The Nominal Domain in Languages of the Caucasus
This chapter aims to address how Caucasian languages behave in terms of the dichotomy between noun phrases (NPs) and determiner phrases (DPs), dichotomy as specifically discussed in Bošković (2005, 2008, 2012). It uses comparative data from three Caucasian languages, namely, Laz, Abkhaz, and Kabardian. These three languages are chosen because typologically they make use of different strategies to express (in)definiteness. Abkhaz has definite and indefinite articles, while Pazar Laz is a language without articles. Kabardian, which also lacks articles, expresses definiteness and specificity through case morphology. Using Bošković’s own criteria, we show that, we shown that the NP/DP split is not enough to handle the differences among these languages. We propose that a new typology, one that allows for NP- and DP-languages as well as Kase Phrase (KP-) and null-DP-, languages is required to capture the properties of Abkhaz, Pazar Laz, and Kabardian. The chapter then discusses the implications of this new typology for the internal structures of the nominals in these three languages with a focus on what other functional projections are available and how they are ordered in the nominal domains.