Differential agent marking in Hinuq

Hinuq, a Nakh-Daghestanian language, has four non-canonical agent constructions: the potential, the involuntary agent, the exterior force and the causative construction. The non-canonical agents in these constructions lack various agentive properties such as volition, sentience or perception, depending on the construction in question. They are always marked with one and the same spatial case, the AT-Essive. This paper compares semantic and syntactic properties of non-canonical agents with their canonical counterparts and tries to provide a unified analysis of all four types of non-canonical agents.