Caucasian Languages

8/2/2019 Caucasian Languages

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Caucasian languages, history andgeographical distribution

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Caucasian languages, also

called Paleo-Caucasian, or Ibero-

Caucasian, group of languagesindigenous to Transcaucasia and

adjacent areas of the Caucasus region,

between the Black and Caspian seas.

The term excludes the Indo-European(Armenian, Ossetic, Talysh, Kurdish, Tat)

and Turkic languages (Azerbaijani,

Kumyk, Noghay, Karachay, Balkar) and

some other languages of the area, all ofwhich were introduced to the Caucasus

in historical times.


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It is commonly believed that all Caucasian languages have alarge number of consonants. While this is certainly true for mostmembers of the Northwest and Northeast Caucasian families

(inventories range up to the 80

84 consonants of Ubykh), theconsonant inventories of the South Caucasian languages are notnearly as extensive, ranging from 28 (Georgian) to 30 (Laz)comparable to languages like Arabic (28 consonants), WesternEuropean languages (2021), and Russian(3537 consonants).

The autochthonous languages of the Caucasus sharesome areal features, such as the presence of ejectiveconsonants and a highly agglutinative structure, and, with the soleexception of Mingrelian, all of them exhibit a greater or lesserdegree of ergativity. Many of these features are shared with otherlanguages that have been in the Caucasus for a long time, suchas Ossetian.


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Three of these families have no currentmembers outside the Caucasus, and are consideredindigenous to the area. The term Caucasianlanguages is generally restricted to these families,

which are spoken by about 11.2 million people.Kartvelian language family with a total ofabout 5.2 million speakers. Includes Georgian, theofficial language of Georgia, with four millionspeakers, Mingrelian ,Laz language and Svanlanguage.

Northwest Caucasian, also called the AbkhazAdyghe, Circassian, or Pontic family, with a total of

about 2.5 million speakers. Includes the Kabardianlanguage, with one million speakers.

Northeast Caucasian, also calledthe Dagestanian, Nakho-Dagestanian,or Caspian family, with a total of about 3.5 millionspeakers. Includes the Chechen language with 1.5million speakers, the Avar language with 1 millionspeakers, the Ingush language with 500,000speakers, the Lezgian language and others.


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Since the birth of comparative linguistics inthe 19th century, the riddle of the apparentlyisolated Caucasian language families hasattracted the attention of many scholars, who

have endeavored to relate them to each otheror to languages outside the Caucasus region.The most promising proposals are connectionsbetween the Northwest and Northeast

Caucasian families and each other or withlanguages formerly spoken in Anatolia andnorthern Mesopotamia.

External relations


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North Caucasian languages

Linguists such as Sergei Starostin see theNorthwest (AbkhazAdyghe) and Northeast (Nahk-Dagestanian) families as related and propose unitingthem in a single North Caucasian family, sometimescalled Caucasic or simply Caucasian. This theoryexcludes the South Caucasian languages, therebyproposing two indigenous language families. Whilethese two families share many similarities, theirmorphological structure, withmany morphemes consisting of a single consonant,make comparison between them unusually difficult,and it has not been possible to establish a genetic

relationship with any certainty.


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Ibero-Caucasian languages

There are no known affinitiesbetween the South Caucasian and

North Caucasian families.Nevertheless, some scholars haveproposed the single name Ibero-Caucasian for all the Caucasian

language families, North and South,in an attempt to unify the Caucasianlanguages under one family.


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External relations

Alarodian

Some linguists have

claimed affinities between

the Northwest Caucasian(Circassian) family and the

extinct Hattic language of

central Anatolia.

Hattic

Alarodian is a proposed

connection betweenNortheast Caucasian and

the extinct Hurro-Urartian

languages of Anatolia.


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DenCaucasian language

Linguists such as Sergei Starostin have

proposed a DenCaucasian macrofamily,

which includes the North Caucasian languages

together with Basque,Burushaski, Na-

Den, Sino-Tibetan, and Yeniseian. This

proposal is rejected by most linguists.


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Families with wider

distribution

Other languages historically

and currently spoken in the

Caucasus area can be placed into

families with a much wider

geographical distribution.


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Indo-European

The predominant Indo-European language inthe Caucasus is Armenian, spoken bythe Armenians (circa 4 million speakers). TheOssetians, speaking the Ossetic language, form

another group of around 700,000 speakers. OtherIndo-European languages spoken in the Caucasusinclude Pontic Greek, Persian, Kurdish,Talysh, Judeo-Tat, Bukhori and of the Slavic

languages, Russian and Ukrainian, whosespeakers number over a third of the totalpopulation of the Caucasus.


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Altaic

Several Turkic languages are spoken in the

Caucasus. Of these, Azerbaijani is

predominant, with around 9 million speakers

in Azerbaijan. Other Turkic languages spoken

include Balkar, Karachay, Kumyk, Nogai.

Kalmyk, spoken by the Oirat descendant

Kalmyks in the region is a Mongolic language.


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Semitic

The only Semitic language spoken

in the Caucasus is Assyrian Neo-

Aramaic, spoken by around 30,000

speakers, largely living in cities, whofled to Russia from Turkey as the

aftermath of Assyrian Genocide at

the close of the First World War.


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Caucasian Languages

Documents

Transcript of Caucasian Languages