
(and sometimes just the absolutive singular) on the one hand, and all other case forms on the
other, though in a number of languages the absolutive and ergative fall together, either in just
pronouns or in pronouns plus some common noun paradigms (Forker 2010).
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
Table X. Some Nakh-Daghestanian pronominal forms.
1SG 2SG 1PL (INCL) 2PL
ABS ERG ABS ERG ABS ERG ABS ERG
Avar dun dica mun duca niž nižeca nuž nužeca
Lezgian zun za wun wuna čun čna kün küne
Khinalug zy yä vy va yir yir zur zur
Tsez di di mi mi eli elā meži mežā
Kryts zi(n) zi(n) vun vun yin yin vin vin
Godoberi den den min min išːe išːe bitːé bitːé
In only two of these languages do we see suppletion in the first and second persons based on
case. However, if we look at larger paradigms we sometimes find suppletion that begins with
other cases, as with Udi and Andi, where the genitive forms of pronouns use a different stem in
the first person than the absolutive and ergative forms:
(n) Udi pronouns (Lezgic/Nakh-Daghestanian; Schulze 1994)
CASE 1SG 2SG 1PL 2PL
ABS/ERG zu un (<*wun) yan waʕn / efan
GEN bez(i) wi beš(i) eʕfi / efi
DAT1 za wa ya waʕ / e
ʕfa
ʕ
(n) Andi personal pronouns (Avar-Andic/Nakh-Daghestanian; Tsertsvadze 1965: 199, cited in
Hewitt 2004: 85)
CASE 1SG 2SG 1PL EXCL 1PL INCL 2PL
ABS din/den min/men išːil ikɬil bisːil
ERG din/den min/men išːidi ikɬidi bisːidi
GEN di-D du-D išːi-D ikɬi-D bisːi-D
DAT diy duy išːiy ikɬiy bisːiy
AFF di-D-o du-D-o išːi-D-o ikɬi-D-o bisːi-D-o
The Andi forms and the Udi forms both share the trait that suppletion for their ‘core’ forms and
their ‘oblique’ forms contrasts the absolutive and ergative on the one hand with the genitive on
the other. However, less obviously, they also share something else in common, and this is that
while the genitive and affective cases of the Andi pronouns inflect for gender (here marked with
a capital ‘D’), the Udi forms used to as well. While Udi has lost all inflection for gender, in Andi
these gender agreement patterns are still operative. In Udi, these inflections remain only as the
initial /b/ on the pronoun, which formerly marked agreement for the gender of the head noun.
This thus illustrates one important source of synchronic suppletion: the ossification of
previously functional inflectional material.
In some cases, nominal suppletion for case can be difficult to disentangle from suppletion
for gender and number. In Khinalug (an isolate within Nakh-Daghestanian), demonstratives
distinguish four genders in the singular, and two genders in the plural, but crosscutting these
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
suppletive patterns are also suppletions for case, in which singulars are sometimes superficially
similar to plural forms but in ways that cannot be stated as consistent morphological rules:
(n) Khinalug demonstrative pronouns (isolate within Nakh-Daghestanian; Schulze 2003: 304)
ABS ERG=GEN1 DAT
SG I du ği x u
II dä ğwi ğu
III dä si su
IV ǯi si su
PL I dur ğózi ğózu
II dur ğózi ğózu
III ǯith sédri sédru
IV ǯith sédri sédru
In (n), the absolutive features unquestionably strong suppletion for case in gender I in the
singular, but a weaker form of suppletion in the same gender in the plural, while the other
gender forms also feature various kinds of suppletion. What is interesting here though is that
patterns of suppletion across cases are actually what distinguish particular genders from each
other. It is in other words not the case that a root dä characterizes the second gender as distinct
from other genders, but the fact that this root in the absolutive is paired with a root ğwi in the
ergative and genitive, rather than si. Si is likewise paired with dä or ǯi to indicate the third and
fourth genders, respectively.
