Grammaticalization in the North Caucasian languages

The chapter presents an overview of selected grammaticalization phenomena in the two branches of the (North) Caucasian languages: the Circassian branch of the Northwest Caucasian family and the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian family. For the former, we focus on the grammaticalization of body-part nouns as locative applicative prefixes and of motion verbs as suffixes with abstract Aktionsart-like meanings, and on various constructions with auxiliary verbs, showing that rich polysynthetic morphosyntax of Circassian languages provides means to differentiate degrees of integration of such complexes. For the Lezgic languages, we concentrate on the grammaticalization and morphologization of matrix verbs which includes not only well-known cases like copulas and existential verbs becoming auxiliaries in various periphrastic tense-aspect forms—‘do’ becoming a causative auxiliary or ‘say’ becoming a quotative or reportative marker—but also a typologically rare development of the verb ‘see’ into a ‘verificative’ marker ?to find out whether the situation takes place’.