Focus Clefts and the Origins of Focus in Udi

Abstract The focus-marking property of PMs in Udi, while not unique among languages of the world, is quite remarkable. An investigation of its origin and that of the partially similar focus marking in other languages of the North East Caucasian family explains a number of aspects of the current system. Given the contacts of Udi with other languages during the last two millennia, the development of the category of person (in agreement) is likely to have been influenced by Azeri (Azerbaijani), Georgian, Armenian, Persian, and other non-NEC languages. Development of focus marking is also likely to have been influenced by these sources, but especially by Azeri, which has both focus clefts and at least some of the kinds of focus word order found in Turkish. According to the criteria established by Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 57 –64), evidence for the likelihood of influence by Azeri in these aspects of the grammar is the fact that Udi has also been influenced by this language (as well as others) in other subsystems, notably the lexicon, with obvious borrowings such as baγ ‘garden’, buz ‘ice’, vaxt’ ‘time’ (Azeri vaxt), q’onaγ ‘guest’ (Azeri qonaq).3 Nevertheless, the person agreement system developed by Udi is entirely unlike anything in Azeri or the other contact languages, in the sense that only in Udi have we identified such a variety of positions under specific conditions (see Chapter 6), and only Udi has PMs that invade verbs, even monomorphemic verb roots. For this reason, and because internal mechanisms are often involved even in instances of contact, we must look also for internal causes, internal mechanisms, and internal explanations.