Introduction to the Diachrony: Origins of Udi Morphosyntax

Abstract One goal of Part III of this book is to explain from a diachronic point of view how Udi came to violate the Lexical Integrity Principle. This part provides an explanation of why Udi is different from most other languages in having endoclitics and how it got to be different from other languages of the North East Caucasian family and the Lezgian subgroup, to which it belongs. An additional goal is to explain how Udi came to place PMs in so many different positions (see Chapter 6) under different conditions. Both of these explanations are undertaken in Chapter 12, drawing on diachronic descriptions developed in Chapters 8 – 11. This chapter provides background on the NEC family, describing relationships within the family and within the subgroup (§8.1) and reconstructing case marking (§8.2) and agreement (§8.3) in the Lezgian subgroup, based of course on comparison within this subgroup. A second goal of the chapter is to demonstrate the pronominal origin of the three main sets of PMs (§8.4) and to discuss possible origins of the question PM (§8.5) on the basis of internal reconstruction. It is only the origins of the morphological shape of PMs that is addressed in this chapter, and the development of the positions of PMs is deferred to Chapters 9 – 10 and 12.