1 ♦ EAST CAUCASIAN PREVERBS AND THE COMPOUNDING-DERIVATION-INFLECTION CONTINUUM ♦ Pavia, 11 September 2014 Timur Maisak Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences Preverbs in Agul: an elaborate system of locative prefixation 1. Agul and its verbal derivation 1.1. Basic facts about Agul (Aghul) • Lezgic branch of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) family • About 30,000 speakers • 20 mountain villages in the Agul district and the Kurah district of Daghestan, Russia (+ those resettled on the lowlands) • Seven dialects: (i) CENTRAL AGUL, (ii) CIRXE (TSIRKHE), (iii) FITE, (iv) GEQUN (BURKIKHAN), (v) HUPPUQ , (vi) KEREN, (vii) QUSHAN. • The QUSHAN dialect is hardly understandable by speakers of other varieties. • Below, the HUPPUQ dialect is the default one. 1.2. Suffixes and prefixes in inflection and derivation • Nominal inflection: rich system of cases (absolutive, ergative, dative, genitive, comitative and ~20 locative cases); plural marking – all suffixal • Nominal derivation: a few suffixes, not very productive • Verbal inflection: mostly suffixal (non-finite and non-indicative forms) or periphrastic forms (in the indicative); prefixal negation (negative and prohibitive markers) • Verbal derivation: rich system of locative prefixes , and also (in southern dialects) a repetitive prefix (almost inflectional); productive pattern of complex verbs Cen tral Cirxe Fi te Gequn Huppuq Keren Qushan