Northwest Caucasian languages

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Northwest Caucasian
West Caucasian
Abkhazo–Circassian
Abkhaz–Adyghean
North Pontic
Pontic
Geographic
distribution		 Ciscaucasia in Eastern Europe
Linguistic classification One of the world's primary language families
Proto-language Proto-Northwest Caucasian
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottolog abkh1242
Northwest Caucasian languages map.png
  Circassian
  Abazgi
  Ubykh (extinct)

The Northwest Caucasian languages, [1] also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, [2] 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, [3] 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.

Contents

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". [4]

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. [5] [6]

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 labialization and palatalization were reassigned to adjacent consonants. For example, ancestral */ki/ may have become /kʲə/ and */ku/ may have become /kʷə/, losing the old vowels */i/ and */u/ but gaining the new consonants /kʲ/ and /kʷ/. The linguist John Colarusso has further postulated that some instances of this may also be due to the levelling of an old grammatical class prefix system (so */w-ka/ may have become /kʷa/), on the basis of pairs like Ubykh /ɡʲə/ vs. Kabardian and Abkhaz /ɡʷə/heart. This same process is claimed by some[ who? ] 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 vowels (two or three, depending upon the analysis) coupled with rich consonantal systems that include many forms of secondary articulation. [3] Ubykh (Ubyx), for example, had two vowels and probably the largest inventory of consonants outside Southern Africa.

Grammar

Northwest Caucasian languages have rather simple noun systems, with only a handful of cases at the most, coupled with highly agglutinative verbal systems that can contain almost the entire syntactic structure of the sentence. All finite verbs are marked for agreement with three arguments: absolutive, ergative, and indirect object, [7] 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 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 sense. Equivalent functions are performed by extensive arrays of nominal and participial non-finite verb forms, though Abkhaz appears to be developing limited subordinate clauses, perhaps under the influence of Russian.

Classification

Northwest Caucasian family tree Northwest Caucasian Family Tree.JPG
Northwest Caucasian family tree

Percentage of total Northwest Caucasian speakers, by language

   Kabardian (67.0%)
   Adyghe (23.5%)
   Abkhaz (7.6%)
   Abaza (1.9%)
   Ubykh (0%)

There are five recognized languages in the Northwest Caucasian family: Abkhaz, Abaza, Kabardian or East Circassian, Adyghe or West Circassian, and Ubykh. [3] [8] They are classified as follows:

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 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 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.

Yinal speaking Adyghe and Kabardian.

Kabardian

Kabardian has just over one million speakers: 550,000 in Turkey and 450,000 in Russia, 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, for example, the consonants /ʃʷʼ,ʐʷ,ʂʷ,ʐ,ʂ,tsʷ,dzʷ/ became /fʼ,v,f,ʑ,ɕ,f,v/.

Abkhaz–Abaza (Abazgi) dialect continuum

Abkhaz

Abkhaz has 100,000 speakers in Abkhazia (a de facto independent republic, but a de jure autonomous entity within Georgia), 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 consonants, /a/ is realized as [e] or [o], and /ə/ as [i] or [u]. There are three major dialects: Abzhuy and Bzyp in Abkhazia and Sadz in Turkey.

Abaza

Abaza 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 two 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, 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 clicks. 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:

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.[ citation needed ]

Connections to Hattic

Some scholars have seen affinities between the Northwest Caucasian (Circassian) family and the extinct Hattic language. Hattic was spoken in Anatolia (Turkey), in the area around ancient Hattusa (modern Boğazköy), until about 1800 BCE, when it was replaced by the Indo-European Hittite language. The name Hetto-Iberian (or Proto-Iberian) was proposed by Georgian historian Simon Janashia 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, 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" (Adyghe : Хьатыкъуай) (From Хьаты ("Hatti") + Кхъуэ ("male or son"); meaning "HattiSon"). [9] [ failed verification ][ original research? ]

Connections to Indo-European

It has been conjectured [10] [11] 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. 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 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, Burushaski, Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, and Na–Dene families. However, this is an even more tentative hypothesis than Nostratic, which attempts to relate Kartvelian, Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic, etc., and which is widely considered to be undemonstrated.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ubykh language</span> Extinct Northwest Caucasian language

Ubykh is an extinct Northwest Caucasian language once spoken by the Ubykh people, a subgroup of Circassians who originally inhabited the eastern coast of the Black Sea before being deported en masse to the Ottoman Empire in the Circassian genocide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abkhaz language</span> Northwest Caucasian language of Abkhazia

Abkhaz, also known as Abkhazian, is a Northwest Caucasian language most closely related to Abaza. It is spoken mostly by the Abkhaz people. It is one of the official languages of Abkhazia, where around 190,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan, and several Western countries. 27 October is the day of the Abkhazian language in Georgia.

Pontic is a proposed language family or macrofamily, comprising the Indo-European and Northwest Caucasian language families, with Proto-Pontic being its reconstructed proto-language.

