Semantic Invariant of the Verbal Suffix -Š in Balkar

The paper addresses semantics of the reciprocal marker -š in KarachayBalkar. The goal of the study is to find the semantic invariant for all interpretations available for the affix. In most Turkic languages this suffix displays several meanings, reciprocal-sociative polysemy being most typical. The data for the study were collected in a fieldwork expedition to the village Verkhnyaya Balkariya in KabardinoBalkar Republic. The data suggest that the suffix -š encodes four basic meanings: reciprocal, sociative, distributive and competititve. Reciprocal clauses describe mutual interactions, “sociative” stands for actions performed together and collectively, the distributive describes eventualities occurring at different times or locations, and the competitive denotes collective actions performed within a competition. All of the above normally require a plural participant. Some of the meanings also involve other types of plurality. Distributive actions imply plurality of locations, directions or temporal intervals. I argue that the competitive involves a plurality of degrees: each participant of an eventuality is associated with an interval on a scale representing a contextually relevant gradable property of that eventuality. Therefore, the meaning component underlying all of the interpretations of the affix is plurality, while the variation comes from the fact that the plurality requirement can cut across different semantic domains.