The Typological Status of the Nakh Languages

The article describes the features of the manifestation of agglutinative and inflective ways of forming linguistic units (words, word forms, phrases, and sentences) in the Nakh languages in order to clarify the morphological type of these languages. The analysis is conducted at the phonetic, morphemic, morphological, word-formation, and syntactic levels of the language. Traditionally, the Nakh languages are classified by linguists as affixing languages, as one of the main methods of form and word formation is affixation. The study showed that the languages under consideration demonstrate signs of agglutination as the dominant method of form- and word formation: multifunctional affixes, affixal word formation, suffixal word inflection, phonetic changes of sounds at the junction of morphemes, clearly defined boundaries between morphemes, and the absence of personal verb conjugation. At the same time, signs of inflection (analyticity, syntheticity) were found. It has been established that inflection in the Nakh languages is a phenomenon of a later origin than agglutination, and that analyticity preceded syntheticity, the emergence of analyticity in the Nakh languages is due to the presence of a large number of verbal nominal forms, function words, and affixed words. Since the Nakh languages are characterized by both agglutinative (to a greater extent) and inflectional methods of form- and word formation, we consider it appropriate to classify them as affixing agglutinative-inflectional languages.