In other cases, the question is not so much of suppletive entanglement as suppletive
cleavage that presents the analyst with problems. Khwarshi (Tsezic/Nakh-Daghestanian) is
described in Khalilova (2009: 151) as having two interrogative pronouns: one for genders I and
II for humans (‘who’) and the other for genders III, IV and V (‘what’), but this is based on the
fact that one and the same form in the absolutive apparently bifurcates into two separate
suppletive paradigms in the oblique cases, as in (n):
(n) Khwarshi interrogative pronouns
‘who’ (I/II) ‘what’ (III/IV/V)
ABS hibo
ERG ɬu ɬene
GEN1 ɬiyo ɬene-s
GEN2 ɬu-lo ɬene-lo
LAT ɬu-l ɬene-l
So here again, the issue is the pattern of suppletion within the paradigms, but in this case it is
not the distribution of roots as a question of lexical entries. If we say there is one root for all
interrogatives in the absolutive, but two in two different sets of gender paradigms, then we face
an awkward cleavage in one part of the paradigm and an overlap in another. On the other hand,
if we separate out homophonous roots for each gender possibility, then we might in fact
envision a much more complicated paradigm along the following lines:
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
(n) Alternative Khwarshi interrogative paradigm
I II III IV V
ABS hibo hibo hibo hibo hibo
ERG ɬu ɬu ɬene ɬene ɬene
GEN1 ɬiyo ɬiyo ɬene-s ɬene-s ɬene-s
GEN2 ɬu-lo ɬu-lo ɬene-lo ɬene-lo ɬene-lo
LAT ɬu-l ɬu-l ɬene-l ɬene-l ɬene-l
That is to say, seen from the perspective of Khwarshi grammar, it is not obvious that there are
two lexical items more or less analogous to English ‘who’ and ‘what’ which happen to share the
same root in the absolutive, as opposed to five lexical items that all have a homophonous root in
the absolutive but with different genders sharing different roots in the other cases. This is
important, because as we saw with the Khinalug data in (n) above, how we identify suppletive
processes depends on our prior understanding of what the set of lexical items is, and how the
cells in their paradigm structures are organized.
Khwarshi provides other constructions that complicates our identification of suppletion.
As above and with many other Nakh-Daghestanian languages, oblique stems of regular nouns
are often portrayed as being formed by overt suffixes which have no syntactic or semantic
function, since they are purely morphological markers of paradigm formation. However,
although they are involved in the formation of case paradigms, they are clearly distinct from the
actual case forms, which are discretely segmentable from root plus oblique stem suffix, as in (n):
(n) Khwarshi oblique stem formation
GLOSS CORE STEM OBLIQUE STEM
a. ‘door’ anc a
nc-ma-la [door-OBL-GEN2]
b. ‘finger’ t’u tu-lá-la [finger-OBL-GEN2]
c. ‘she-goat’ can can-á-l [she.goat-OBL-LAT]
d. ‘father’ obu obu-t’-lo [father-OBL-GEN2]
e. ‘roof’ λ’u λ’u-n-lo [roof-OBL-GEN2]
f. ‘girl’ kad kand-ɨ-lo [girl.OBL-OBL-GEN2]
In each of the forms in (n), a separate suffix attaches to the root, which then provides the
input for the genitive case (which usually agrees in vowel height with the root). Because there
are so many distinct suffixes that can be used to form oblique stems, it is not easy in principle to
distinguish between the traditional analysis in which the core and oblique forms share a
common root but differ in their oblique suffix, and an alternative analysis in which the
distinction between core and oblique stems is systematically suppletive. The evidence that these
two analyses sit uncomfortably close to one another in the history of this language is that
sometimes the oblique suffixes can become incorporated into the verbal root itself, thereby
creating an unquestionably weakly suppletive stem alternation. The contrast between (ne) and
(nf) is an illustration of this: an original –n oblique suffix underwent metathesis for originally
purely phonological reasons. This was later morphologized (nasal metathesis is not systematic
in Khwarshi) producing the current suppletive alternation.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
An even clearer case of productive weakly suppletive stem alternation comes from
Georgian, where many roots undergo what was traditionally seen as zero-grade ablaut (or
syncope) in some of their case forms (here, italicized). Consider the following case paradigms:
(n) Georgian
CASE ‘object’ ‘city’ ‘priest’ ‘general’ ‘god’
NOM sagan-i kalak-i mğvdel-i general-i ğmert-i
NARR sagan-ma kalak-ma mğvdel-ma general-ma ğmert-ma
DAT sagan-s kalak-s mğvdel-s general-s ğmert-s
GEN sagn-is kalak-is mğvdl-is generl-is ğvt-is/ğmert-is
INST sagn-it kalak-it mğvdl-it generl-it ğmert-it
ADV sagn-ad kalak-ad mğvdl-ad generl-ad ğmert-ad
VOC sagan-o kalak-o mğvdel-o general-o ğmert-o
Clearly, the locus of syncope was originally phonologically motivated, as the only cases that
undergo it are those with ‘heavy’ vowel+consonant sequences: the genitive, instrumental and
adverbial cases. This process can nonetheless not be described as a synchronically phonological
one, since otherwise metrically identical nouns like kalaki ‘city’ do not undergo this ablaut
process. As mğvdeli ‘priest’ shows, the ablaut process can also work to create phonologically
more marked structures, here by increasing the size of the (already large) initial onset cluster.
