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11 - Expressive constructions in Georgian and other Caucasian languages
from Caucasian
- By Thomas R. Wier
Edited by Jeffrey P. Williams, Texas Tech University
Book:

Expressivity in European Languages

Published online:

24 August 2023

Print publication:

07 September 2023, pp 337-358
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Summary

Expressive and ideophonic constructions conveying ‘marked words that depict sensory imagery’ (Dingemanse 2012) are frequently found in the languages of all regions of the world, but their distribution, use and functioning across languages of the Caucasus has never been documented from a regional perspective. This chapter surveys the various kinds of expressive language present in the three autochthonous Caucasian families: Abkhaz-Adyghean, Kartvelian, and Nakh-Daghestanian. It also looks in depth at the specific morphological and syntactic peculiarities of expressives in Georgian, which exhibit exuberant consonant clusters, processes of reduplication uncharacteristic of the language as a whole, as well as specific morphosyntactic alignment splits between different classes of expressive. Expressives will be seen not to be one thing, but many.