The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian,
Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of
Pontus
Pontus or Pontos may refer to:
* Short Latin name for the Pontus Euxinus, the Greek name for the Black Sea (aka the Euxine sea)
* Pontus (mythology), a sea god in Greek mythology
* Pontus (region), on the southern coast of the Black Sea, in modern ...
, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as i ...
), are a
family of languages spoken in the northwestern
Caucasus region,
[Hoiberg, Dale H. (2010)] chiefly in three
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
n republics (
Adygea
The Republic of Adygea (; russian: Республика Адыгея, Respublika Adygeya, p=ɐdɨˈɡʲejə; ady, Адыгэ Республик, ''Adıgə Respublik''), also known as the Adyghe Republic, is a republic of Russia. It is situated ...
,
Kabardino-Balkaria,
Karachay–Cherkessia), the
disputed territory of
Abkhazia
Abkhazia, ka, აფხაზეთი, tr, , xmf, აბჟუა, abzhua, or ( or ), officially the Republic of Abkhazia, is a partially recognised state in the South Caucasus, recognised by most countries as part of Georgia, which ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
, and
Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the
Middle East.
The group's relationship to any other
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hi ...
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 vowel distinctions, often providing archetypical cases of
vertical vowel systems, also known as "linear" vowel systems.
Main features
Phonetics
Linguistic reconstructions suggest that both the richness of the consonantal systems and the poverty of the vocalic systems may be the result of a historical process, whereby vowel features such as
labialisation
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 ...
and
palatalisation were reassigned to adjacent consonants. For example, ancestral may have become and may have become , losing the old vowels and but gaining the new consonants and . The linguist
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 h ...
has further postulated that some instances of this may also be due to the levelling of an old
grammatical class prefix system (so may have become ), on the basis of pairs like Ubykh vs. Kabardian and Abkhaz ''heart''. This same process is claimed by some to lie behind the development of
labiovelars in
Proto-Indo-European, which once neighboured
Proto-NWC.
Lack of distinctive vowels and wealth of distinctive consonants
The entire family is characterised by a paucity of
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
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
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
.
Grammar
Northwest Caucasian languages have rather simple noun systems, with only a handful of cases at the most, coupled with highly agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative l ...
verbal systems that can contain almost the entire syntactic structure of the sentence. All finite verbs are marked for agreement with three arguments: absolutive
In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative ...
, ergative, and indirect object, and there are also a wide range of applicative constructions. There is a split between "dynamic" and "stative" verbs, with dynamic verbs having an especially complex morphology. A verb's morphemes indicate the subject's and object's person, place, time, manner of action, negative, and other types of grammatical categories.
All Northwest Caucasian languages are left-branching, so that the verb comes at the end of the sentence and modifiers such as relative clauses
A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
precede a noun.
Northwest Caucasian languages do not generally permit more than one finite verb in a sentence, which precludes the existence of subordinate clauses in the Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
sense. Equivalent functions are performed by extensive arrays of nominal
Nominal may refer to:
Linguistics and grammar
* Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech
* Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement")
* Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb
* Nou ...
and participial
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
non-finite verb forms, though 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:
* Abkhaz–Abaza (Abazgi)
** Abaza (49,800 speakers)
** Abkhaz (190,110 speakers)
* Circassian
** Adyghe (590,000)
** Kabardian (1,685,000)
* Ubykh †
]
Circassian dialect continuum
Circassian (Cherkess) is a cover term for the series of dialects that include the literary languages of Adyghe and Kabardian.
Adyghe
Adyghe is one of the more widely spoken Northwest Caucasian languages. It has 500,000 speakers spread throughout Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
and the Middle East: 280,000 in Turkey; 125,000 in Russia, where it is official in the Republic of Adygea; 45,000 in Jordan, 25,000 in Syria, 20,000 in Iraq, and 4,000 in Israel. There is even a small community in the United States. Four main dialects are recognised: Temirgoy, Abadzekh, Shapsugh
The Shapsug ( ady, шапсыгъ , russian: шапсуги, tr, Şapsığlar, ar, الشابسوغ, he, שפסוגים) (also known as the Shapsugh or Shapsogh) are one of the twelve major Circassian tribes. Historically, the Shapsug tribe ...
and Bzhedugh, as well as many minor ones such as Hakuchi spoken by the last speakers of Ubykh in Turkey. Adyghe has many consonants: between 50 and 60 consonants in the various Adyghe dialects but it has only three phonemic vowels. Its consonants and consonant clusters are less complex than the Abkhaz–Abaza dialects.
