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This article provides an overview of case systems in Daghestanian languages. First, it describes classification of the Nakh-Daghestanian, of which Daghestanian is a regional subset (rather than a genetic subgroup). In most Nakh-Daghestanian languages, declension mostly follows a two-stem pattern: all cases except nominative are derived from a common stem called oblique, while the nominative case is derived from a direct stem and is most often formally identical to it (thus being zero marked). The oblique stem is derived from the direct stem by adding various morphemes called oblique stem markers. A rare typological feature of the Daghestanian languages is the presence of an agreement position in some case markers, including genitives in human noun declension in Bagvalal (controlled by the class of the head) or affective in Andi and Tukita Karata and some locative forms in Dargwa and Lak. This article also describes case marking in Daghestanian languages as well as non-local cases, spatial forms, place names and natural locations, adnominal and predicative possession, and instrumental case.

The paper describes the form and behavior of placeholders in Udi and Agul, two languages belonging to the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian family. The placeholders found in these languages show clear similarity despite the fact that they developed independently. In both languages, nominal placeholders originate from interrogative pronouns, which in combination with the verb 'do' serve as a source for verbal placeholders. In Udi, placeholders further gave rise to a similative construction describing a set of individuals or events on the basis of their similarity to a specific referent or situation. Finally, we suggest hypotheses concerning the development of placeholders and the correlations between their form and the overall typological profile of a language. 1 This paper is based on our talk given at the Conference on the Languages of the Caucasus in 2007 (Leipzig, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). We are grateful to the audience of the conference as well as to Nino Amiridze, Boyd Davis, Margaret Maclagan, and Vera Podlesskaya for discussions. All errors are ours. This material is based upon work supported in part by the RGNF grant No. 09-04-00332a. 2 Our Udi corpus was recorded in 2004-2006 in the village of Nizh, Azerbaijan, and represents the Nizh dialect of Udi; a sample of Udi spontaneous speech was published in Ganenkov et al. (2008). The Agul corpus used here was recorded in 2004-2005 by Dmitry Ganenkov, Timur Maisak and Solmaz Merdanova in the village of Huppuq', Daghestan, and represents the Huppuq' dialect of Agul.

The article argues that the syntactic behavior of non-absolutive subjects of finite clauses in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Chirag Dargwa is a result of their interaction with two different functional heads in a clause: v and T. Discussing empirical data from Chirag, I present the puzzling behavior of person agreement, which shows selective sensitivity to arguments in the ergative, dative, and genitive cases. The primary evidence comes from the periphrastic causative, which displays some typologically unusual properties in case marking and agreement. I show that the ability to trigger person agreement is not an intrinsic property of ergative, dative, and genitive DPs in Chirag, but rather is endowed to the highest DP in T’s c-command domain over the course of the derivation. I propose that all non-absolutive subjects start out as DPs assigned inherent case and a theta-role by v, and that T further assigns structural nominative case to the DP in Spec,vP, thus making it accessible to φ-probes.

The article discusses the OC-NC generalization ( Landau 2004 , 2015 ) that establishes a relationship between the obligatory control nature of a construction and its semantic (tensedness/attitude) and formal (morphological agreement) properties. I discuss three counterexamples attested in languages of the Caucasus and demonstrate that complements of desiderative verbs in these languages violate predictions of the generalization: agreeing tensed complements instantiate obligatory control, or uninflected tensed complements are noncontrolled. I also give references to other potential counterexamples and discuss issues raised by the empirical evidence, ultimately arguing that no such typological universal holds.