Dargwa

AbstractThis chapter is a description of Dargwa based on the data of the Tanti dialect. Dargwa, which is spoken in Central Dagestan, constitutes a separate branch of the Nakh-Dagestanian family. Dargwa is known for its dialectal variation: many researchers believe that it should be treated as a language group. Nouns in Dargwa have the category of gender (in the singular: masculine–feminine–neuter, in the plural: first/second person plural–human–non-human). Nominal forms are derived from two stems, direct and oblique, in both singular and plural. The nominal system includes five to seven forms of non-locative cases and a number of locative (spatial) forms opposed as to localization, orientation, and, in some dialects, direction. Most verbal roots have a perfective and an imperfective form within a single verbal paradigm. The verbal system is also rich with multiple TAM-paradigms and non-finite forms (participles, convers, deverbal nouns). An important syntactic feature of Dargwa is a well-developed system of person agreement with a typologically rare opposition of the second person singular versus first person (singular and plural) + second person plural (the third person is usually unmarked). Like other Nakh-Dagestanian languages, Dargwa is morphologically ergative, left-branching (SOV), with free word order. Clause coordination is relatively rare, most dependent clauses are headed by non-finite verb forms.