The Desiderative in Bezhta¹

Abstract This paper describes the Bezhta desiderative constructions expressed by sentential and affixal complementation. The latter type of complementation is rare in the Nakh‐Daghestanian languages. Although the desiderative affix forms a morphologically single predicate, the resulting construction exhibits properties of a biclausal structure. Furthermore, the Bezhta data confirm the prediction that the closer the semantic connection between events, the stronger the syntactic integration between them (Givón 1980).