Even more clearly morphological are some syncopation alternations mentioned in Hewitt (1999:
35): tvali ‘eye’ does not syncopate (tvalis), but tvali ‘gemstone’ does (tvlis); k’ari ‘door’ does not
syncopate (k’aris), while in compounds like cisk’ari ‘dawn’, it does (cisk’ris), and so on.
In the Kartvelological literature this is usually not described as a suppletive process, in
part because it only weakly alters the stem to which the case suffix attaches – most would only
accept the single example of ğmerti ‘god’ which suppletes optionally, and only, in the genitive --
but also because it appears to be a productive process. New loan words can and often do undergo
the syncopating process, as instances like generali ‘general’ (shown above), limoni ‘lemon’,
rest’orani ‘restaurant’, panjara ‘window’, peršali ‘doctor’s assistant’, zeink’ali ‘machinist’, šakari ‘sugar’, and many others. In the light of the ill-defined nature of suppletive processes cross-
linguistically, it is a case in which our expectations about how a morphological process should
behave guide us in deciding what are cases of that process – a circular form of reasoning.
4.2 Number
As with case suppletion, number suppletion manifests an array of different kinds of
form-function pairings in the languages of the Caucasus. However, in the Caucasus, number
suppletion in nouns appears to be considerably rarer than suppletion for case. In Tsova-Tush,
for example, we see a variety of deviations from stem paradigmatic uniformity, most of which
result from diachronic phonological changes in the language. Thus in (nb), vocalic metathesis
obscures two otherwise similar noun stem forms for ‘knee’, and in many cases the loss of some
word final consonants creates stem contrasts, as with (nc). Only in a few cases, like (ne), are
strongly suppletive.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
(n) Tsova-Tush (aka Batsbi, Nakh/Nakh-Daghestanian; Holisky and Gagua 1994: 164)
GLOSS SINGULAR PLURAL
a. ‘rooster’ mamal mamal-i
b. ‘knee’ gaugu
gagu-i
c. ‘day’ de den-iš
d. ‘daughter-in-law’ nus nas-ar-i
e. ‘man’ s’tak’ vaser
f. ‘star’ t’ʕeiri t’ʕeri-ar-iš t’ʕirelč
Archi presents a few more cases of nominal suppletion for number, and in these cases the
suppletion cannot be laid at the feet of phonology. The Archi stems are fully strongly suppletive,
resulting from the merger of two originally distinct nominal paradigms :
(n) Archi (Lezgic/Nakh-Daghestanian; Hippisley et al. 2004; Chumakina et al. 2007)
GLOSS SINGULAR PLURAL
a. ‘man, husband’ bošór kɬelé
b. ‘shepherd’ uɬdu ɬ:wat
c. ‘corner of sack’ bič’ní boždó
d. ‘woman’ ɬ:onnól xom
e. ‘cow’ xʕon buc:’i
f. ‘pier of bridge’ biq’ʕni boʁdó
Why would there be such a distinct lack of suppletion in number in Caucasian languages? One
feature that often distinguishes the languages of the Caucasus from more familiar Indo-European
languages is that case and number are often realized by separate morphological exponents. This
is more or less true of all the languages of the Caucasus – even including non-autochthonous
languages like Armenian and Ossetian – but its exact realization differs for different reasons in
different languages and families. In Kartvelian languages, fusional suffixes combining person and
plural number were replaced in all languages by an originally collective suffix plus the case
marking found on singulars: Old Georgian kartvel-ni Georgian-NOM.PL became Georgian
kartvel-eb-i ‘Georgian-PL-NOM’, and cf. Mingrelian kortu-ep-i ‘Georgian-PL-NOM’, etc. Abkhaz-
Adyghean languages typically do not have extensive case systems, but where they do manifest
both case and number, they typically have distinct exponents: cf. Kabardian gyaata-r [sword-ABS]
vs. gyaata-ha-r [sword-PL-ABS] (Colarusso 1992:51). Nakh-Daghestanian languages are usually
more complicated, in that they often employ distinct plural and oblique suffixes, neither of
which formally marks case, as with Archi:
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
(n) Archi stem formation: gel ‘cup’ (Forker classnotes)
base stem plural stem
gel gel-um cup cup-PL
oblique stem oblique plural stem
gel-li-s gel-um-če-s cup-OBL.SG-DAT cup-PL-OBL.PL-DAT
Such stem formation is more complicated than in Kartvelian or Abkhaz-Adyghean, in that
oblique suffixes are partially morphomic entities that simply build paradigms, but also bear
morphosyntactic features, such as number. However, in all three families, the exponence of
features in discrete slots is far more straightforward than in more familiar Indo-European
languages, since in most Caucasian languages (nominal) stems do not appear to bear features for
case or number as such. This raises the possibility of an implicational universal along the
following lines:
(n) A language will not manifest suppletive stem allomorphy if the ratio of features (number
and case) and exponents is close to a one-to-one correspondence.