Kabardian
Kabardian has just over one million speakers: 550,000 in Turkey and 450,000 in Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
, where it is an official language of the republics of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay–Cherkessia. Kabardian has the fewest consonants of any North-Western Caucasian language, with 48, including some rather unusual ejective fricatives and a small number of vowels. Kabardian itself has several dialects, including Terek, the literary standard, and Besleney, which is intelligible with both Terek and Adyghe. Unlike the Adyghe, Kabardian lost many of the consonants that existed in the Proto-Circassian language
Proto-Circassian (or Proto-Adyghe–Kabardian) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Adyghean and Kabardian languages.
Phonology
Consonants
The consonant system is reconstructed with a four-way phonation contrast in stops and affricate ...
, for example the consonants became .
Abkhaz–Abaza (Abazgi) dialect continuum
Abkhaz
Abkhaz has 100,000 speakers in Abkhazia
Abkhazia, ka, აფხაზეთი, tr, , xmf, აბჟუა, abzhua, or ( or ), officially the Republic of Abkhazia, is a partially recognised state in the South Caucasus, recognised by most countries as part of Georgia, which ...
(a ''de facto'' independent republic, but a ''de jure'' autonomous entity within Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
), where it is the official language, and an unknown number of speakers in Turkey. It has been a literary language from the beginning of the 20th century. Abkhaz and Abaza may be said to be dialects of the same language, but each preserves phonemes which the other has lost. Abkhaz is characterised by unusual consonant clusters and one of the world's smallest vowel inventories: It has only two distinctive vowels, an open vowel /a/ and a mid vowel /ə/. Next to palatalized or labialized
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 ...
consonants, /a/ is realized as or and /ə/ as or There are three major dialects: Abzhuy and Bzyp in Abkhazia
Abkhazia, ka, აფხაზეთი, tr, , xmf, აბჟუა, abzhua, or ( or ), officially the Republic of Abkhazia, is a partially recognised state in the South Caucasus, recognised by most countries as part of Georgia, which ...
and Sadz
The Sadz or Asadzwa, also Jigets, are a subethnic group of the Abkhazians. They are sometimes purported to have originated from the Sanigoi tribe mentioned by the Classic authors. In the 6th century, they formed a tribal principality, which later ...
in Turkey.
Abaza
Abaza has some 45,000 speakers, 35,000 in Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
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, Tapant and Ashkhar. Some are partially intelligible with Abkhaz.
Ubykh
Ubykh forms a third branch, with parallels to both Adyghe and Abkhaz. The population switched to speaking Adyghe, and Ubykh became extinct on 7 October 1992, with the death of Tevfik Esenç. A dialectal division within Ubykh was suspected by Georges Dumézil
Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French Philology, philologist, Linguistics, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and comparative mythology, mythology. He was a profe ...
, but the divergent form he described in 1965 was never investigated further. With eighty-one consonants, Ubykh had perhaps the largest inventory in the world aside from the Kx'a and Tuu families of southern Africa with their extensive system of click
Click, Klick and Klik may refer to:
Airlines
* Click Airways, a UAE airline
* Clickair, a Spanish airline
* MexicanaClick, a Mexican airline
Art, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Klick (fictional species), an alien race in t ...
s. There are pharyngealised consonants and a four-way place contrast among sibilants. 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 proto-language problematic:
* most roots in Northwest Caucasian languages are monosyllabic, and many are single consonants;
* the sound changes are often intricate, and the numerous consonants and sibilant contrasts provide further complexity;
* ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and i ...
was extensive and still plays some part in the modern languages;
* borrowings between languages of the family were frequent;
* extensive homophony occurs in the modern languages.
For these reasons, Proto–Northwest Caucasian is widely accepted as being one of the most difficult proto-languages to deal with, and it is therefore more difficult than most to relate to other families.
Connections to Hattic
Some scholars have seen affinities between the Northwest Caucasian (Circassian) family and the extinct Hattic language
Hattic, or Hattian, was a non-Indo-European agglutinative language spoken by the Hattians in Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium BC. Scholars call the language "Hattic" to distinguish it from Hittite, the Indo-European language of the Hittite Empir ...
