Languages of the Caucasus
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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.
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[edit] Language families
[edit] 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.
[edit] Families with wider distribution
Other languages historically and presently spoken in the Caucasus area can be placed into familes with a much wider geographical distribution.
For a more detailed classification of these languages, see the articles on the corresponding families.
[edit] 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 extinction 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Hurrian and Urartian
Other linguists have claimed similarities between the Northeast Caucasian (Nakh-Dagestan) family and the extinct languages Hurrian and Urartian. See the article on Northeast Caucasian languages for details.
[edit] 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, though tempting, is considered as yet undecisive by many linguists, and the question of Basque's distant relatives thus remains open.
[edit] (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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- TITUS Language map by Jost Gippert
- 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