The reasoning behind this seems to be that because (weakly) suppletive stem allomorphy so
frequently results from historical phonological change that obscures surface morphological
contrasts, if phonological changes have not occurred to obscure those contrasts, there simply are
not any discrepancies between phonology and morphology that can become morphologized.
Strong suppletive contrasts of the Archi type are thus reduced to the rarity of paradigmatic
conflation, rather than the rarity of suppletion as such.
4.3 Adnominals
Adjectival forms also often undergo suppletion in many languages, though in many
languages it is not clear that they constitute a distinct syntactic class from substantival nouns.
This is especially true in the Caucasus, where the distinction between nouns and adjectives is
weak at best and sometimes completely absent.
As in many European languages, languages of the Caucasus often manifest a
morphological contrast among scalar attributive nominals between at least two grades: positive
and comparative. In some languages, this contrast is weak or found only in some lexical items.
Thus in Georgian, an attributive like k’arg-i [good-NOM] has a comparative form u-k’et-es-i [COMP-good.COMP-COMP-NOM] and a superlative sa-u-k’et-es-o [SUP-COMP-good.COMP-COMP-
SUP], but this is the exception rather than the rule, as most adnominals have only positive and
comparative synthetic forms, some of which are suppletive:
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
(n) Georgian adnominals (Hewitt 1995: 49)
GLOSS POSITIVE COMPARATIVE (SUPERLATIVE)
a. ‘good’ k’arg-i u-k’et-es-i sa-u-k’et-es-o
u-mjob-es-i sa-u-mjob-es-o
b. ‘bad’ cud-i u-ar-es-i
c. ‘few’ cot’a na-kl’-eb-i
d. ‘many’ bevr-i met’-i u-met’-es-i
e. ‘sweet’ t’k’bil-i u-t’k’b-es-i
The related language Svan has an even larger number of adnominal degrees of comparison:
positive, approximative, comparative and superlative. Thus: c’ərni ‘red’, məc’ərna ‘reddish’, xo-c’ran-a ‘redder’ and ma-c’ran-e ‘reddest’. In some cases, adnominals also have suppletive
allomorphs, but not in the same sense as in Georgian. This is because for each of these suppletive
forms, there exist two positive forms, one of which might be regular (xoča xočēl) or
canonically suppletive (xola xodrēl), but the other will form its comparative based on the
first.
(n) Svan suppletive adnominals (Palmaitis XX: 52)
GLOSS POSITIVE COMPARATIVE
a. ‘good’ xoča xočēl
ezär
b. ‘bad’ xola xodrēl
leg
c. ‘big’ xoša xošēl
ʒɣəd
d. ‘small’ xoxwra xoxwrēl
k’ot’ōl
Thus, like the Khwarshi examples above, we are faced with the question of identifying exactly
how many lexical items are behaving suppletively. However, comparative constructions often
do not make use of actual comparative morphology throughout the languages of the Caucasus.
In most languages, an alternative construction exists in which the positive form of the
adnominal is used with the standard of comparison in some kind of oblique case, such as the
Lezgian example in (n), or with a postposition (as in nb). This is true even in those languages
such as Georgian which do have comparative/superlative morphology:
(n) Lezgian comparatives (Haspelmath 1993: 432)
I dünja.da-l qhsan-bur pis-bur.u-laj gzaf ja.
this world-SESS good-SBST.PL bad-SBST.PL-SREL many COP
‘In this world the good people are more numerous than the bad people.’