. Hattic was spoken in Anatolia ( Turkey), in the area around ancient Hattusa
Hattusa (also Ḫattuša or Hattusas ; Hittite: URU''Ḫa-at-tu-ša'', Turkish: Hattuşaş , Hattic: Hattush) was the capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age. Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey, within the great loop of ...
(modern Boğazköy), until about 1800 BCE, when it was replaced by the Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
Hittite language
Hittite (natively / "the language of Neša", or ''nešumnili'' / "the language of the people of Neša"), also known as Nesite (''Nešite'' / Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people ...
. The name Hetto-Iberian (or Proto-Iberian) was proposed by Georgian historian Simon Janashia
Simon Janashia ( ka, სიმონ ჯანაშია; July 13, 1900 – November 5, 1947) was a Georgian historian and public figure. He was a professor of history and one of the founding members of the Georgian Academy of Sciences.
Janashi ...
for a superfamily comprising the North and South Caucasian languages, Hattic and other languages of ancient Anatolia. (The "Iberian" in the name refers to Caucasian Iberia
In Greco-Roman geography, Iberia ( Ancient Greek: ''Iberia''; la, Hiberia) was an exonym for the Georgian kingdom of Kartli ( ka, ქართლი), known after its core province, which during Classical Antiquity and the Early Middle Age ...
, a kingdom centered in eastern Georgia which existed from the 4th century BCE to the 5th century CE; it is not related to the Iberian Peninsula.)
Many Northwest Caucasian ( Adygean) family names have prefixes like "Hath" or "Hatti", and one Adyghe tribe has the name "Hatuqwai
The Hatuqway ( ady, Хьатыкъуай, translit=Hatıqway; tr, Hatukay; ar, حتوقاي, links=, translit=Hatuqway; ; russian: Хатукай, translit=Khatukai) are one of the twelve major Circassian tribes, representing one of the twelv ...
" ( ady, Хьатыкъуай) (From Хьаты ("Hatti") + Кхъуэ ("male or son"); meaning "HattiSon").
Connections to Indo-European
It has been conjectured[Colarusso, John (1997)] that the North-West Caucasian languages may be genetically related to the Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
family, at a time depth of perhaps 12,000 years before the present. This hypothesised proto-language is called Proto-Pontic, but is not widely accepted.
There does at least appear to have been extensive contact between the two proto-languages, and the resemblances may be due to this influence.
North Caucasian family
Many linguists join the Northwest and Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as i ...
into a '' North Caucasian'' family, sometimes simply called Kavkazian (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. (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), Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
, Burushaski
Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people ...
, Yeniseian
The Yeniseian languages (sometimes known as Yeniseic or Yenisei-Ostyak;" Ostyak" is a concept of areal rather than genetic linguistics. In addition to the Yeniseian languages it also includes the Uralic languages Khanty and Selkup. occasionall ...
, Sino-Tibetan, and Na–Dene families. However, this is an even more tentative hypothesis than Nostratic, which attempts to relate Kartvelian, Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
, Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian lan ...
, and Altaic
Altaic (; also called Transeurasian) is a controversial proposed language family that would include the Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic language families and possibly also the Japonic and Koreanic languages. Speakers of these languages are ...
, etc., and which is widely considered to be undemonstrated.
See also
* Proto-Northwest Caucasian language
Proto-Northwest Caucasian (sometimes abbreviated PNWC), also ''Proto-Adyghe-Abazgi'' or Proto-Adyghe-Abkhaz, is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Northwest Caucasian languages.
Phonology Consonants
# In Circassian and Abkhaz, gʷǝ i ...
* Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as i ...
* North Caucasian languages
References
Citations
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
External links
CIA linguistic map of the Caucasus
Atlas of the Caucasian Languages with detailed Language Guide (by Yuri B. Koryakov)
* A Comparative Dictionary of North Caucasian Languages
Preface
by Sergei Starostin & Sergein Nikolayev
Ancient Adyghe Abkhaz–Abaza Ubykh alphabet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Northwest Caucasian Languages
Caucasian languages
The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Linguistic comparison allows ...
Languages of Russia
Language families