Abkhaz language

Based on phonological research of 37 Northwest and Northeast Caucasian languages, the author proposes for them an original and phonetically complete generalized featural alphabet shaped via peculiar usage of the morphological principles of construction of millennial South Caucasian alphabets. Unlike the phonetically inconsistent Cyrillic alphabets currently in use, it has exceptional properties for precise and alphabetically unequivocal rendition of all phonetic peculiarities of the North Caucasian languages which possess the largest consonant inventory among all languages of the world.

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.

Abkhaz is one of the three languages comprising the Abkhazo-Adyghean, or West Caucasian branch of North Caucasian linguistic family (the other branch being Nakh-Daghestanian, or East Caucasian). Abkhaz is spoken by approximately 100,000 people in the former Soviet union (mainly in the Republic of Abkhazia, Caucasus), and by at least the same number of speakers in Turkey and some Middle east countries (small Abkhaz colonies can be found also in Western Europe and the USA). Abkhaz is notorious for its huge consonantal inventory (up to 67 consonants in its Bzyp dialect) and by its minimal vocalic system: only two vowels. Though Abkhaz was studied by a number of scholars (among whom P. Uslar in XIX century, or more easily K. Lomtatidze in Georgia and G. Hewitt in Great Britain), many aspects of Abkhaz grammar (especially its syntax) still have to be adequately described. Abkhaz is the only West Caucasian language to possess the category of grammatical classes, manifested in personal pronouns, verb conjugation, numerals and in category of number. Abkhaz is an ergative language, the ergative construction being represented not by case endings, as in related Circassian and Ubykh (Abkhaz does not have the case system), but by order of actant markers. The verbal root consists usually of one consonant, preceded by a string of prefixes (class-personal, directional, temporal, negational, causative, etc.) and followed by few suffixes. Verbs can be stative or dynamic, finite or non-finite. The grammatical sketch of Abkhaz includes information about its phonological system, morphology, and syntax. A short text is provided with grammatical comments.

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 present-day Gulrypsch region of Abkhazia. The dialect has survived only in Turkey.

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 ones - the labialized  counterparts of dz, c, c', z, s.

The article analyzes Abkhaz “children’s speech” (baby talk), the phonetic processes and morphological means involved in the derivation of children’s forms of “adult” words. The
article presents the corpus of children’s vocabulary of the Abkhaz language.

The applicative, along with the causative, is one of the mechanisms of increasing actant derivation. Unlike some other languages, Abkhaz applicatives can be used with both transitive and intransitive verbs. In addition, they are possible with dynamic and static verbs. In Abkhaz applicatives increase the valency of the verb by introducing into the structure of the verbal complex with the help of special prefixes of the first, or, in addition to the existing one, the second indirect object. Unlike the causative, which transforms the structure of an intransitive verb, turning it into a transitive one, in Abkhaz applicatives do not affect the transitivity of the verb and do not change its syntactic type.

Being a minoritarian language, the Abkhaz language is under strong pressure from Russian. The paper analyses historical factors that had led to a difficult situation with Abkhaz, including the factor of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. In this regard, debates on state languages on the eve of the adoption of the first Constitution of the SSR of Abkhazia in 1925 are discussed. A serious political struggle between two political directions – pro-Georgian and pro-independent – to some extent influenced modern negative processes in the functioning of the Abkhaz language. Nevertheless, the most important factor that explains the difficult situation with the Abkhaz language is the fact that Abkhaz had not become a central element of the identity of the modern Abkhaz nation. To normalize the situation with Abkhaz, measures are needed to increase its political status and give it more functionality.

The paper discusses the circumstances concerning the creation of Abkhaz alphabets based on Latin script. There were two projects - the so-called "analytical" alphabet proposed by academician N. Ya. Marr (used in 1926-1928) and the so-called "unified alphabet", which replaced Marr’s alphabet (1928 - 1938).

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.

A number of different languages in outside of the Indo-European family were analyzed based on how difficult it would be for a native English speaker to learn them. They were then rated on a purely impressionistic 1-6 scale of easiest to most difficult. Extensive phonological, morphological, syntactic and even semantic analysis was done for many of these tongues to highlight areas of difficulty for English learners. Very long: 101 pages.

Several basic-lexicon etymologies, with regular sound correspondences, suggest Hurro-Urartian (HU) might be derived from (or related to) Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Preliminary evidence suggests North-Caucasian (NC) languages might also be related to PIE – in particular, to Iranian languages and Armenian.

