LANGUAGES OF THE CAUCASUS

The 'languages of the Caucasus' are a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Linguistic studies allow those languages to be classified into several language families, with little or no discernible affinity to each other.
Some of those language families have no known members outside the Caucasus area. The term 'Caucasian languages' may refer to these families specifically, or more generally to all languages historically spoken in that area.

Contents

Language families

Families restricted to the Caucasus area

Families with wider distribution

Proposed higher-level classifications

North Caucasian languages

Ibero-Caucasian languages

Possible affinities with other languages

Hattic

Basque

(Western) Iberian language

Dené-Caucasian macrofamily

See also

References

External links

Language families

Families restricted to the Caucasus area

Most of the languages spoken in the Caucasus area fall into three widely accepted language families. These families were essentially restricted to the Caucasus area through historic times, hence their common label 'Caucasian languages'.

★ 'South Caucasian', also called the 'Georgian' or 'Kartvelian' family. Includes Georgian, the official language of Georgia, with four million speakers;

★ 'Northwest Caucasian', also called the 'Abxaz-Adyge', 'Circassian', or 'Pontic' family. Includes the Kabardian language, with one million speakers;

★ 'Northeast Caucasian', also called the 'Dagestanian', 'Nakho-Dagestanian', or 'Caspian' family. Includes the Chechen language, with one million speakers.
The autochthonous languages of the Caucasus share some areal features, such as the presence of ejective consonants and a highly agglutinative structure, and with the sole exception of Mingrelian, all of them exhibit a greater or lesser degree of morphological ergativity. It is commonly believed that all Caucasian languages have a large number of consonants; while this is certainly true for most members of the North-West and North-East Caucasian families (inventories range up to the 80-84 consonants of Ubykh), the South Caucasian languages' inventories are not nearly so extensive, ranging from 28 (Georgian) to 30 (Laz), comparable to languages like Arabic (28 consonants) and Russian (35-37 consonants).

Families with wider distribution

Other languages historically and presently spoken in the Caucasus area can be placed into families with a much wider geographical distribution.

★ 'Indo-European'

★
★ Armenian

★
★ Greek

★
★
★ Pontic

★
★ Iranian languages

★
★
★ Ossetian

★
★
★ Talysh

★
★
★ Judeo-Tat

★
★ Slavic languages

★
★
★ Russian

★ 'Altaic'

★
★ Turkic languages

★
★
★ Azeri

★
★
★ Balkar

★
★
★ Karachay

★
★
★ Kumyk

★
★
★ Nogai

★
★ Mongolic languages

★
★
★ Kalmyk
For a more detailed classification of these languages, see the articles on the corresponding families.

Proposed higher-level classifications

A topic that has attracted much research since the 19th century is the classification of the four major Caucasian families into larger groups. Unfortunately this field is quite sensitive, given the complex ethnic and political situation of the region, both before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. As in many other regions of the globe, linguistic arguments are often used to back up or dismiss territorial disputes and separatist movements. Given the general paucity of linguistic and historical evidence for inter-family relationships, those political implications often dominate the debate.

North Caucasian languages

Some linguists see the Northwest (Abkhaz-Adyghe) and Northeast (Nahk-Dagestanian) families as related, and have proposed to join them into a single 'North Caucasian' family — which is sometimes called 'Caucasic' or simply 'Caucasian', even though it is not meant to contain the South Caucasian (Kartvelian) languages. However, this proposal is not yet widely accepted. See the article on North Caucasian languages for details.

Ibero-Caucasian languages

There are no known affinities between the South Caucasian and North Caucasian families. Nevertheless, some scholars have proposed the single name 'Ibero-Caucasian' for all the Caucasian language families, North and South. (The ''Ibero'' in the name refers to the ancient kingdom of Caucasian Iberia in Eastern Georgia and is not related to the Iberian Peninsula.) See the article on Ibero-Caucasian languages for details.

Possible affinities with other languages

Since the birth of comparative linguistics in the 19th century, the riddle of the apparently isolated Caucasian language families has attracted the attention of many scholars who have strenuously tried to relate them to other languages outside the Caucasus region. While most linguists do not accept these proposals, there may be connections between the Northwest and Northeast Caucasian families and some extinct languages formerly spoken in Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia.

Hattic

Some linguists have claimed affinities between the Northwest Caucasian (Circassian) family and the extinct Hattic language. See the article on Northwest Caucasian languages for details.

Basque

Many of the Caucasian languages have case systems (noun inflection rules) of a particular kind, known as ergative, which sets them typologically apart from most European languages. The impossibility to link Basque, an isolated language spoken in the Pyrenees, with its Indoeuropean neighbours has made many scholars to seek its relatives elsewhere. Lexical and morphological clues (ergativity among them) have been reminiscent of the languages spoken in the Caucasus. Comparisons have been made to all the three language families, Northeast Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian and Kartvelian, the most elaborate being the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis of John D. Bengtson's, yet the suggested evidence is rejected by most linguists.

(Western) Iberian language

It has been speculated that the South Caucasian languages may be related to the extinct Iberian language, spoken until the 1st century BC in the Iberian peninsula (which is known as "Western Iberia" in the Caucasus, to distinguish it from the Caucasian Iberia). There seems to be no evidence for this relationship other than the coincidence of the names; however, the few surviving Iberian inscriptions suggest a genetic relationship to Basque, so any links with one language may also apply to the other.

Dené-Caucasian macrofamily

Recently, linguists such as Sergei Starostin have proposed a Dene-Caucasian superfamily which would include, among others, the North Caucasian languages and Na-Dené. In Sarostin's version, Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian are related only at a higher level of this family called Sino-Caucasian.

See also

★ Language family

References

External links

★ TITUS: Caucasian languages map by Jost Gippert& projects Armazi& Ecling

★ CIA ethnolinguistic map

★ Linguistic families map by Matthew Dryer

★ Ethnolinguistic map of Tajikistan by Iraj Bashiri

★ Caucausian section of the Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire

★ The Iberian-Caucasian Connection in a Typological Perspective — An in-depth linguistic study of Basque, Georgian, and other ergative languages, concluding that the similarities are not strong enough to prove a genetic link.

★ The A. Chikobava Institute of Linguistics, Georgian Academy of Sciences

★ Atlas of the Caucasian Languages with very detailed Language Guide (by Yuri B. Koryakov)

★ The Graphic Model and the Maps of Origin Homelands of North Caucasian and Abkhaz-Adyghean Languages

★ Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European by V. V. Ivanov