Azeri affixes in Udi
Summary
Description
Information and examples are from Maisak (2019:339) and Maisak (2023:66). The Udi people have been using Azeri as a second language for centuries, and in the village of Nizh (Azerbaijan), where the majority of Udi speakers live, Udi speakers are nowadays functionally bilingual in Azeri (Schulze 2016). Udi displays strong contact-induced changes from Azeri on all linguistic levels.
1 conditional clitic
- =sa ‘conditional’, e.g. bak-e=ne=sa (become-perfect=3.singular=conditional) ‘if s/he was’. The clitic =sa is also used on verbs and nouns to mark the standard of comparison and it combines with the third person clitic into =ne=sa which is described as an indefinite pronoun, e.g. šu=ne=sa (who=3.singular=conditional) ‘someone’ (Maisak 2019:340).
1 ordinal numeral formation
- -(i)mǯi ‘ordinal numeral’, e.g. sa-mǯi ‘first’, χib-imǯi (three-ordinal) ‘third’.
1 privative adjectivizer
- -suz ‘privative’, e.g. χe-suz (water-privative) ‘not having water’, išqːar-suz (husband-privative) ‘not having a husband’. This suffix is in competition with the native Udi privative/negative morpheme nutː.
3 nominal/nominalizer suffixes
- -lu ‘related to X’, e.g. niˁžˁ-lu (Nizh-attributive) ‘inhabitant of Nizh (village)’.
- -luʁ ‘abstract or status noun’, e.g. muˁq-luʁ (glad-nominalizer) ‘joy’. This suffix is highly productive (Schulze 2002:122).
- -či ‘agent noun’, e.g. zido-či (iron-agent) ‘smith’. It is rare with native words in the written sources, but in spoken Udi, hybrid formations with this suffix can incidentally be heard (Schulze 2002:123). These are often certain calques modelled after Azeri lexemes.