Caucasian Languages
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 October 2011
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0057
- LAST REVIEWED: 28 October 2011
- LAST MODIFIED: 28 October 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0057
Introduction
Medieval Arab geographers called the Caucasus “a mountain of tongues.” Many diverse languages are spoken in this relatively small area, but the term “Caucasian languages” usually applies only to languages that belong to one of the three linguistic families indigenous to the Caucasus: Kartvelian (also referred to as South Caucasian), West Caucasian (Northwest Caucasian, Abkhaz-Adyghe), and East Caucasian (Northeast Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestanian). These languages are believed to have been spoken in the area for at least four thousand years. West and East Caucasian were traditionally joined into one family, but now most specialists agree that all three are genetically unrelated. Nevertheless, the notion “Caucasian languages” makes sense: they are spoken in a contiguous geographic area, which is characterized by cultural homogeneity and established trading contacts. Traditionally, specialists in Caucasian languages and cultures have been trained across three families, both in the Soviet Union (which included the Russian Federation and Georgia) and abroad, partly for practical reasons: specializing in these languages often presupposes knowing Russian or Georgian. The Kartvelian languages are spoken predominantly in Georgia; West and East Caucasian languages are spoken mostly in the Russian Federation. Kartvelian is a relatively small family in terms of number of languages but with a high number of speakers (Georgian has more than four million) and a long literary tradition, whereas East Caucasian comprises twenty-six languages, many of which are spoken in just one village and are either unwritten or developed their written forms within the last two hundred years. More details are given for each family in respective sections (see Kartvelian, West Caucasian, and East Caucasian). All Caucasian languages are characterized by rich consonantism; rich inflection, especially in verb systems; and ergative alignment. Out of the three, the Kartvelian languages are probably the best studied, though much of the materials are in Georgian. During the 20th century much was written on East and West Caucasian languages (mainly in Russian), mostly on their phonology and morphology. Only recently have the syntactic riches of these languages been discovered—partly due to the progress in syntactic theory.
General Overviews
Despite being genetically unrelated, the Caucasian languages have often been the subject of linguistic comparison. A good place to start for English sources is a special issue of Lingua (van den Berg 2005). It gives an overview of each family’s phonology, morphology, and syntax. The typological interest of Caucasian languages is summarized in the introduction (Comrie 2005). More detailed descriptions are in Greppin 1989–2004, a four-volume collection on Caucasian languages in which each volume provides an overview of the family and a description of each language belonging to it (two volumes are dedicated to East Caucasian family). Lexical, syntactic, morphological, and phonological features shared by Caucasian languages are discussed in Klimov 1978. Verbs of perception are an example of a common Caucasian way of structuring the lexicon: they tend to make a distinct group with a special way of coding the arguments (the experiencer argument is marked by the dative or by a special case, the affective). Klimov and Alekseev 1980 focuses on the syntactic features common to Caucasian languages, considering in turns the alignment of the verb arguments, syntactic government, and syntactic characteristics of ergativity. The overall conclusion is that West Caucasian languages are the most prototypically ergative, East Caucasian languages have elements of nominative-accusative strategies, and Kartvelian languages represent a combination of active, ergative, and nominative types. Alekseev 1999 provides an overview of Caucasian languages (in Russian); each chapter opens with a general description of the linguistic branch and is followed by descriptions of individual languages following the same format: an overview of phonology, morphology, syntax, and the vocabulary of the language. Detailed information on the geographical distribution of Caucasian languages is in Koryakov 2006. Comrie 2008 describes the sociolinguistic situation in the Caucasus and contacts between the indigenous languages and languages from other linguistic families spoken in the Caucasus. Nikolayev and Starostin 1994 is an etymological dictionary (available as an online database) for all Caucasian languages. The authors believe that Caucasian languages had a common ancestor. This view has not been shared by all Caucasiologists, but the database presents an invaluable resource for comparative studies: it allows query by lexical or semantic value and returns the reconstructions plus lexical items in modern Caucasian languages.
Alekseev, M. E., ed. 1999. Yazyki mira: Kavkazskie yazyki. Moscow: Academia.
A short grammatical description of every Caucasian language. In Russian.
Comrie, Bernard. 2005. Introduction to Caucasian. In Special issue: Caucasian. Edited by Helma van den Berg. Lingua 115:1–4.
DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2003.07.009
General information about the Caucasian family stressing the typological interest of the phenomena represented in its languages.
Comrie, Bernard. 2008. Linguistic diversity in the Caucasus. Annual Review of Anthropology 37:131–143.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123248
Overview of all languages spoken in the Caucasus with sociolinguistic information and a description of linguistic diversity across indigenous Caucasian languages.