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
(n) a. K’onst’ant’ine Gamsaxurdia Sakartvelo-s sa-u-k’et-es-o
K. G. Georgia-GEN SUP-COMP-good.COMP-COMP-SUP
m-c’er-al-i=a
PART-write-PART-NOM=be.3SG
‘Konstantine Gamsaxurdia is Georgia’s best writer.’
b. Gamsaxurdia Dumbadze=ze k’arg-i=a
G. Dumbadze=on good-NOM=be.3SG
‘Gamsaxurdia is better than Dumbadze.’
In such languages, adnominal suppletion is rare or absent for the simple reason that the syntactic
context that licenses it is lacking.
4.4 Numeral suppletion
Like adnominals, numerals are in many languages around the world not a distinct
syntactic class from nominals, and this is also true of many Caucasian languages. However, just
as adnominals can be morphologically distinguished by being capable of comparative inflection,
numerals in most Caucasian languages distinguish cardinal from ordinal numbers
morphologically, and often additional categories such as multiplicatives, multipliers,
distributives and fractionals. However, suppletion among Caucasian languages appears to be
restricted to the relationship between cardinals and ordinals, as illustrated by the following
Kartvelian data:
(n) Georgian / Mingrelian
7 / Svan (Amirejibi 2006: 119; Schmidt 1994: 535)
GLOSS CARDINAL ORDINAL
a. ‘one’ erti / arti / ešxu p’irveli / maarta / määnk’wi,
p’irveli, ešxu
b. ‘two’ ori / žiri / yori meore / mažira / mērme
c. ‘three’ sami / sumi / semi mesame / masuma / mēsme
d. ‘four’ otxi / otxi / wōštwx meotxe / maotxa / ?
e. ‘five’ xuti / xuti / woxwišd mexute / maxuta / ?
In the case of Georgian, the word for ‘first’ might be a borrowing from some Indo-European
source, but if so it is an early loan, since it is found in Old Georgian. In the case of the Svan
ordinal for ‘one’, we see something somewhat different. Instead of an ordinal regularly formed
from mē-…-e, as with mēsme ‘third’ from semi ‘three’, we see three different forms: määnk’wi, a native suppletive form that may use the circumfix but with a different stem; p’irveli, a
suppletive form transparently borrowed from Georgian; and a bare form ešxu morphologically
indistinct from the cardinal form – the inverse phenomenon of määnk’wi. It is noteworthy that in each language, when suppletion arises, it arises in a linear
progression from ‘one’ upward. In other families, a similar pattern is found, as in the
7 Megrelian and Laz have different realizations of numbers, but they are formed in the same way.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
Daghestanian language Khwarshi (n) and in the Abkhaz-Adyghean language Kabardian, where a
root that originally meant ‘face’ entered into the paradigm for one as an ordinal, alongside the
nonsuppletive form (n):
(n) Khwarshi (Tsezic/Nakh-Daghestanian; Khalilova 2009)
GLOSS CARDINAL ORDINAL
a. ‘one’ hos hada
b. ‘two’ q’ʕwene / q’
ʕwine q’
ʕwana
c. ‘three’ ħono ħal-la
d. ‘four’ unq’e u
nq’q’el-la
e. ‘five’ ɫino / ɫuno ɫul-la
f. ‘six’ enɫ e
nɫɫe-la
g. ‘seven’ oλ oλλe-la
(n) Kabardian (Abkhaz-Adyghean; Colarusso 1992)
GLOSS CARDINAL ORDINAL
a. ‘one’ zə yah-pa (pa- ‘face’) / ya-za-a-na
b. ‘two’ t’ʔwə, t’ə ya-t’ʔwa-a-na
c. ‘three’ śə ya-sa-a-na
d. ‘four’ p’λ’ə ya-p’λ’a-a-na
e. ‘five’ tx wə ya-tx
wa-a-na
Why would suppletion be so readily found across languages in this way? The answer clearly has
to do with frequency effects already known from previous studies of both suppletion and
numeral systems (XX, YY, ZZ). Although historical and corpus data from many Caucasian
languages are lacking, a simple look at their English equivalents shows that ordinals indeed can
have fairly constant frequencies over time:
Table X. Frequency of English ordinal numerals across time (Google N-gram)
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
Table X presents shows that although ordinals may change in frequency slightly over the
centuries, their relative frequency is remarkably stable: whatever the century, first is
approximately four times as frequent as second, second is approximately twice as frequent as
third, third about twice as frequent as fourth, and so on in rough conformity with Zipf’s Law.
Thus it is not surprising that instances of suppletion among Caucasian languages occur precisely
in those places where token frequency is greatest.