Abaza is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by Abazins in Russia. The language has gone through several different orthographies based primarily on Latin and Cyrillic letters. Its consonant-to-vowel ratio is remarkably high; making it quite similar to many other languages from the same parent chain. The language evolved in popularity in the mid to late 1800s, but has become an endangered language.

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 Nart sagas are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus. They form much of the basic mythology of the ethnic groups in the area, including Abazin, Abkhaz, Circassian, Ossetian, Karachay-Balkar, and to some extent Chechen-Ingush folklore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Caucasian languages</span> Proposed language family

The North Caucasian languages, sometimes called simply Caucasic, is a proposed language family consisting of a pair of well established language families spoken in the Caucasus, predominantly in the north, consisting of the Northwest Caucasian family and the Northeast Caucasian family. There are some 34 to 38 distinct North Caucasian languages.

In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kabardian language</span> Northwest Caucasian language natively spoken by Circassians

Kabardian, also known as East Circassian, is a Northwest Caucasian language, that is considered to be the east dialect of Adyghe language. While some Soviet linguists have treated the two as distinct languages, the Circassians consider the eastern and western language variants to be dialects of one Circassian language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adyghe language</span> Northwest Caucasian language

Adyghe is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by the western subgroups of Circassians. It is spoken mainly in Russia, as well as in Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Israel, where Circassians settled after the Circassian genocide by the Russian Empire. It is closely related to the Kabardian language, though some reject the distinction between the two languages in favor of both being dialects of a unitary Circassian language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Languages of the Caucasus</span> Diverse languages between the Black and Caspian seas

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ubykh people</span> Caucasian ethnic group

The Ubykh are an ethnic group of the Circassian nation, represented by one of the twelve stars on the green-and-gold Circassian flag. Along with the Circassian tribes of Natukhai and Shapsug, the Ubykh formed the Circassian Assembly in 1860. Historically, they spoke a distinct Ubykh language, which never existed in written form and went extinct in 1992 when Tevfik Esenç, the last speaker, died.

Hakuchi is a variety of the Shapsug sub-dialect of West Adyghe dialect of the Adyghe language spoken in Turkey. It is considered to be the most archaic variety of Adyghe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hatuqway</span> Circassian tribe

The Hatuqway are one of the twelve major Circassian tribes, representing one of the twelve stars on the green-and-gold Circassian flag. They were known for their art of war as a warrior tribe. After the Russo-Circassian War, their presence in the Caucasus was destroyed during the Circassian genocide, and their number was significantly decreased and today they exist only in small communities in various diasporas, and their names are not mentioned anymore in Circassian dialectology.

The Abzakh are one of the twelve major Circassian tribes, representing one of the twelve stars on the green-and-gold Circassian flag. Historically, they lived in the mountainous part of the modern Russian republics of Adygea and Krasnodar Krai. Major settlements or villages were located in the river valleys Kurdzhips, Psheha, Pshish, and Psekups.

Abkhaz is a language of the Northwest Caucasian family which, like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, is very rich in consonants. Abkhaz has a large consonantal inventory that contrasts 58 consonants in the literary Abzhywa dialect, coupled with just two phonemic vowels.

Proto-Circassian is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Adyghean and Kabardian languages.

Proto-Abkhaz-Abaza is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Abkhaz and Abaza languages.

Proto-Northwest Caucasian, also Proto-Adyghe-Abazgi or Proto-Adyghe-Abkhaz, is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Northwest Caucasian languages.

John Colarusso is a linguist specializing in Caucasian languages. Since 1976, he has taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

References

Citations

  1. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original on 13 August 2017. Retrieved 20 May 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. ↑ Matthews, W. K. (2013). Languages of the USSR. Cambridge University Press. p. 147. ISBN   9781107623552.
  3. 1 2 3 Hoiberg, Dale H. (2010)
  4. ↑ "UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in danger". www.unesco.org. Retrieved 3 June 2018.
  5. ↑ Liljencrafts, Johan and Lindblom, Björn. 1972. "Numerical Simulation of Vowel Quality Systems: The Role of Perceptual Contrast". Language, vol 48, no 4. Page 845: ", a 'linear' vowel system, is described by Trubetzkoy (1958:87). He attributes such systems to Caucasian languages ... Abkhaz and Adyge... and with some hesitation Ubykh... The phonetic realizations of these vowels exhibit rich consonant-determined variation." page 857: "These observations bear to mind the phonological systems of Caucasian languages such as Kabardia whose underlying vowel segments are confined to /a/ and /a/ but whose consonant system is extreme".
  6. ↑ Halle, M. 1970. "Is Kabardian a vowel-less language?". Foundations of Language 6: pages 95–103.
  7. ↑ Nichols, Johanna (1986)
  8. ↑ Chirikba, Viacheslav (1996); p. 452
  9. ↑ Burney, Charles (2004); p. 106
  10. ↑ Colarusso, John (2003)
  11. ↑ Colarusso, John (1997)

Sources

Further reading

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