Languages of the Caucasus Research Papers (original) (raw)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the ethno-social and legal aspects of language policy in the Caucasus during the imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The information characterizing the specifics of language processes in the Caucasus is given. It is noted that the political and legal response to problems arising in the national-cultural sphere does not always correspond to the complexity and socio-political tension of the ethnocultural and linguistic processes taking place in the region. The importance of studying and using the historical experience
of national language policy to address the current, due to modern trends in the dynamics of ethnic language processes in the regions of the Caucasus is emphasized.

- by Maia Gambashidze
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- Literature, Georgian Language, Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasus

The paper is a discussion of the Megrelian data contained in George Ellis’s book Memoir of a Map of the Countries Comprehended Between the Black Sea and the Caspian; with an Account of the Caucasian Nations, and Vocabularies of Their Languages (1788). The final part of the book presents specimens of the Caucasian languages, including those belonging to the Kartvelian branch. There are 128 entries. The resource is organized in the following way: the leftmost column displays headwords in English, followed by translations into
Georgian, Megrelian, and Svan. The latter two (Megrelian and Svan) segments are deficient: not all of them contain translations into all the three languages. There are 62 entries with Megrelian equivalents. Detected spelling and/or transliteration errors and translation inadequacies
may seem abundant for a sample consisting of only 62 entries; however, G. Ellis’s lexicographic resource should be valued for adequate representations of Megrelian linguistic data and for being the earliest work in the history of English-Megrelian lexicography.

- by Zaal Kikvidze and +1
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- Languages of the Caucasus, Lexicography (in English), Lexicography, South Caucasus

It is clear that the entire community of the Circassian population in Israel speaks the vernacular mother tongue. It is just as clear that the Circassian language symbolizes Circassian ethnicity and constitutes the 'core value' of their... more

On Monday 25, Tuesday 26, and Wednesday 27 October 2021, the Sapienza Università di Roma, will host the annual conference of the Italian Association for the study of Central Asia and the Caucasus (Asiac).
The aim of this edition of the annual conference is to foster the scientific dialogue between scholars working on these areas, from Italy as well as from abroad. The topics of the conference include, but are not limited to, such disciplines as history, linguistics, philology, literature, politics, sociology, archeology, and geography.
We strongly encourage participants to submit thematic sessions including participants from different universities or research institutions; the conference sessions will generally combine three or four accepted proposals, one moderator, and, in certain cases, a discussant. All proposals should include a title and an abstract (around 500 words), affiliation, and contact information for each of the speakers and should be sent by June 4th 2021 to the following email address: info@asiac.net.

- by Vittorio Springfield Tomelleri and +1
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- Sociology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Political Science, Iranian Studies

Relativization in a polysynthetic language: Adyghe relative constructions in a typological perspective (in Russian)

Review of Charles Dowsett. Sayat-Nova, An 18th-century Troubadour: A Biographical and Literary Study. Louvain, Belgium/Washington, D.C.: Peeters Publishers/Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium of the Catholic University of Louvain and the Catholic University of America, 1997, xviii, 507 pp., in Central Asian Survey, Vol. 21, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 211-215.

- by Hovann Simonian
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- Armenian Studies, Georgian Language, Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasus
- by Thomas Wier
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- Ottoman History, Soviet History, Historiography, Post-Soviet Regimes

Abkhaz folklore recordings in the Abzhywa dialect. Three tales: Nart Sasryqwa from the Nart Epics (birth and heroic deeds), mythological story about the wizzard sister, explaining the moon eclipse, and a tale about the mythical hero Abrskil, chained in the cave - the Abkhaz version of the Prometheus myth. With Russian translation and comments.

- by Viacheslav Chirikba
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- Mythology And Folklore, Folklore, Mythology, Languages of the Caucasus

Person and gender are typical agreement features within the clause, and cross-linguistically they are frequently part of one and the same agreement system and even expressed through the same morphological exponents. Some theories even go so far as to claim that person and gender agreement on different targets, e.g. verbs and adjectives, are instances of one and the same agreement phenomenon. This paper discusses gender and person agreement in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Lak. It shows that the two agreement systems are formally and functionally completely separated from each other. Corpus data from Lak does not prove that gender agreement in this language is used to establish reference. Therefore it should rather be treated as concord, that is, similar to modifier agreement within the noun phrase.

