Language Contact and Documentation: Contacto Linguistico y Documentacion

An introduction to the Atlas of the Araxes-Iran Linguistic Area 345
convergence features I would like to demonstrate in the Atlas. The sentence
demonstrates the following five very common features – in this case all syntactic
– that almost all AILA languages share:
1. The non-use of the infinitive (also a well-known feature of Balkan languages):
even though an infinitive (or an equivalent verbal noun) exists in
most AILA languages, the subjunctive is used after modals (‘want, can,
must’) as well as main verbs (‘prefer to, like to, decide to, be afraid to’,
etc.) even when subjects of both verbs are coreferential (usually requiring
an infinitive in various other parts of the world, e.g., Spanish, French, German,
Russian, etc.). In some AILA languages an infinitive or verbal noun
is occasionally used with certain modals, e.g., ‘can’.
2. SOV: The verb is generally clause-final (“I apple buy”). Note that, while
SOV is typical of these languages, they are not rigidly verb-final. Definite
nouns may sometimes occur in postverbal position.
3. The modal (or main verb) is not in final position and is not necessarily
next to the dependent verb it controls (but often has a certain flexibility of
position).
4. Singular forms of the noun are generally used after numerals.
5. A numeral classifier is used between the numeral and the noun (“three
grain apple”). The classifier systems of these languages are very simple,
not usually exhibiting more than two classifiers, although a few others are
sometimes used. The classifier in Georgian, which is on the AILA periphery,
is optional and not very common. In most AILA languages, the most
general classifier means ‘grain, seed’, used even with human nouns.
(1) Example in a. Georgian; b. Colloquial Armenian; c. Colloquial Azerbaijani;
and d. Northern Talyshi:
a. šen ginda sami (c h ali) vašli 0̸ -iqid-o
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b. du uzumes yerek h haṭ xənʓor 0̸ -ařn-es
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c. sæn istirsæn üč dana alma al-a-san
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d. tï peday se gïla sef bï-san-iš
you want:pres:2s three grain apple:sg buy: subjunct:2s
‘You want to buy three apples’
When we compare c. Colloquial Azerbaijani, for example, with its nearest relative
outside the AILA zone, Standard Turkish, we see that the word roots in
this sentence are almost identical in the two languages: