The aim of this study is to identify valency classes in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA; < Semitic) varieties spoken in Urmiya, Krasnodar Krai. These varieties’ homelands are in the borderland of the present-day Iran, Turkey and Iraq. NENA speakers settled in Urmiya following several waves of migrations and multiple contacts with other languages (Iranic, Turkic, Russian, etc.).

This study is part of a broad typological project based on a questionnaire comprising 130 bivalent predicates. Language-particular valency classes are identified based on devices employed for encoding two predefined arguments.

In the NENA varieties of Urmiya, the main encoding devices are verb indexing for subjects and (direct) objects and prepositions employed for flagging oblique arguments.

Compared to other languages of Eurasia, including, e.g., Hebrew and Standard Arabic, the NENA varieties of Urmiya display a moderately-sized class of transitive verbs, which is typical of the languages of the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. This class covers a cross-linguistically predictable set of meanings, but displays an unusual pattern of differential object marking, which simultaneously includes optional object agreement and optional flagging by the dative-like preposition ka.

Individual intransitive classes are, by contrast, rather unpredictable in a typological perspective. Unusual features include a systematic ablative-comitative syncretism and idiosyncratic competition between mən and bi in source-like arguments and between ka and +al in goal-like arguments.

Finally, the NENA varieties display valency patterns with an extraposed noun phrase unindexed on the verb. These patterns reflect a transitory stage between discourse-motivated fronting and a nascent type of integrated argument structure.

There is both language-internal and cross-linguistic evidence to the effect that the valency class system in the NENA varieties of Urmiya is in a diachronically unstable state, which arguably reflects multiple contact situations and dialectal diversity.