Klimov, G. A., ed. 1978. Strukturnye obshchnosti kavkazskikh yazykov. Moscow: Nauka.
The vocabulary, syntax, morphology, and phonology of Caucasian languages are considered in turn, and common features are established. In Russian with an English summary.
Klimov, G. A., and M. E. Alekseev. 1980. Tipologiya kavkazskikh yazykov. Moscow: Nauka.
Typological comparison of three families, Abkhaz-Adyghe (West Caucasian), Nakh-Daghestanian (East Caucasian), and Kartvelian, focusing on the syntactic structures. In Russian with an English summary.
Koryakov, Y. B. 2006. Atlas kavkazskikh yazykov. Moscow: Piligrim.
Maps showing where individual Caucasian languages are spoken. Map legends in Russian.
Nikolayev, S. L., and S. A. Starostin. 1994. North Caucasian etymological dictionary. Moscow: Asterisk.
The printed version contains roots common to East Caucasian and West Caucasian languages. The online resource has the Kartvelian etymologies added (among other etymological databases, including North Caucasian etymologies.
Greppin, John A. C., ed. 1989–2004. The indigenous languages of the Caucasus. 4 vols. Delmar, NY: Caravan.
This four-volume collection provides an overview of each family followed by short grammatical descriptions of every language. Volume 1, The Kartvelian Languages; Volume 2, The North West Caucasian Languages; Volumes 3 and 4, The North East Caucasian Languages.
van den Berg, Helma. 2005. Special issue: Caucasian. Lingua 115.1–2.
Special issue on Caucasian languages comprising three articles, one on each of the three families of Caucasian languages: South Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian, and Northeast Caucasian. Each article emphasizes the typological interest of the family and provides a brief grammatical description and a bibliography.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Acceptability Judgments
- Accessibility Theory in Linguistics
- Acquisition, Second Language, and Bilingualism, Psycholin...
- Adjectives
- Adpositions
- Affixation
- African Linguistics
- Afroasiatic Languages
- Agreement
- Algonquian Linguistics
- Altaic Languages
- Ambiguity, Lexical
- Analogy in Language and Linguistics
- Anaphora
- Animal Communication
- Aphasia
- Applicatives
- Applied Linguistics, Critical
- Arawak Languages
- Argument Structure
- Artificial Languages
- Attention and Salience
- Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Dyslexia in A...
- Australian Languages
- Austronesian Linguistics
- Auxiliaries
- Balkans, The Languages of the
- Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan
- Berber Languages and Linguistics
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism
- Biology of Language
- Blocking
- Borrowing, Structural
- Caddoan Languages
- Caucasian Languages
- Causatives
- Celtic Languages
- Celtic Mutations
- Chomsky, Noam
- Chumashan Languages
- Classifiers
- Clauses, Relative
- Clinical Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Colonial Place Names
- Comparative Reconstruction in Linguistics
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics
- Complementation
- Complexity, Linguistic
- Compositionality
- Compounding
- Comprehension, Sentence
- Computational Linguistics
- Conditionals
- Conjunctions
- Connectionism
- Consonant Epenthesis
- Constructions, Verb-Particle
- Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics
- Conversation Analysis
- Conversation, Maxims of
- Conversational Implicature
- Cooperative Principle
- Coordination
- Copula
- Creoles
- Creoles, Grammatical Categories in
- Critical Periods
- Cross-Language Speech Perception and Production
- Cyberpragmatics
- Default Semantics
- Definiteness
- Dementia and Language
- Dene (Athabaskan) Languages
- Dené-Yeniseian Hypothesis, The
- Dependencies
- Dependencies, Long Distance
- Derivational Morphology
- Determiners
- Dialectology
- Dialogue
- Diglossia
- Disfluency
- Distinctive Features
- Dravidian Languages
- Ellipsis
- Endangered Languages
- English as a Lingua Franca
- English, Early Modern
- English, Old
- Ergativity
- Eskimo-Aleut
- Euphemisms and Dysphemisms
- Evidentials
- Exemplar-Based Models in Linguistics
- Existential
- Existential Wh-Constructions
- Experimental Linguistics
- Fieldwork
- Fieldwork, Sociolinguistic
- Finite State Languages
- First Language Attrition
- Formulaic Language
- Francoprovençal
- French Grammars
- Frisian
- Gabelentz, Georg von der
- Gender
- Genealogical Classification
- Generative Syntax
- Genetics and Language
- Gestures
- Grammar, Categorial
- Grammar, Cognitive
- Grammar, Construction
- Grammar, Descriptive
- Grammar, Functional Discourse
- Grammars, Phrase Structure
- Grammaticalization
- Harris, Zellig
- Heritage Languages
- History of Linguistics