- by Diana Forker
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- Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasus, North Caucasus, Functional Linguistics

This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry… The Khazars' sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain. In the second part of this book, " The Heritage, " Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced. Yet should this theory be confirmed, the term " anti-Semitism " would become void of meaning, since, as Mr. Koestler writes, it is based " on a misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated. " ISBN 0-394-40284-7

- by Osman Karatay
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- Toponomastics, Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasus, Caucasus Politics

An overview of the main phonological, morphological amd lexical traits of the Tsabal dialect of Abkhaz. Before the period of Muhajirism, the mountain ethnographic group of Tsabals lived in the middle reaches of the Kodor River in the... more

- by Viacheslav Chirikba
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- Dialectology, Languages of the Caucasus, Abkhazia, Abkhazians

The present monograph was written within the framework of the project Phonosemantic
Vocabulary in Kartvelian Languages (Structure, Semantics, Pragmatics) (No 31/20) funded by
Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation in 2013-2016; the project was implemented at the
Institute of Linguistic Research (specifically, Research Group of Kartvelian Languages), Ilia State
University.
Success of the project proposal was due to a number of factors:
1. Phonetic symbolism and onomatopoeia, as rather significant linguistic phenomena in
Kartvelian languages, was not systematically described and analyzed by scholars; moreover, it was
not studied at all in Svan and Laz; however, these phenomena always attracted scholarly interest,
and this is well attested with occasionally published papers.
2. Notwithstanding the fact that phonosymbolic and onomatopoeic items are parts of actual
language, most of them were not considered “full-fledged members” of the lexicon. Their inclusion
in dictionaries were a disputable issue. Recently published dictionaries (Svan – A. Liparteliani’s
dictionary, Megrelian – O. Kajaia’s and A. Kobalia’s dictionaries, Laz – A. Tandilava’s dictionary,
Georgian Dialect Corpus and dialect dictionaries: http://www.corpora.co), providing a more
comprehensive description of the items in point, stated the necessity of the scholarly study of the
phenomenon in question, on the one hand, and facilitated its complete research.
The present book Phonosemantic Vocabulary in Kartvelian Languages provides analyses of a
number of significant linguistic problems associated with phonosemantics (as a linguistic process)
and phonosemantic vocabulary (as outcome of the process).

- by Zaal Kikvidze and +3
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- Georgian Language, Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasian Studies, Phonosemantics

Altaic-related German words represent namely substrate, i. e. basic (not cultural) lexicon which might be inherited from ‘macro-Altaic’ (Y haplogroup C, longhouses) Linear Pottery culture. ‘Hamitic’ (non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic)-related cultural lexicon was possibly accepted from Ertebølle (fishing and swine-herding, reflected in language, while ox may be wild). Pictish as well as several pre-Proto-Germanic substrate words might be Yenisseian-related. Kartvelian and North Caucasian elements might be preserved from Basque (Caucasian, mainly Daghestanian-related) Bell Beaker culture. Hurrian elements in Proto-Germanic are confirmed by genetic link with Cyprys and Aegean influence on the Nordic Bronze Age. Etruscan consonantism is similar to Armenian and Germanic as a result of the substrate influence or preservation of archaic features

This paper reviews ancient human DNA from sites around the Black Sea and the Pontic-Caspian steppes in order to clarify the genetic evolution of the Yamnaya population in the steppes, and to connect the genetic evidence from Yamnaya and pre-Yamnaya Eneolithic mating networks with archaeologically defined groups. The overall purpose is to analyze A. Bomhard's hypothesis that Proto-Indo-European was a contact language that developed from interference between a pre-Northwest Caucasian type of language and a pre-Proto-Uralic type of language. I was asked to evaluate this linguistic hypothesis from genetic and archaeological perspectives.

My old paper on middle ("hissing-hushing") sibilants in the West Caucasian languages. One corrective: now I regard the simple hissing-hushing ones just as palatalized (sign j) dental sibilants (dzj, cj, c'j, sj, zj), and the labialized... more

An overview of the main features of the Guma sub-dialect of the Abkhaz language in the field of phonology, morphology and vocabulary. The Guma speech occupied an intermediate position between the Bzyp and Abzhywa dialects. It is now fully preserved only in Turkey. Before the period of Muhadzhirism, the Central Abkhaz ethnographic group, Guma Abkhazians, used to live in the areas of the present-day Sukhum and Gulrypsh districts.

- by Viacheslav Chirikba
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- Dialectology, Languages of the Caucasus, Abkhazia, Abkhaz language

ÇERKES DİYALEKTLERİNİN KARŞILAŞTIRMALI ANALİZİ

- by Şamil Emre Aydın
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- Languages and Linguistics, Dialectology, Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasus

In the late 80s and early 90s, Colin Renfrew presented his Anatolian hypothesis. According to him, the agrarian revolution begun in Anatolia, and from there, it spread out in Europe. He supposed that these farmers were carriers of the Proto-Indo-European language, but his theory had weak support from Indo-European linguists. Some questions then arise: What language(s) was introduced in the Ægean islands and mainland Greece by these early farmers? Can we figure out the affiliations of the Minoan language? A different agrarian hypothesis will be shown in these pages, unrelated to the Indo-European and Semitic language families. It instead is featuring a new language family that encompasses the Ægean, Anatolia, Caucasus and the Near East.