Part II. Phylogeny and Areality
§5. Areal Distribution
The above survey of suppletive processes in Caucasian languages has touched on a few of
the larger crosslinguistic implications of suppletion as a morphological process, but there is a
larger question surrounding suppletion, and this is that if suppletion is a feature of the lexicon as
has so often been assumed (XX, YY), then do we see extensive evidence of language contact as a
factor feeding the creation of suppletive processes, or is suppletion a phenomenon that arises
largely language-internally? The answer in most of the examples above seems to be the latter:
we do not see extensive evidence of loan words providing input for suppletive paradigms. This is
a curious fact considering how frequent lexical borrowing has otherwise been in the Caucasus
(Chirikba 2008).
One way of viewing this is that it is a side-effect of the frequency effects that have
already been noted in cross-linguistic studies of suppletion. If a language borrows a new lexeme
from a neighboring language in contact, there is no guarantee that that lexeme will be a
frequent one early in the borrowing process, or even centuries later. But there is another
possible reason, and this is that for a borrowed word to enter into a suppletive paradigm with a
preexisting word, the language must generally already have a grammatical category to provide a
framework for that paradigm. Consequently, when we look at suppletive trends across the three
autochthonous families, we see that indeed the kinds of suppletion that exist in them do not
always seem to fall into the same categories: the kinds of tenses, for example, and the way tenses
are formed, vary significantly across the three families, and not surprisingly the extent to which
suppletion is found across them in that category varies as well. In some families, a category like
gender will be robust (e.g. Nakh-Daghestanian), allowing for suppletion, while in others it will
be weak (Abkhaz-Adyghean) or entirely absent (Kartvelian), leading to rarity or absence of
suppletion for it. An examination of Table X summarizes these trends, including English as a
control case.
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
Table X. Suppletive trends across Caucasian languages
Strong (√) / weak (w) / no (*)
suppletion for:
NAKH-
DAGHESTANIAN
KARTVELIAN
ABKHAZ-
ADYGHEAN
ENGLISH
verbal lexical contrast
tense √ √+ * √+
aspect √ √ * *
mood √ * * *
person * √ * √
number √ √ √ w
gender rare * * *
substantive nominals
case
number
√ √ * √ (pronouns)
√ √ ? √ (pronouns)
adnominals rare √ rare √
numerals √ √ marginal √
[‘+’ indicates extensive suppletion for a given category.]
§6. Whence suppletion?
Such a chart serves to highlight the morpholexical and morphosyntactic diversity of the
Caucasus as a linguistic area, rather than its oft-presumed unity. From the perspective of
suppletion, languages like Abkhaz actually have more in common with a language like English
(here used as a control) than neighboring families like Nakh-Daghestanian or Kartvelian. But
what it does not illustrate is the underlying mechanisms that we encountered above that
engender or obviate suppletion in the first place. These can be summarized as follows:
(n) a. Phonological sound-change leading to stem alternations. E.g. Khwarshi oblique stem
formation (n) or Tsova-Tush plural noun stems (n)
b. Competing morphosyntactic constructions. E.g. Georgian adnominals in comparative
constructions (n); Svan ordinal numerals (n);
c. Ossification of moribund morphological processes. E.g. Udi possessive pronouns with
ossified gender prefixes (n)
d. Paradigmatic gaps becoming filled by other stems. E.g. Georgian tense forms, Table 2.
e. Lexical borrowing. E.g. Svan ordinal numerals (n)
The picture we see from this study of suppletion across Caucasian languages is that it is in
fact a rather complicated morphological phenomenon with multiple sources. In some cases,
such as the formation of Khwarshi oblique stems, we saw that processes external to morphology
proper can trigger quite localized changes to the morphological system in place. In other cases,
such as the adoption of a new construction (or the loss of an old) for making comparisons, a
language may gain (or lose) the possibility of new suppletive forms simply because the entire
[DRAFT:] Suppletion in the Languages of the Caucasus
subsystem works differently now. But perhaps the most interesting fact of this study is how
suppletion is revealed to be the result of commonplace morphological processes working in the
context of entire systems of morphology. Suppletion is, in other words, not a side-show, but a
very revealing way to understand the core of natural language morphological systems.
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Contact:
Dr. Thomas R. Wier Free University of Tbilisi
University Campus of Dighomi
Davit Aghmashenebeli Alley, 13km
Tbilisi 0131, Georgia
Email: trwier AT gmail DOT com
t.wier AT freeuni DOT edu DOT ge