This talk investigates the evolving historical contrast between two verb stems in Tat, an Iranian language spoken in the Caucasus. Through the analysis of diverse Tat language samples from the past 150 years, this study demonstrates the gradual erosion of stem differentiation due to an ongoing morphological transformation. The research focusses on three phenomena which reflect instances of morphological simplification of the historical two-way Tat verb stem distinction across different Tat varieties, namely secondary stem derivation, stem adjustment and stem generalisation.

Murad Suleymanov is the administrative manager and lecturer of Turkic languages at the Institute for Linguistic Heritage and Diversity (ILARA, Paris) of Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL) – École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), lecturer of Azeri at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations (Inalco, Paris) and lecturer of Judaeo-Tat at the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL, Oxford).