- by Philippos Kitselis and +1
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- Historical Linguistics, Anatolian Archaeology, Languages of the Caucasus, Aegean Bronze Age (Bronze Age Archaeology)
- by Diana Forker
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- Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasian Studies, Grammar, Caucasian Languages

This paper compares the expression of information structure in the three indigenous language families of the Caucasus (West Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestanian and Kartvelian) by means of the concepts of focus, contrast, topic and givenness. I concentrated on constituent order and the use of particles, thereby largely ignoring other formal means such as intonation. When comparing all three Caucasian language families we can see a number of parallels in the way information structure is expressed.
First of all, there are obvious (and expectable) similarities in the constituent order at the clause level. All three language families show a clear preference for SOV, but other orders are, in general, possible, whereby Ubykh and Laz are more rigid than the other languages (which might be due to Turkish influence on both languages). The major focus position is preverbal, but postverbal focus is also attested and although focal items are frequently positioned in adjacency to the verb this is not a strict requirement. All three language families allow for verb-initial order for presentational focus in introductory statements of narratives.
By contrast, at the phrasal level we find a sharp difference between West Caucasian with its prenominal and postnominal modifiers as well as nominal complexes on the one hand side and Kartvelian and Nakh-Daghestanian language on the other hand side. Only the latter two families make use of postnominal modifiers for emphasis, contrast or focus, although their syntactic status as belonging to the preceding head noun and forming one NP with it is rather doubtful.
The second major parallel is the existence of cleft-like and pseudo-cleft constructions that normally express constituent focus. Although the exact syntactic nature of these constructions has been investigated only for a handful of languages and their status as genuine cleft constructions is rather doubtful, we can generalize that these constructions have a bipartite structure without necessarily being biclausal and make use of subordinate clause structures that are otherwise found in relative clauses. Cleft-like and pseudo-cleft constructions are commonly found in WH-questions, in particular in West Caucasian and a number of Nakh-Daghestanian languages (e.g. Ingush, Avar, Udi). In general, the extent of use of these constructions varies from family to family, but they seem to be most frequent in West Caucasian because they represent the default strategies for the formation of content questions.
The third similarity concerns the frequent use of enclitics and suffixes for information-structuring purposes, but also dedicated focus particles in some languages. In a great number of languages, modal markers, interrogative markers, additives, scalar-additives, discourse markers, and markers with grammatical meaning (person, tense, negation, etc.) are used as focus-sensitive particles and usually placed after the item they scope over or after the head of the phrase.

Sumerian (of Tibeto-Burman origin) influenced Caucasus, Balkans, and Egypt, and was influenced by Hittite-Luwians and Indo-Iranians

Master de Sciences du Langage Spécialité Langage, Langues, Textes, Sociétés mémoire de recherche de master 1 présenté par Neige Rochant Soutenu le 2 septembre 2017 Discipline : linguistique Morphologie, syntaxe et sémantique des verbes causatifs synthétiques dans un dialecte andi Mémoire dirigé par : M. Anton Antonov Maître de conférence, Inalco M. Gilles Authier Directeur d'études, EPHE Membres du jury : M. Guillaume Jacques Directeur de recherche, CNRS La réalisation de ce mémoire a été possible grâce au concours de plusieurs personnes à qui je voudrais témoigner ma reconnaissance. En premier lieu, je remercie M. Gilles Authier, qui m'a fait découvrir les langues du Daghestan et m'a conseillée de m'intéresser à l'andi, puis, en tant que directeur de ce mémoire, m'a guidée dans mon travail et mes recherches de terrain. Je voudrais aussi exprimer ma reconnaissance à Mme Hélène Gérardin et à M. Timur Maisak de m'avoir initiée au terrain et à la linguistique dans le Caucase, pour leur soutien et leurs conseils. Je remercie également M. Antonov d'avoir accepté de co-diriger mon mémoire. Je dois aussi beaucoup à M. Guillaume Jacques, qui a accepté d'être dans mon jury et a si aimablement fait le nécessaire pour que ma soutenance puisse avoir lieu. Je le remercie d'ailleurs pour les commentaires et les conseils qu'il m'a fournis à cette occasion. Je souhaite témoigner ma plus grande gratitude à tous mes informateurs andis, en particulier à la famille de M. Aligadji Magomedov, pour leur précieuse collaboration. Sans eux, ce travail n'aurait pas vu le jour faute de données sur le dialecte de Zilo. i J'adresse encore des remerciements à Mme Hélène Gérardin, ainsi qu'à M. Arthur Laisis, pour avoir relu et corrigé des extraits de mon mémoire. Je souhaite remercier également Mmes Nina Dobrushina et Natalia Zevakhina, ainsi que la Haute École d'Économie de Moscou, de m'avoir aidée à obtenir mon visa pour la Russie afin que je puisse y effectuer mes missions de terrain. Enfin, je remercie mes parents de m'avoir soutenue dans ce projet, ainsi que mes co-expéditionnaires George Moroz, Alexandra Martynova, Samira Verhees et Aigul Zakirova d'avoir été à mes côtés et pour tous les conseils qu'ils m'ont donnés.

