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Northwest Caucasian Languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages (from Ancient Greek, ''pontos'', referring to the Black Sea, in contrast to the Northeast Caucasian languages as the ''Caspian languages''), is a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region,Hoiberg, Dale H. (2010) chiefly in three Russian republics ( Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia), the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East. The group's relationship to any other language family is uncertain and unproven. One language, Ubykh, became extinct in 1992, while all of the other languages are in some form of endangerment, with UNESCO classifying all as either "vulnerable", "endangered", or "severely endangered". The Northwest Caucasian languages possess highly complex sets of consonant distinctions paired with a lack of vo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Caucasus
The North Caucasus, or Ciscaucasia, is a subregion in Eastern Europe governed by Russia. It constitutes the northern part of the wider Caucasus region, which separates Europe and Asia. The North Caucasus is bordered by the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea to the west, the Caspian Sea to the east, and the Caucasus Mountains to the south. The region shares land borders with the countries of Georgia (country), Georgia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. Located in the southern part of the region, Mount Elbrus is the List of European ultra-prominent peaks, tallest peak in Europe. Krasnodar is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, most populous among the urban area, urban centres in the region. The North Caucasus came under Russian control in the 19th century, following the Caucasian War between the Russian Empire and the various regional powers. The territory is the Southern Russia, southernmost portion of Russia and is divided between a number of Republics of Russia, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region on the coast of the Black Sea. It is located at the intersection of Eastern Europe and West Asia, and is today generally regarded as part of Europe. It is bordered to the north and northeast by Russia, to the south by Turkey and Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. Georgia covers an area of . It has a Demographics of Georgia (country), population of 3.7 million, of which over a third live in the capital and List of cities and towns in Georgia (country), largest city, Tbilisi. Ethnic Georgians, who are native to the region, constitute a majority of the country's population and are its titular nation. Georgia has been inhabited since prehistory, hosting the world's earliest known sites of winemaking, gold mining, and textiles. The Classical antiquity, classical era saw the emergence of several kingdoms, such as Colchis and Kingdom of Iberia, Iberia, that formed the nucleus of the modern Georgian state. In the early fourth centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secondary Articulation
In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-articulated consonants is the approximant-like articulation. It "colors" the primary articulation rather than obscuring it. Maledo (2011) defines secondary articulation as the superimposition of lesser stricture upon a primary articulation. Types There are several kinds of secondary articulation supported by the International Phonetic Alphabet: * Labialization is the most frequently encountered secondary articulation. For example, labialized has a primary velar plosive articulation, , with simultaneous -like rounding of the lips, thus the name. It is in contrast to the doubly articulated labial-velar consonant , which is articulated with two overlapping plosive articulations, and . * Palatalization is perhaps best known from the Russian "s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages contain phonemes (or the spatial-gestural equivalent in sign languages), and all spoken languages include both consonant and vowel phonemes; phonemes are primarily studied under the branch of linguistics known as phonology. Examples and notation The English words ''cell'' and ''set'' have the exact same sequence of sounds, except for being different in their final consonant sounds: thus, versus in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a writing system that can be used to represent phonemes. Since and alone distinguish certain words from others, they are each examples of phonemes of the English language. Specifically they are consonant phonemes, along with , while is a vowel phoneme. The spelling of Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Indo-European Language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labialized Velar Consonant
A labialized velar or labiovelar is a velar consonant that is labialized, with a -like secondary articulation. Examples are , which are pronounced like a , with rounded lips, such as the labialized voiceless velar plosive and labialized voiced velar plosive , obstruents being common among the sounds that undergo labialization. Labialized velar approximants The most common labiovelar consonant is the voiced approximant . It is normally a labialized velar, as is its vocalic cousin . (Labialization is called rounding in vowels, and a velar place is called back.) and its voiceless equivalent are the only labialized velars with dedicated IPA symbols: * 1 - In dialects that distinguish between ''which'' and ''witch''. The voiceless approximant is traditionally called a "voiceless labial–velar fricative", but true doubly articulated fricatives are not known to be used in any language, as they are quite difficult to pronounce and even more difficult to distinguish. Histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noun Class
