ИСТИНА

I address the coexistence of two homophonous grammatical markers in Rutul, a Lezgic language of the Nakh-Daghestanian family spoken in southern Daghestan (Russia). Both markers have the shape ga, but are very different in other respects. I argue for the following two scenarios of development of the two ga-morphemes, which in my view go back to constructions with different lexical items: (1) temporal marker -ga < ga(h) ‘time’, a Persian loan attested in some Lezgic languages, which is also the source of temporal markers in some of them (Agul, Tabasaran); (2) indefiniteness marker -ga INDF < hɨga- / jɨga- ‘want’, a common source of indefinite pronouns (free-choice pronouns, at the initial stage).