The ‘say’ strategy for ordinal numerals in East Caucasian

Abstract Many East Caucasian languages form ordinal numerals by means of a participle form of the verb ‘say’. This way of ordinal formation, which we refer to as the ‘say’ strategy, is cross-linguistically rare. In this paper we analyze the genealogical and areal distribution of the ‘say’ strategy within the family. We argue that this way of forming ordinals spread due to a combination of genealogical and areal factors. More precisely, we argue that the ‘say’ strategy is an instance of shared grammaticalization that has emerged on the proto-level and has then been renewed multiple times due to language contact. In the languages that are either not in contact with the other languages of the family or are in active contact with genealogically unrelated languages, the ordinal marker has lost the synchronic connection to ‘say’ or perhaps was never connected to it.