Основываясь на исследованиях по фонетике северокавказских языков, автор выявляет структурное несоответствие между исключительно богатым консонантизмом данных языков и их нынешними кириллическими алфавитами и, выдвигая идею о необходимости создания собственных и независимых систем письма для 37 западно- и восточнокавказских языков, находящихся под угрозой исчезновения, предлагает совершенно новую, оригинальную и обобщенную алфавитную систему, наделенную высшей степенью графемно-фонемной взаимооднозначности и основанную на принципах знакоформирования и морфологическом применении элементов графики трех исторических алфавитов Южного Кавказа и Армянского Нагорья.

Based on phonological research of 37 Northwest and Northeast Caucasian languages, the author proposes for them an original and phonetically complete generalized featural alphabet shaped via peculiar usage of the morphological principles of construction of millennial South Caucasian alphabets. Unlike the phonetically inconsistent Cyrillic alphabets currently in use, it has exceptional properties for precise and alphabetically unequivocal rendition of all phonetic peculiarities of the North Caucasian languages which possess the largest consonant inventory among all languages of the world.

Polysynthesis, broadly understood as extreme morphological complexity of the verb, has been attracting attention of linguists since the advent of linguistic typology in the beginning of the 19th century. Somewhat paradoxically, while the intuition of linguists has to a large extent converged on which languages can be considered “polysynthetic”, the notion itself has so far resisted unequivocal definition. While it is clear that polysynthesis is much more than merely “a high number of morphemes per word” (Mithun 1988 vs. Fortescue 2016), there is no consensus as to which properties usually associated with polysynthesis, e.g. holophrasis, polypersonalism, incorporation, “lexical affixation” etc. are definitional and which should be treated as parameters of variation (e.g. Fortescue 2017 vs. Mattissen 2004, 2006, 2017).
By focusing on the polysynthetic languages of the Northwest Caucasian family (Arkadiev & Lander 2020), on which I have first-hand data, I show how these languages fit within the typology of polysynthesis and in which ways they are special. The most salient polysynthetic feature of Northwest Caucasian is exuberant polypersonalism whereby up to four participants can be expressed by verbal affixes. This is made possible by the existence in these languages of a rich system of applicative prefixes introducing indirect objects of various kinds (cf. “open head marking”, Nichols 2017). A large part of these applicatives express spatial functions and form a cline from genuine “lexical affixes” with a considerable degree of grammaticalisation to incorporated nouns retaining their lexical meaning. These morphological elements have both morphosyntactic and lexical functions, testifying to the lack of clear boundaries between “inflection” and “derivation” (Lander 2016). A large bulk of the Northwest Caucasian morphology serves syntactic purposes. In addition to participant cross-reference and valency-related processes, “syntactic morphology” includes a rich system of marking inter-clausal relations, especially the intricate and typologically unusual encoding of relativisation (Lander & Daniel 2019) employed for externally and internally headed as well as headless relative clauses, the latter serving as the basis for expression of subordination, focus and constituent questions (Caponigro & Polinsky 2011, Arkadiev 2020, Arkadiev & Caponigro 2021).

To create new words, Abkhaz uses practically limitless resources of both compounding and affixation, as well as of their combination. Compounding is a dominant means of word-formation across the parts of speech. In verb-formation prefixation is prevalent while suffixation plays a modest role, whereas in the derivation of other word-classes suffixation is more prominent. Reduplication is a common mechanism in verb and adverb-formation, but it is only modestly represented in noun-formation. Another usual means to form new words is conversion. Neo-classical word-formation in Abkhaz is prefixal.

