Bi-absolutive constructions in Chechen

Abstract This study presents new data on the bi-absolutive construction in Chechen, a Nakh-Daghestanian language spoken in the northern Caucasus. The basic case frame in a transitive clause in Chechen is ergative-absolutive. In progressive constructions with an auxiliary and a simultaneous converb, the basic case frame alternates with an absolutive-absolutive – or bi-absolutive – construction. To assess the factors conditioning this alternation, we use data from two corpora (one of spoken narratives and one of written newspaper articles) and data elicited from native speakers using visual (video and picture) stimuli. We discuss conditions on the relatively infrequent bi-absolutive construction in terms of (in)animacy/humanness of the A argument, verb class, discourse-based factors, and aspectual meaning. We connect our results to existing studies of bi-absolutive constructions in other Nakh-Daghestanian languages as well as to methodological challenges associated with the study of minority patterns in under-resourced languages.