- by Neige Rochant
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- Typology, Languages of the Caucasus, Morphosyntax, Valency
- by Diana Forker
- •
- Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasus, Caucasian Studies, Grammar

International Kartvelological Congress I Problems and Prospects of Kartvelology was held on 11 - 13 November, 2015 in Tbilisi. The Congress was organized by the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and the Georgian Patriarchate.
Among the participants were representative kartvelologists from France, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Romania, Japan, Israel, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, Armenia, Russia, Chechnya, Ingushetia etc.
The International Kartvelological Congress was opened on 11 November in the Georgian National Academy of Sciences by welcome speech of Academician Roin Metreveli, the Vice-President of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, the chairman of the organizing committee of the Congress.
After the plenary meeting the sessions continued in the sections. There were three sections: Section of Linguistics, Section of Georgian History and Religion and Section of Literature and Art.

- by Rusudan Labadze
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- Religion, History, Cultural History, Archaeology

Based on the study and analysis of ancient near eastern sources and current scientific literature in the field, we believe the following conclusion can be drawn about the ethno-genesis of Georgian tribes: the relationship between genetically related Ancient Anatolian and Georgian (in the II millennium BC: Hatti, Kaška, Muška; in the I millennium BC–Daiaeni/Diaohi, Kulha) tribes developed based on and largely due to the metallurgical manufacturing processes (obtaining and manufacturing of ore and processing the metal). The engagement in the metallurgical production processes of the local tribes and their neighboring ethnic groups led to the emergence of a common culture, religious and ideological systems, and the formation of a united consciousness across the entire geographic area of settlements of Georgian tribes. This, created pre-conditions for the formation of Kolkhian end Iberian kingdoms later on.

- by Maia Gambashidze
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- Anatolian Studies, Hittitology, Anatolian Archaeology, Georgian Language

This thesis presents a study of the syntax and typology of relative clauses in colloquial Armenian. It proposes a syntactic analysis and classification of the relativization strategies available in Armenian within the framework of existing syntactic theoretical and typological proposals concerning relative clauses, and to identify the decisive factors associated with the distribution of these different strategies. As each of the available strategies is paralleled in other languages of the area, it is possible that language contact will have an impact on the choice of strategy. There is also evidence that the role of the relativized element in the relative clause is relevant for the choice of strategy; in particular, evidence presented in previous studies of Armenian suggests that the distribution of participial RCs may violate the Relativization Accessibility Hierarchy if this is envisaged as operating directly in terms of syntactic grammatical relations. The study is mainly based on data from sound recordings of native speaker consultants from various areas of Armenia, both spontaneous speech and responses to stimuli designed to elicit relative clauses with particular properties that have been proposed to affect the choice of relativization strategy. The relative clauses are entered into a database with filters for relevant features, which contains approximately 2000 examples.
The results show that accessibility to relativization is determined by semantic (affectedness) and pragmatic (topicality) role prominence, and by frequent role-reference association patterns, rather than directly by syntactic grammatical relations. This provides a coherent explanation of the apparent Accessibility Hierarchy violations found in Armenian, as well as other phenomena that have proved problematic for syntactic structure-based interpretations of accessibility to relativization.

- by Katherine Hodgson
- •
- Armenian Studies, Syntax, Languages of the Caucasus, Linguistics

Language cannot be used as an objective definition of ethnic identity.

Hurro-Urartian, due to their Indo-European-like elements, might be an archaic branch which splitted from other Indo-European long before Hittite-Luwian and even Tyrsenian. An initial language of IJ haplogroups might be Indo-Hurro-Tyrsenian. Altaic-like element in Hurro-Urartian, Kassite, Hittite-Luwian link these languages with another Nostratic family. Hurrian might be among languages of the Kura-Araxes culture (together with Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian), influenced Proto-Germanic Nordic Bronze, and was used in the Bronze Age Cyprus. Names of metals and metalworkers in Sumerian, Semitic, Kartvelian are Hurrian. The spread of arsenical bronze in Mesopotamia was related to the Kura-Araxes southward migration

Greeks visited Colchis in pre-Mycenaean time

- by iurii mosenkis
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- Mythology And Folklore, Mythology, Greek Literature, Greek History