In this article the values of the “Abkhazian-Abazinians” and the “Circassians” who commemorated 147th year’s of the “Circassian exile” and their relatives living in Abkhazia; and also Armenians who resettled in Abkhazia after 1915 and those living in Turkey will be discussed under the perspective of “acculturation”.
The research has done both in Abkhazia and Turkey in 2010 with 698 participants. According to the results,  the values of the “Abkhazian-Abazinians” living in Abkhazia and Turkey are differentiated from each other while their values became similar to the values of other ethnic groups both in Abkhazia and Turkey. On the other hand the values of the Armenians, who almost have similar deportation process, with 50 years of difference, living in Abkhazia and Turkey stayed closer to each other while resembling to other ethnic groups in both of the countries. According to Berry’s (1997) acculturation strategies, it can be said that there are different acculturation processes in the same country. Thus the “Abkhazians-Abazinians and the Circassians) living in Turkey are “assimilated”, while the Armenians living in Abkhazia and Turkey are “integrated” into the new culture.
Key Words: Values, Acculturation, Abkhazian-Abazinian, Circassian, Armenian, Abkhazia-Turkey
.
Özet
Bu makalede 21 Mayıs 2011’de Çerkes  Sürgünü’nün 147. yılını anan Türkiye’deki “Çerkesler-Abazalar” ve bu grupların Abhazya’daki akrabaları  “Abhazlar” ile, 1915 tehcirinden sonra Abhazya’ya yerleşen ve Türkiye’de yaşayan Ermenilerin kültürlenme süreçleri “değerler” kapsamında ele alınmıştır. 
2010 yılında 698 kişi ile yapılan bu araştırma sonucunda, Türkiye’de yaşayan “Abhaz-Abaza” ile “Adiğe-Çerkes-Kafkasyalı” etnik kimlik gruplarının değerleri, ülkedeki diğer gruplarla benzeşirken, Abhazya’da yaşayan “Abhaz-Abaza” grubuyla farklılaştıkları saptanmıştır. Diğer taraftan yaklaşık 50 yıl farkla benzer süreçleri yaşamış Ermenilerin değerlerinin, ülke içerisindeki diğer etnik kimlik gruplarla benzeştikleri ancak diğer Ermenilerle olan benzerliklerini sürdürdükleri bulunmuştur. Sonuç olarak aynı ülkede yaşayan ve farklı etnik kimliğe sahip bireylerin, farklı kültürlenme süreçlerinin olduğu anlaşılmaktadır. Türkiye’de yaşayan Abhaz-Abaza ve Çerkeslerin Berry’nin (1997) kültürlenme stratejilerinden “asimilasyona”, diğer taraftan hem Türkiye hem de Abhazya’daki Ermenilerin ise “entegrasyona” tabi oldukları söylenebilir

"The paper presents a thorough investigation of the Abkhaz borrowings in Megrelian, including structural loans, grammatical elements, adjectives, adverbs, numerals,and appellativa (anatomical and medical terms, household items, terms related
to husbandry and pasture, floristic and zoological names, religious terms, landscape, food, etc.). The author examines also the cases of the Abkhaz influence on Megrelian onomasticon."

В.А. Чирикба ВКЛАД В.Г. АРДЗИНБА В ИЗУЧЕНИЕ ХАТТСКОГО ЯЗЫКА Владислав Григорьевич Ардзинба был ученым широкого профиля: историком, филологом, специалистом в области древневосточных и кавказских цивилизаций и культур, мифов, ритуалов и религий. Занимался он и вопросами правовой и политической системы хеттского общества, а также вопросами взаимоотношения Хеттского царства с соседними государствами, хеттской дипломатией. К началу 1980-х годов Владислав Григорьевич фактически возглавил школу советской хеттологии, став ее выдающимся представителем. Однако при всей увлеченности хеттской проблематикой во многих ее аспектах, все же особое место среди научных интересов Ардзинба занимали культура и язык хаттов, этого загадочного народа древней Малой Азии, сыгравшего значительную роль в процессе формирования хеттского государства, его идеологии и культовой практики. Хатты считаются предшественниками индоевропейцев-хеттов в Малой Азии. Именно хатты создали ту идеологическую основу, на которую затем наложилась культура, язык и общественные институты, как полагают, пришлого индоевропейского народа. По мнению крупного востоковеда Г.А. Меликишвили 1 , на которое ссылается Ардзинба, «Хеттское государство возникло в условиях политической гегемонии не хеттов-неситов, а именно хаттов». Да и само имя хеттов первоначально относилось к хаттам. Защищенная в 1971 году в Москве кандидатская диссертация В. Ардзинба «Хаттские истоки социальной организации древнехеттского общества (Функции должностных лиц с титулами хаттского происхождения)» была полностью посвящена 1 Меликишвили Г.А. Возникновение Хеттского царства и проблема древнейшего населения Закавказья и Малой Азии // Вестник древней истории. 1965. № 1. С. 3. изучению хаттского наследия в хеттской цивилизации в религиозном и социально-политическом аспектах. Следует вспомнить, что решение Владислава Григорьевича заняться хеттской проблематикой на заре своей научной карьеры главным образом и мотивировалось его изначальным интересом к раскрытию проблемы происхождения хаттов, и их возможных древних этнокультурных и языковых связей с народами Западного Кавказа -абхазами, абазинами, адыгами и убыхами. А стимулом к развитию этого интереса, как ученый сам рассказывал, был совет его учителя, крупнейшего абхазского этнолога профессора Шалвы Денисовича Инал-ипа. В аспирантуре эстафету учителя от профессора Инал-ипа принял новый научный руководитель Ардзинбы, крупнейший русский филолог, лингвист и культуролог, специалист, в частности, и по хеттскому языку и культуре, Вячеслав Всеволодович Иванов. Более звездного сочетания учителей, как кажется, трудно было пожелать. Мне уже приходилось делать общий обзор о вкладе Владислава Ардзинба в хеттологию и кавказоведение 2 . Еще предстоит более детальная работа по осмыслению его вклада и в другие аспекты востоковедной науки. Данная работа посвящена более конкретной проблематике -вкладу Ардзинба в лингвистические аспекты хаттологии. Хаттский язык К началу II тыс. до н.э. хатты являли собой одну из основных этнических групп в составе населения Малой Азии, наряду с хеттами, лувийцами и палайцами, говорившими на близкородственных (анатолийских) индоевропейских языках, а также с не индоевропейскими народами касками и хурритами. 2 Чирикба В.А. Научное наследие Владислава Ардзинба // В.Г. Ардзинба. Собрание трудов в трех томах. Том III. Кавказские мифы, языки, этносы. Москва: Институт востоковедения РАН; Сухум: АбИГИ АНА, 2015.

