Exuberant Exponence in Batsbi

Alice Carmichael Harris

Abstract

Although multiple exponence has long been recognized by some, morpheme-based theories predict that it will not exist. To deal with the existence of double exponence in some languages, a variety of ways have been sought around the restrictions imposed by these theories. In Batsbi, a language of the Nakh-Dagestanian family, in principle as many as six markers may occur in a single verb (five gender-number markers and one person-number marker), each agreeing in many instances with the same argument; in fact, examples presented here have up to four agreement markers. The implications of this for linguistic theory are explored. An analysis is proposed in terms of word-based morphology.