Who fulfills a wish? On supernatural ergatives in Nakh-Daghestanian languages

Blessings and curses are peculiar in that, like imperatives, they imply performing a wish, but, unlike imperatives, the intended performer is not the addressee but a supernatural power. Impersonal constructions are typical for wish-formulas, since, as there is often only one supernatural power, there is no need to refer to it by linguistic means:

Russian

(1) čtob teb’a razorva-l-o!
COMPL you.SG.ACC tear-PST-SG.N

‘May you be torn apart!’

Another option is to express the performer explicitly: *Que dieu vous garde!* The name of the superficial power in blessings and curses can be grammaticalized in the languages of the world, e.g. Wolof (Guerin 2020). In Jóola Fóoñi (Atlantic), the biclausal construction with the matrix clause *Emitey ekaan* ‘Let God make (that)’, was reanalysed as a monoclausal construction where the sequence *Emitey ekaan* acts as an optative particle (Creissels & Bassène 2022):

(2) Emitey ε-kaan Emitey ε-bɔncɛt-ɔ
God(E) sI.clE-make God(E) sI.clE-forgive-I.clA

Lit. ‘Let God make that God will forgive him / her!’

In this talk, I will show how the performer of blessings and curses is expressed in Nakh-Daghestanian languages (Northern Caucasus).

Most languages of Daghestan have a morphological optative, a category dedicated to the expression of blessings and curses. The implicit performer of most wishes is commonly understood to be Allah. Native speakers often translate optative utterances into Russian using the word ‘Allah’, even if it was not present in the original sentence; in other cases, however it is explicitly expressed as an address.

Notably, in some languages, eg. Rutul (Lezgic), the word ‘Allah’ may be expressed as an ergative subject in intransitive sentences which normally do not allow ergative arguments (3):

(3) Rutul

allah-a-ra saɣ jiš-ij žu-di duɣ
Allah-OBL-ERG healthy 1.become-OPT REFL.M-ATTR son

May his son be healthy!

Unlike Rutul, Mehweb (Dargwa) intransitive verbs cannot have the ergative of *Allah* in the optative construction, but regularly add a causative marker; through valency increase, they add a position for the supernatural ergative. The optative of the verb thus causativized has exactly the same meaning as its non-causative counterpart (4), except that the former may introduce *Allah* as an ergative subject (5).

(4) Mehweb

hum-be ʾaʿχ d-uh-a-b!
road-pl good npl-become:pfv-irr-opt
'May you have a good trip!'

(5) Mehweb

allah-li hum-be ʔaʕχ d-uh-aq-a-b!

Allah-obl(erg) road-pl good npl-become:pfv-caus-irr-opt

'May you have a good trip with the help of God!'

To sum up, some Daghestanian languages explicitly express the performer of the blessings and curses as an agent even in the constructions which otherwise do not suppose the presence of agent. The nearest analogy are meteorological constructions, which often have dummy (expletive) subjects, a cross-linguistically common phenomenon also attested in Daghestan ('world', 'weather' or such). Cross-linguistically, meteorological predicates are also attested with so-called mythological subjects (see examples from Japanese and Uralic languages in Malchukov & Ogawa 2011, Salo 2011). While the subject of meteorological predicates is an S, the subject of blessings and curses is an Agent, and is thus coded by the ergative case.

References

Creissels, Denis, and Alain Christian Bassène. 'The emergence of an optative marker in Jóola Fóoñi (Atlantic)'. *Syntax and Semantics* 22. 101-119.

Guérin, Maximilien. Optatif et prohibitif en wolof : description et hypothèses de grammaticalisation

Malchukov, Andrej, and Akio Ogawa. 2011. Towards a typology of impersonal constructions. In: Malchukov, Andrej, and Anna Siewierska, eds. Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Vol. 124. John Benjamins Publishing.

Salo, Merja. 2011. Meteorological verbs in Uralic languages – are there any impersonal structures to be found. In: Malchukov, Andrej, and Anna Siewierska, eds. Impersonal constructions: A cross-linguistic perspective. Vol. 124. John Benjamins Publishing.