In defence of intragenetic typology: evidence from clause coordination in Daghestanian languages

In this study the technique of semantic clause coordination in 20 Daghestanian languages (DLs) is explored. (Semantic) clause coordination is a (usually biclausal) construction activating cognitively conjugate events occurring simultaneously or sequentially. In accordance with that, there is typically coreference between participants of the two clauses, e.g. The boyi beat the girl and Øi went away (where the subject of the first clause is the antecedent and the subject of the second one is a zero anaphor); The boy beat the girli and shei / the girli went away (where the subject of the second clause is a pronominal / full NP anaphor). Semantic clause coordination can be expressed by a syntactically subordinate construction. This is the case in the majority of DLs. However, this is not the main property of DLs. Typologically, DLs demonstrate a striking variation of techniques used for the expression of interclausal coreference relations. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find two languages identical in this respect. That means that clause coordination cannot be explained in terms of specific constructions in specific DLs. Nevertheless, we assume that being extremely multiform these constructions are restricted in terms of parameterized principles and strategies rather than in terms of constructions themselves. The exhaustive description of the empirical data of DLs based on a restricted set of principles (such as the principle of distinguishability, principles of syntactic neutrality vs. accusativity, principles of structural or linear priority and so on) and strategies (such as syntactic coordination vs. subordination, dependent clause marking, anaphor marking) as well as techniques of their interplay are proposed. It is claimed that this theoretical approach (1) restricts the set of possible constructions and (2) explains the nature of multiplicity of coordinate constructions and the cognitive and semiotic sources of restrictions. It is crucial that none of the principles or strategies is obligatory, each of them can be lifted in a specific construction. At the same time, principles and strategies are not fully independent: choosing a value of a principle/strategy may have implications for other choices. In this paper the proposed approach will be illustrated by examples, demonstrating the most common values of principles and strategies. The data under investigation contradict the widely spread claim about the syntactically accusative behavior of languages with the ergative alignment. In our sample, in ten languages (ПЕРЕЧИСЛИТЬ?) coreference is marked by zero anaphors alone, while seven languages (ПЕРЕЧИСЛИТЬ?) use various types of anaphor marking, whose distribution is motivated by communicative statuses, such as topic and focus. In the latter class of languages more or less marked referring expressions can be used, as predicted by Anaphor Marking Hierarchy: Ø < Third person pronoun / demonstrative < Emphatic / reflexive pronoun < Full NP