This book deals with the reconstruction of Common West Caucasian, the postulated proto-language of the West Caucasian (Abkhazo-Adyghean) languages, Abkhaz, Circassian and the recently extinct Ubykh. The book contains a synchronous description of the phonemic systems of all West Caucasian dialects and presents intermediary reconstructions of the Proto-Abkhaz, Proto-Circassian and Proto-Ubykh phonemic systems. The reconstructed intermediary proto-languages serve as a basis for the reconstruction of Common West Caucasian. Besides phonology, the book deals also with certain aspects of the morphology (nominal and verbal affixation, ablaut) and the lexicon of Common West Caucasian. Finally, the author touches upon the problem of the external relations of Common West Caucasian, namely, with the East Caucasian (or Nakh- Daghestanian) languages, and with the long extinct Hattic language of ancient Asia Minor (early second millennium B.C.).

The article analyzes the Abkhaz language material as contained in the book by James Stanislaus Bell “Journal of a residence in Circassia during the years 1837, 1838, and 1839” (London, 1840). The author spent three years (1837-1839) in the Western Caucasus and recorded language materials directly from the speakers of Abkhaz, Ubykh and Adyghe languages. We argue that part of the Abkhaz lexical material recorded by Bell reflects the features of the Sadz dialect of Abkhaz.

The paper discusses the contribution of the outstanding Russian philologist Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoy (1890-1938) to the formation of a new branch of comparative historical linguistics – the North Caucasian linguistics and philology. N.S. Trubetskoy was one of the first in the world practice to successfully apply the methods of classical comparative linguistics to the non-written (or newly written) languages of the Northern Caucasus, having proved, on the basis of regular sound correspondences in the main lexical fund of these languages, the genetic relationship between the two groups of Caucasian languages – the Abkhazo-Adygean and Nakh-Daghestanian. The paper also discusses Trubetskoy's contribution to the study of phonetics and phonology of the North Caucasian languages, as well as of folklore and mythology of the peoples of the Northern Caucasus.

It is commonly assumed that basic cardinal numerals such as English three are simplex expressions whose primary function is to quantify over entities denoted by the modified NP (e.g., Kennedy 2015; Rothstein 2017; Ionin & Matushansky 2018). In this paper, we explore cross-linguistic marking patterns suggesting that cardinals in fact lexicalize complex syntactic and semantic structures derived from the primitive notion of the number scale. The evidence we will investigate comes from various morphological shapes of cardinal numerals when used to count objects and when used for abstract arithmetical counting.