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others consider these different concepts. Noun classes should not be confused with noun classifiers. Notion There are three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into noun classes: * according to similarities in their meaning (semantic criterion); * by grouping them with other nouns that have similar form (morphology); * through an arbitrary convention. Usually, a combination of the three types of criteria is used, though one is more prevalent. Noun classes form a system of grammatical agreement. A noun in a given class may require: * agreement affixes on adjectives, pronouns, numerals, etc. in the same noun phrase, * agreement affixes on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Colarusso
John Colarusso is a linguist specializing in Caucasian languages. Since 1976, he has taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Colarusso has published more than sixty-five articles on linguistics, myths, politics, and the Caucasus; he has also authored three books, edited one, and is finishing two further books.http://johncolarusso.net/teaching/18-works Among other works, he has published grammar books of the Kabardian language Kabardian (), also known as , is a Northwest Caucasian languages, Northwest Caucasian language, that is widely considered to be the eastern dialect of Adyghe language, Adyghe. While some Soviet linguists have treated the two as distinct language .... Selected publications * * Colarusso, John (1997). "Phyletic Links between Proto-Indo-European and Proto–Northwest Caucasian". The Journal of Indo-European Studies (Chicago Linguistic Society) 25 (1–2): 119–151. * * Colarusso, John (2003). "Further Etymologies between Indo-European ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palatalization (phonetics)
In phonetics, palatalization (, ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by affixing a superscript ''j'' ⟨ʲ⟩ to the base consonant. Palatalization is not Phonemic contrast, phonemic in English, but it is in Slavic languages such as Russian language, Russian and Ukrainian language, Ukrainian, Finnic languages such as Estonian language, Estonian, Karelian language, Karelian, and Võro language, Võro, and other languages such as Irish language, Irish, Marshallese language, Marshallese, Kashmiri language, Kashmiri, and Japanese language, Japanese. Types In technical terms, palatalization refers to the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labialization
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded. The most common labialized consonants are labialized velars. Most other labialized sounds also have simultaneous velarization, and the process may then be more precisely called labio-velarization. The "labialization" of bilabial consonants often refers to protrusion instead of a secondary articulatory feature velarization. ʷdoesn't mean ˠalthough refers to a labial–velar approximant. In phonology, labialization may also refer to a type of assimilation process. Occurrence Labialization is the most widespread secondary articulation in the world's languages. It is phonemically contrastive in Northwest Caucasian (e.g. Adyghe), Athabaskan, and Salishan language families, among others. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Reconstruction
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language – that is, it is based on evidence from that language alone. * Comparative reconstruction, usually referred to just as reconstruction, establishes features of the ancestor of two or more related languages, belonging to the same language family, by means of the comparative method. A language reconstructed in this way is often referred to as a proto-language (the common ancestor of all the languages in a given family). Texts discussing linguistic reconstruction commonly preface reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) to distinguish them from attested forms. An attested word from which a root in the proto-language is reconstructed is a . More generally, a reflex is the known deriv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vertical Vowel System
A vertical vowel system is the system of vowels in a language that requires only vowel height to phonemically distinguish vowels. Theoretically, rounding, frontness and backness could also be used in one-dimensional vowel systems; however, ''vertical'' refers specifically to the usage of vowel height as the sole distinguishing feature. Vertical vowel systems have only been uncovered in the underlying representation of various languages' phonology. Phonetically, all known natural languages employ both front and back vowels; however, in a vertical vowel system, the occurrence of front vs. back vowels is predictable, governed by one or more phonological processes. Two different diachronic mechanisms may give rise to a vertical vowel system. In some cases, the front-back distinction may simply be lost when vowels are merged. This has occurred in Wichita, in which an old vowel (preserved in the related language Pawnee) has merged with . However, the Wichita vowel system is no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
