enaTmecnierebis sakiTxebi ISSUES OF LINGUISTICS - Tbilisi State ...

Although Tsova-tush is similar to Georgian in one respect (both can be qualified as
role-deixis-oriented languages), it also differs from Georgian in a significant way:
it seems that due to the contacts with the Georgian language, Tsova-tush
distinguishes the I/II versus III dichotomy, although its formalization takes place
only after the grammaticalization of the class category which is basic for the
prototypical ergative constructions. That is, it keeps the original category as the
stronger one and puts it on a higher position in the hierarchy.
We suppose that hierarchies can give us a new understanding of the nature of
linguistic changes in the situation of language interferences: when new categories
or structures rise in languages because of contacts (or because of internally
motivated variations), the old ones do not disappear, on the contrary, they occupy a
high position in a hierarchically organized linguistic system of grammatical
categories.
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