The present paper examines the reflexes of common Abkhazo-Adyghian lateral phonems. In contemporary Abkhaz-Abaza dialects lateral system is represented only by resonant l. In contrast to Abkhaz-Abaza, Circassian (Kabardian, Adyghean and Ubykh) contains a complicated system of fricative laterals – L, λ, λ’. In order to reconstruct common Abkhazo-Adyghian lateral system, in the first instance it is necessary to represent on the one hand common Abkhazo-Abaza, on other hand common Circassian, than reconstructed material of both groups should be compared with each other and the process should be finished by establishing regular voice correspondence.

A large number of Ancient Greek vases dated to the 1st millennium BC contain short inscriptions. Normally, these represent names of craftsmen or names and descriptions of the depicted characters and objects. The majority of inscriptions are understandable in Ancient Greek, but there is a substantial number of abracadabra words whose meaning and morphological structure remain vague. Recently an interdisciplinary team (Mayor et alii 2014) came up with the idea that some of the nonsense inscriptions associated with Amazons and Scythians are actually written in ancient Abkhaz-Adyghe languages. The idea is promising since in the first half of the 1st millennium BC the Greeks initiated the process of active expansion in the Black Sea region, so it is natural to suppose that contacts with autochthonous peoples might be reflected in Greek art. Unfortunately, detailed examination suggests that the proposed Abkhaz-Adyghe decipherment is semantically and morphologically ad hoc, containing a number of inaccuracies and errors of various kinds. The methodological and factual flaws are so substantial that it makes Mayor et alii 's results improbable.

La nuna situacio kun abĥaza lingvo elvokas seriozan zorgemon kiel ĉe specialistoj,
tiel en rondo de intelektularo, malgraŭ garantita en Konstitucio de Abĥazio altan
staton de abĥaza lingvo kiel ŝtata. Laŭ takso de lingvoscientistoj abĥaza apartenas
al kategorio de malbonstataj lingvoj; ĉe tio observiĝas la plifortigon de vico da
faktoroj malfavore influantaj per ĝia funkcionado (altan nivelon de urbonizo,
amasan migradon de agrarloĝantaro en urbojn, kie en kondiĉoj de polietnika socio
dominas rusa lingvo ktp). En la verko taksas ĝeneralan kondiĉon de abĥaza lingvo
en Abĥazio, citiĝas la rezultojn de statistika kaj sociolingvistika esplorado de
specifikecoj de ĝia funkcionado en medio de urbaj abĥazoj. Sur la bazo de rezultoj
de esplorado, kaj ankaŭ kun konsidero de internacia sperto, proponiĝas la
komplekson da rimedoj, direktitaj al sanigado de situacio kun abĥaza lingvo.

Основываясь на исследованиях по фонетике северокавказских языков, автор выявляет структурное несоответствие между исключительно богатым консонантизмом данных языков и их нынешними кириллическими алфавитами и, выдвигая идею о необходимости создания собственных и независимых систем письма для 37 западно- и восточнокавказских языков, находящихся под угрозой исчезновения, предлагает совершенно новую, оригинальную и обобщенную алфавитную систему, наделенную высшей степенью графемно-фонемной взаимооднозначности и основанную на принципах знакоформирования и морфологическом применении элементов графики трех исторических алфавитов Южного Кавказа и Армянского Нагорья.

ETHNIC IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE COMPETENCE IN THE DESCENDANTS OF NATIONAL-MIXED FAMILIES IN GUDAUTA
(According to a sociological study of 2017–2018)

The article analyzes the ethno-linguistic characteristics of the ethnically mixed population of the town of Gudauta based on data from a sociological survey conducted in 2017–2018. The survey covered 562 respondents, or 6.4% of the town’s population. Extrapolating the data of the present study to the population of Gudauta as a whole, one can conclude that progeny represent more than ¼ of the citizens from inter-ethnic marriages, either in the first or second generation.

The file is too big to upload on Academia.edu, you can download it here http://apsnyteka.org/3681-Bagapsh_N_Etnodemograf_protsessy_v_Sukhume_2017.html

Монография кандидата географических наук Багапш Н.В. посвящена изучению этнодемографических процессов в столице Абхазии на протяжении последних 130 лет. В работе анализируется история изменения этнической структуры населения Сухума с конца XIX столетия до наших дней, даётся ретроспективная характеристика этнокультурного пространства города, а также проводится исследование современной этнодемографической и этноязыковой ситуации в столице на основе анализа данных социологического опроса.
Книга рассчитана на этнологов, историков, демографов, географов, социологов, студентов-гуманитариев, а также на широкий круг читателей, интересующихся этнодемографической историей Абхазии.