| Northwest Caucasian Languages |
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Information AboutNorthwest Caucasian Languages |
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Main features Phonetics The entire family is characterised by a paucity of Phonemic vowels (two or three, depending upon the analysis) coupled with rich consonantal systems that include many forms of Secondary Articulation . Ubykh (Ubyx), for example, had both the minimal number of vowels (two), and probably the largest inventory of consonants outside Southern Africa.
Grammar Northwest Caucasian languages have rather simple noun systems, manifesting only a handful of cases at the most, coupled with highly Agglutinative verbal systems so complex that virtually the entire syntactic structure of the sentence is contained within the verb. They do not generally permit more than one finite verb in a sentence, which precludes the existence of Subordinate Clause s in the Indo-European sense; equivalent functions are performed by extensive arrays of Nominal and Participial non-finite verb forms (although Abkhaz appears to be developing limited subordinate clauses, perhaps under the influence of Russian). Classification There are five recognized languages in the Northwest Caucasian family: Abkhaz , Abaza , Kabardian or East Circassian, Adyghe or West Circassian, and Ubykh . They are classified as follows:
Circassian dialect continuum Circassian (or Cherkess) is a cover term for the series of dialects that include the literary languages of Adyghe and Kabardian. Adyghe (Adyge) The , Abdzakh , Bzhedugh and Shapsugh , as well as many minor ones such as the Turkish dialect Hakuchi spoken by the last speakers of Ubykh. Adyghe has three phonemic vowels, and its consonants are less complex than the Abkhaz-Abaza dialects. Kabardian and 450,000 in Russia , where it is an official language of the republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia . Kabardian has the least number of consonants of any North-Western Caucasian language, with 48, including some rather unusual Ejective Fricative s and a small number of vowels. It has two major dialects, called Kabardian and Cherkess (Circassian); Kabardian itself has several dialects, including Terek, the literary standard, and Besney, which is intelligible with both Terek and Adyghe . Abkhaz-Abaza dialect continuum Abkhaz (Abxaz) language The and Bzyp in Georgia and Sadz Turkey. Abaza Language The Abaza Language has some 45,000 speakers, 35,000 in Russia and 10,000 in Turkey . It is a literary language, but nowhere official. It shares with Abkhaz the distinction of having just two phonemic vowels. Abaza is phonologically more complex than Abkhaz, and is characterised by large consonant clusters, similar to those that can be found in Georgian . There are three major dialects, T’ap’anta , Ashkar , and Bezshagh . Some are partially intelligible with Abkhaz. Ubykh (Ubyx) language The Ubykh (Ubyx) Language is more closely related to Abkhaz and Abaza than to Adyghe and Kabardian. The population switched to speaking Adyghe, and Ubykh became extinct on October 7 , 1992 , with the death of Tevfik Esenç . A dialectal division within Ubykh was suspected by Georges Dumézil , but the divergent form he described in 1965 was never investigated further. With eighty consonants, Ubykh has one of the largest inventories in the world, and probably the largest outside the Khoisan Languages . There are Pharyngealised Consonant s and a four-way place contrast among Sibilant s. It was the only Northwest Caucasian language never to have a literary form. Relationship to other language families A number of factors make the reconstruction of the Northwest Caucasian protolanguage problematic:
For these reasons, Proto-Northwest Caucasian is widely accepted as being one of the most difficult protolanguages to deal with, and it is therefore more difficult than most to relate to other families. Connections to Hattic Until about 1800 BC, the region of Anatolia around ancient Hattusa (modern Boğazköy ) that was later occupied by the Hittites had been the home of an earlier people, conventionally called Hattians , who spoke a poorly known non- Indo-European language unrelated to Hittite . This extinct Hattic Isolate appears to have some affinity with the Northwest Caucasian languages. The name Hetto-Iberian has been proposed for a superfamily comprising Northwest Caucasian and Hattic. Connections to Indo-European It has been conjectured that the North-West Caucasian languages may be genetically related to the Indo-European family, at a time depth of perhaps 12,000 years before the present. The hypothesised protolanguage is called Proto-Pontic , but is not widely accepted. There does at least appear to have been extensive contact between the two protolanguages, and the resemblances may be due to this influence. North Caucasian family Many linguists join the Northwest and Northeast Caucasian Languages into a North Caucasian family, sometimes simply called '''Caucasic''' or '''Caucasian''' (in opposition to Kartvelian (South Caucasian) , which is thought to be unrelated, albeit heavily influenced by their northern neighbours). This hypothesis has perhaps been best illustrated by Sergei A. Starostin and Sergei Nikolayev, who present a set of phonological correspondences and shared morphological structure. However, there is no consensus that the relationship has been demonstrated, and many consider the correspondences to be spurious for the reasons mentioned above. See the article on North Caucasian Languages for details, as well as the external links below. Higher-level connections A few linguists have proposed even broader relationships, of which the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis is perhaps the most popular. Dene-Caucasian links the North Caucasian (including Northwest Caucasian ), Sino-Tibetan , Burushaski and Yeniseian (or Karasuk ), and Na-Dene families. However, this is an even more tentative hypothesis than Nostratic , which attempts to relate Indoeuropean , Uralic , Kartvelian , Altaic , ''etc.,'' and which is widely considered to be undemonstrated. See the article on the Languages Of The Caucasus for more details. External links
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