- History of the English Language
- Hmong-Mien Languages
- Hokan Languages
- Honorifics
- Humor in Language
- Hungarian Vowel Harmony
- Iconicity
- Ideophones
- Idiolect
- Idiom and Phraseology
- Imperatives
- Indefiniteness
- Indo-European Etymology
- Inflected Infinitives
- Information Structure
- Innateness
- Interface Between Phonology and Phonetics
- Interjections
- Intonation
- IPA
- Irony
- Iroquoian Languages
- Islands
- Isolates, Language
- Jakobson, Roman
- Japanese Word Accent
- Jones, Daniel
- Juncture and Boundary
- Khoisan Languages
- Kiowa-Tanoan Languages
- Kra-Dai Languages
- Labov, William
- Language Acquisition
- Language and Law
- Language Contact
- Language Documentation
- Language, Embodiment and
- Language for Specific Purposes/Specialized Communication
- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
- Language Geography
- Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes
- Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Language Nests
- Language Revitalization
- Language Shift
- Language Standardization
- Language, Synesthesia and
- Languages of Africa
- Languages of the Americas, Indigenous
- Languages of the World
- Learnability
- Lexemes
- Lexical Access, Cognitive Mechanisms for
- Lexical Semantics
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Lexicography
- Lexicography, Bilingual
- Lexicon
- Linguistic Accommodation
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Areas
- Linguistic Landscapes
- Linguistic Prescriptivism
- Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Educational
- Listening, Second Language
- Literature and Linguistics
- Loanwords
- Machine Translation
- Maintenance, Language
- Mande Languages
- Markedness
- Mass-Count Distinction
- Mathematical Linguistics
- Mayan Languages
- Mental Health Disorders, Language in
- Mental Lexicon, The
- Mesoamerican Languages
- Metaphor
- Metathesis
- Metonymy
- Minority Languages
- Mixed Languages
- Mixe-Zoquean Languages
- Modification
- Mon-Khmer Languages
- Morphological Change
- Morphology
- Morphology, Blending in
- Morphology, Subtractive
- Movement
- Munda Languages
- Muskogean Languages
- Nasals and Nasalization
- Negation
- Niger-Congo Languages
- Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages
- Northeast Caucasian Languages
- Nostratic
- Number
- Numerals
- Oceanic Languages
- Papuan Languages
- Penutian Languages
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonetics, Acoustic
- Phonetics, Articulatory
- Phonological Research, Psycholinguistic Methodology in
- Phonology
- Phonology, Computational
- Phonology, Early Child
- Pidgins
- Polarity
- Policy and Planning, Language
- Politeness in Language
- Polysemy
- Positive Discourse Analysis
- Possessives, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Cognitive
- Pragmatics, Computational
- Pragmatics, Cross-Cultural
- Pragmatics, Developmental
- Pragmatics, Experimental
- Pragmatics, Game Theory in
- Pragmatics, Historical
- Pragmatics, Institutional
- Pragmatics, Second Language
- Pragmatics, Teaching
- Prague Linguistic Circle, The
- Presupposition
- Pronouns
- Psycholinguistics
- Quechuan and Aymaran Languages
- Questions
- Reading, Second-Language
- Reciprocals
- Reduplication
- Reflexives and Reflexivity
- Register and Register Variation
- Relevance Theory
- Representation and Processing of Multi-Word Expressions in...
- Salish Languages
- Sapir, Edward
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Second Language Acquisition, Anaphora Resolution in
- Semantic Maps
- Semantic Roles
- Semantic-Pragmatic Change
- Semantics, Cognitive
- Sentence Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers
- Sign Language Linguistics
- Slang
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics, Variationist
- Sociopragmatics
- Sonority
- Sound Change
- South American Indian Languages
- Specific Language Impairment
- Speech, Deceptive
- Speech Perception
- Speech Production
- Speech Synthesis
- Suppletion
- Switch-Reference
- Syllables
- Syncretism
- Synonymy
- Syntactic Change
- Syntactic Knowledge, Children’s Acquisition of
- Tense, Aspect, and Mood
- Text Mining
- Tone
- Tone Sandhi
- Topic
- Transcription
- Transitivity and Voice
- Translanguaging
- Translation
- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
- Tucanoan Languages
- Tupian Languages
- Typology
- Usage-Based Linguistics
- Uto-Aztecan Languages
- Valency Theory
- Verbs, Serial
- Vocabulary, Second Language
- Voice and Voice Quality
- Vowel Harmony
- Whitney, William Dwight
- Word Classes
- Word Formation in Japanese
- Word Recognition, Spoken
- Word Recognition, Visual
- Word Stress
- Writing, Second Language
- Writing Systems
- Yiddish
- Zapotecan Languages