Caucasian Substrate in the History of Indo-European Case

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Caucasian Substrate in the History of Indo-European Case

LEONID KULIKOV University of Leiden, Netherlands Areal features and substrate influence in the diachronic typology of case systems: Caucasian substrate in the history of Indo-European case The present paper deals with a diachronic typology of case systems, concentrating on evidence available from the history of cases in Indo-European languages. The Indo-European family provides an enormous variety of types of development: we can observe all the three logically possible evolutionary types of languages. There are languages which attest (i) the increase and expansion of case systems (case-increasing languages; cf. New Indo-Aryan, Ossetic, Tocharian); (ii) the loss of cases and decay of case systems (case-reducing languages; cf. Italic/Romance and Celtic, Germanic, Albanian, Greek); and (iii) processes which do not lead to quantitative changes in case systems but help to resist phonetic erosion (case-stable languages; cf. Armenian, Slavic, Baltic). Most interestingly, these sub-types are not chaotically distributed over the map of the Indo- European languages but represent areal features. I will argue that the main factors determining the evolutionary type of a language include language contact and substrate influence. Thus, the conservatism of Balto-Slavic in their case systems (note that Old Lithuanian has even extended its case system, developing three new locatives) is likely to be due to the influence of the neighbouring Finno-Ugric languages with their rich case systems, which, in particular, include a number of locatives. Likewise, the development of the agglutinating case in Ossetic must be due to the East Caucasian influence. Another telling example of the stable type is provided by Armenian, which has preserved the original Proto-Indo-European system of case oppositions intact, in spite of the heavy phonetic erosion in the auslaut, thus being even more ‘case-stable’ than the phonologically more conservative Slavic and Baltic languages. By contrast, Balkan languages attest quite dramatic reduction of the Proto-Indo-European case system, ending up with 2 or 3 cases at maximum (cf. Rumanian, Albanian, Greek and Bulgarian). As in the case of Indo-Aryan, Ossetic and Balto-Slavic languages, these developments may be due to substrate influence. Moreover, we can make some cautious assumptions about the character of the case system (and, possibly, some other grammatical features) of the hypothetical language(s) with which (some) ancient Balkan languages could be in contact (the language documented in the undeciphered linear A?) and perhaps even to suggest its/their genetic affiliation. The recent attempts to compare this unknown language, on the basis of purely phonetic features betrayed by the system of linear A, with the North-West Caucasian linguistic type, are corroborated by the reconstruction of the Proto-North-Caucasian case system (Chirikba, p.c.), which, most likely, counted no more than three cases, Absolutive, Ergative, and Oblique (Dative/Genitive?). .

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