Abstract

The article deals with discontinuous nominal expressions in three languages of the North Caucasus region: Lak (Nakh-Daghestanian), Circassian (Abkhaz-Adyghe), and Nogai (Turkic). It is argued that discontinuity in these languages can bring about “non-configurational” structure, where the noun and the modifier are co-dependents of the verb. Particular attention is paid to the opposition of “simple” and “inverted splits”, with the parts of the discontinuous nominals in their canonical or an inverted order. It is demonstrated that inverted splits in the languages under study regularly are morphologically more complex than simple splits. Some typological consequences of this observation are discussed.