ИСТИНА

A small-inventory numeral classifier system exists in Udi, a language of the Lezgic branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian (a.k.a. East Caucasian) family. The paper gives an overview of the use and origin of the Udi classifiers, mostly based on the available texts in the Nizh dialect. I present the results of a corpus study of the Udi classifiers according to a set of parameters: in particular, the degree of obligatoriness (presence vs. absence in numeral phrases) and the frequency of occurrence with different numerals (e.g. ‘one’ vs. numerals higher than ‘one’) and with different nouns (e.g. animate vs. inanimate).