Talk:Northwest Caucasian languages

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[edit] Proto-Northwest Caucasian research

has anyone on here done any research on proto-northwest caucasian? Gringo300 09:50, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

I've left a note on your user talk page. I've done a little bit of etymological work during the course of my compiling a dictionary of Ubykh; not a whole lot, mind you, but enough to come to the conclusion that Sergei Starostin's Proto-World Dene-Caucasian work perhaps shouldn't be taken at face value. If you want to ask me anything, leave a note on my user talk page, or you can email me at the address I've left on your user talk page. Best, Thefamouseccles 13:24, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ibero-Caucasian not appropriate here

The stuff on (Ibero)-Caucasian repeats texts on the "Languages of the Caucasus" page. It should be merged into that page, leaving here a link "Various higher-level connections have been proposed between the North Caucasian languages and other families."
The Hattic parag too is duplicated, although the proper place for that is a tougher question.
Jorge Stolfi 06:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and move the Ibero-Caucasian stuff. Hattic belongs here. I think some proposals are that Hattic was a NWC language, not that they were related at a higher level. kwami 07:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2-vowel systems

If I remember correctly, the 2-vowel systems are analysed as /a/ and /ə/, with /ɨ/ being epenthetic. But I might be confusing them with Ndu in PNG. If s.o. knows or has a ref, could you verify? Thanks. kwami 07:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at: Hewitt, B. G. 2005. North-West Caucasian, in Lingua vol. 115. He sums up the current position: questions of vowels need to be treated separately for each different language, and the question appears to have been satisfactorily solved only for Abkhaz and Abaza (2 vowels (a vs ə/ɨ) + length for a only) and Kabardian (3 vowels (a vs ə vs ɨ); see Catford, J. C. 1997 Some Questions of NWC Phonetics and Phonology. In: Ozsoy, A. S. Proceedings of the Conference on Northwest Caucasian Linguistics. Novus Forlag: Oslo), and one would imagine that Adyghe's vocalic system would parallel that of Kabardian. The Ubykh situation has not yet been resolved, but my personal opinion is that Ubykh's vocalic system is the same as that of Adyghe and Kabardian, although most modern transcriptions (including my own, I admit) treat it as a long version of a. thefamouseccles 12:51, 18 Jan 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kh or x?

Kwami, I see that you have replaced Abkhaz/Ubykh by Abxaz/Ubyx. However, the name of the country is still spelled Abkhazia in most English sources, and that seems to be the case for the language as well. So, even though the "x" spelling smay be more accurate technically speaking, perhaps the "kh" spellings should be retained as the main names, with the "x" spellings in paretheses?
Jorge Stolfi 16:20, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Maybe. A lot of these names are difficult for English speakers to read, and the fewer digraphs the better from that perspective. kwami 19:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
The average English speaker, never having heard of Ubykh, would probably pronounce it as "ubiks" if it were written as Ubyx. English speakers are used to seeing digraphs anyway; Kazakh, lakh and Sikh don't seem to provide any problem. Aside from which, the Googlefight results are about as conclusive as one can get with such a simplistic (puerile?) tool:
Ubykh vs Ubyx: 94,300 vs 764 (ratio of 123 to 1)
Abkhaz vs Abxaz: 415,000 vs 1,370 (ratio of 303 to 1)
thefamouseccles 12:58, 18 Jan 2006 (UTC)