Towards a description of the semantic field ‘falling’ in Rutul

This paper aims to describe the semantic filed of ‘falling’ in Rutul (< Lezgic < East Caucasian). Our research is based on the data from Kina Rutul variety, which is spoken in the village of Kina (Rutulsky district, Dagestan, Russia). All the data have been elicited. For our analysis, we use a frame-based methodology for lexical typology. Rutul language is typologically unusual since it lacks verbs with lexical meaning ‘to fall’ (however, this seems to be not so rare in the East Caucasian language family). Still, Rutul has means to express the relevant semantic oppositions in the ‘falling’ domain, such as various initial positions (e.g. falling from a container, falling from a vertical position) and subjects of falling (animate / inanimate, singular / plural, countable / mass). Rutul uses verbs of motion and posture such as -irxur ‘appear’, -eč’ur ‘move (intr.)’, lukur ‘lie’, -aˁʁuˁr ‘pour’, ruʔur ‘come’. -irxur ‘appear’, combined with spatial verbal prefixes and spatial adverbs, as in saʔ ʔ-i‹r›xu-r down in-<1>appear.pfv-cvb ‘fall down’, describes almost all types of falling. The verbs are combined with spatial prefixes ʔ- ‘into’, s- ‘down’, l- ‘up’, ʁ- ‘out’, k- ‘in contact’ and g- ‘under’ and spatial adverbs saʔ ‘down’, ʁaʔ ‘out’ and aʔ ‘inside’. There may be up to two spatial prefixes in one verb form, as in gi-ʁ-i‹b›xu-r under-out-<3>appear.pfv-cvb ‘fall off’. In case there are two preverbs, the second one is obligatorily ʁ- ‘out’. There are verbs that cannot be used without a verbal prefix (e.g. verbs derived from -irxur ‘appear’), but spatial adverbs are usually optional. The choice of verbal prefix is governed by peculiarities of the ending point of falling and the presence or absence of saʔ ‘down’. For example, the preverb ʔ- ‘into’ is obligatorily used if the ending point of falling is inside a container (in a pit, for example). The adverb saʔ ‘down’ is obligatory in a limited number of contexts.