Chapter 8. Three types of verb stem levelling in Tat

Abstract

This paper explores phenomena affecting to various degrees the historical opposition of two verb stems in Tat, an Iranian language spoken in the Caucasus. Using corpora from a number of Tat varieties collected by different authors throughout the past century and a half as well interviews with modern-day native speakers, I illustrate the gradual blurring of the distinction between the stems resulting from what appears to be a morphological change in progress.