The North Caucasian languages, sometimes called simply Caucasic, is a proposed language family consisting of a pair of well established

language families 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 ...

spoken in the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia (country), Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range ...

, predominantly in the north, consisting of the Northwest Caucasian family (also called ''Pontic, Abkhaz–Adyghe, Circassian,'' or ''West Caucasian'') and the

Northeast Caucasian 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 ...

family (also called ''Nakh–Dagestanian'', ''Caspian'' or ''East Caucasian''). The

Kartvelian languages The Kartvelian languages (; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian, Kartvelic, and Iberian languagesBoeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primari ...

, including Georgian, Zan and Svan, were once known as South Caucasian. However, they are no longer considered genetically related to the North Caucasian languages and are classified as an independent language family. Some linguists, notably

Sergei Starostin Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005) was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothet ...

and Sergei Nikolaev, believe that the two groups sprang from a common ancestor about five thousand years ago.Nikolayev, S., and S. Starostin. 1994 ''North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary''. Moscow: Asterisk Press
Available online
However, this proposal is difficult to evaluate, and remains controversial. There are some 34 to 38 distinct North Caucasian languages. North Caucasian has also been given in an automated computational analysis ( ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013).Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013.
ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)
'. However, since the analysis was automatically generated, Müller et al. (2013) does not conclude whether the grouping is due to mutual lexical borrowing or genetic inheritance.

Internal classification

Among the linguists who support the North Caucasian hypothesis, the main split between Northeast Caucasian and Northwest Caucasian is considered uncontroversial. Problems arise when it gets to the internal structure of Northeast Caucasian itself. So far no general agreement has been reached in this respect. The following classification is based on Nikolayev & Starostin (1994): : Abkhazo-Adyghean : Hattic : Nakh–Daghestanian :: Nakh :: Hurro-Urartian :: Daghestanian ::: Avar–Andi–Dido ::: Lezgic ::: Lak–Dargwa

Comparison of the two phyla

The main perceived similarities between the two phyla lie in their phonological systems. However, their grammars are quite different.

Main similarities

Both phyla are characterised by high levels of

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

complexity, including the widespread usage of secondary articulation. Ubykh (Northwest) has 84

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...

s, and Archi (Northeast) is thought to have 76. A list of possible

cognates In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical eff ...

has been proposed. However, most of them may be

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...

s or simply coincidences, since most of the

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...

s in both phyla are quite short (often just a single consonant).

Main differences

The Northeast Caucasian languages are characterised by great morphological complexity in the

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

. For example, in Tsez, a series of locative cases intersect with a series of suffixes designating motion with regard to the location, producing an array of 126 locative suffixes (often – depending on the analysis – described as

noun case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomina ...

s). By contrast, the Northwest Caucasian noun systems are relatively poor in morphology, usually distinguishing just two or three cases. However, they make up with a very complex

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

al structure: the subject, the

direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...

, the

indirect object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...

benefactive The benefactive case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door ''for Tom''" or "This book is ''for Bob''" ...

objects and most local functions are expressed in the verb.

Some comparisons

Abbreviations: PN = Proto-Nakh, PDL = Proto-Dargi-Lak, PLK = Proto-Lezgic-Khinalugh, PAAT = Proto-Avar–Andic–Tsezic, PNEC = Proto-Northeast Caucasian, PNWC = Proto-Northwest Caucasian, PNC = Proto-North Caucasian; i = inclusive, e = exclusive Abbreviations: PNEC (S) = Schulze, PNEC (N) = Nichols, PNWC (Ch) = Chirikba, PNWC (Co) = Colarusso, PNC (S) = Starostin & Nikolayev

Criticism

Not all scholars accept the unity of the North Caucasian languages, and some who do believe that the two are, or may be, related do not accept the methodology used by Nikolayev and Starostin.Nichols, J. 1997. ''Nikolaev and Starostin's "North Caucasian Etymological Dictionary" and the Methodology of Long-Range Comparison: an assessment''. Paper presented at the 10th Biennial Non-Slavic Languages (NSL) Conference, Chicago, 8–10 May 1997.

References

{{Long-range comparative linguistics Proposed language families Languages of the Caucasus