Abkhazo-Adyghean Languages

Eurasia's exuberant linguistic diversity can best be seen through the lens of the 'core' Eurasian linguistic regions: the Steppe, the Caucasus, and the Himalaya-Pamir-Tian Shan mountain ranges. They also present citation examples of how geography affects the distribution and evolution of language families: spread-zones vs. residual zones.

Encyclopedia article for International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology

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 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.

Yuri B. Koryakov
Atlas of the Languages of the World. Romance languages
Moscow: Institute of Linguistics RAS, 2001. — 21 pp.
incl. 13 multicoloured maps, 280x200 mm

This set is the first issue of the "Atlas of the Languages of the World" (ALW) series. It concerns the Romance branch of the Indo-European languages and consists of 13 maps. ALW is a serial publication prepared at the Institute of Linguistics as part of Languages of the World project. It originated to the map-making for the Languages of the World Encyclopaedia published in Russian.

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.

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.

Caucasian languages are well-known for their often baroque systems of morphology, but when it comes to suppletion very little is known both about how often Caucasian languages have suppletion, what features undergo processes of suppletion, and whether patterns of suppletion show areal or phylogenetic tendencies. This paper surveys various systems of suppletion in Caucasian languages and finds both little evidence of language contact resulting in suppletion, but also that suppletion arises only in preexisting grammatical categories, and results from a variety of different grammaticalization pathways.

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).

The paper presents a thorough study of the Abaza personal names. Traditionally, Abazas, a small autochthonous people living in the Karačaj-Čerkes Republic of the Russian Federation, used a two-name system, consisting, as a rule, of the surname plus the postposed first name. The Abaza personal names are analysed with regard to their origin, structure, semantics, and social status.  The onomastic system in general, as well as the tradition of naming among the Abazas are outlined as well.

This paper discusses peculiarities of relativization in Shapsug Adyghe, a variety of the polysynthetic Adyghe language belonging to the Northwest Caucasian family. In general, Adyghe relative constructions display a number of interesting phenomena such as morphological marking of the target role, relativization of several arguments within a single construction, and an internally-headed relative construction with the semantic head being marked by a specific exponent. The Shapsug variety i) presents evidence against the contrast between finite forms and participles, which was proposed for the language in most descriptions, ii) restricts relativization of possessors to possessors of absolutive arguments, and iii) displays typologically unique internally-headed constructions with internal heads marked by the external case. It is suggested that these peculiarities actually highlight certain properties of the Adyghe relative constructions that remain implicit in the standard language.

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.

Статья посвящена некоторым вопросам происхождения абхазо-адыгов в
свете новейших данных ряда наук. Осуществляется пересмотр предшествующих гипотез, в
частности, теории миграции предков абхазо-адыгов (народа каска) из Малой Азии во II-I тыс.
до н.э., а также и теории о близком родстве касков с хаттами. Выдвинута версия, согласно
которой предки абхазо-адыгов являются реликтом неолитической Европы и появились на За-
падном Кавказе не позже V тыс. до н.э. Ее суть сводится к тому, что путь миграций пролегал
не непосредственно из Малой Азии через Южный Кавказ, а был более сложным и длительным: из
Западной Анатолии в ходе миграций, связанных с «неолитизацией» 9-10 тыс. лет назад, через
Балканы, Карпатский регион и Северное Причерноморье.
The article is devoted to some issues of the origin of Abkhaz-Adyghs, in the light of latest
data of a number of sciences. It is proposed to revise the earlier hypotheses, particularly the ones on the
migration of the ancestors of Abkhaz-Adyghs (‘kaska’ people) from Asia Minor in the II-I millennium
BC and their close relationship with the Hattians. A version has been put forward that the ancestors
of Abkhaz-Adyghs are a relic of Neolithic Europe and that they appeared in the Western Caucasus no
later than the V millennium BC. The point is that the migration route did not run directly from Asia
Minor through the South Caucasus, but was more complicated and longer: from Western Anatolia during
migrations connected with the «neolithization» of 9-10 thousand years ago, through the Balkans, the
Carpathian region and Northern Black Sea Coast.

The comparison of West Caucasian (WC) with East Caucasian (EC) languages suggests that early PWC underwent a fundamental reshaping of its phonological, morphological and syntactic structures, as a result of which it became analytical, with elementary inflection and main grammatical roles being expressed by lexical means, word order and probably also by tones. The subsequent development of compounding and incorporation resulted in a prefixing polypersonal polysynthetic agglutinative language type typical for modern WC. The main evolutionary line from a NC dialect close to EC to modern WC languages was thus from agglutinative to the analytical or isolating language-type, due to a near complete loss of inflection, and then to the agglutinative polysynthetic type. Although these changes blurred the genetic relationship between WC and EC, however, it can be proven by applying standard procedures of comparative-historical linguistics.

Expressive and ideophonic constructions conveying ‘marked words that depict sensory imagery’ (Dingemanse 2012) are frequently found in the languages of all regions of the world, but their distribution, use and functioning across languages of the Caucasus has never been documented from a regional perspective. This chapter will survey the various kinds of expressive language present in the three autochthonous Caucasian families Abkhaz-Adyghean, Kartvelian and Nakh-Daghestanian, and find they vary in terms of:

1) their morphological exponence,
2) the extent to which their overall typological profile constrains how expressive forms may be formed,
3) grammatical categories exclusive to expressives,
4) expressives as a source for lexical innovation,
5) expressives as a locus of diachronic change

It will also look in-depth at the specific morphological and syntactic peculiarities of expressives in Georgian, which exhibit exuberant consonant clusters, processes of reduplication uncharacteristic of the language as a whole, as well as specific morphosyntactic alignment splits between different classes of expressive. Expressives will be seen to be not one thing, but many.

What really distinguishes normal from obscene language? And do Caucasian languages do anything different from obscenities in more familiar Western languages? In this talk, we will deconstruct the idea of obscenity and discuss them from the perspective of linguistic taboos. Obscenities are part of a much larger world of emotive language triggered by cultural taboos, and because taboos themselves vary from culture to culture, so do the forms of obscene language used to encode them. The languages of the Caucasus present a rich yet understudied array of resources to study this phenomenon.

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

In this paper we describe a peculiar pattern of case alternation from the polysynthetic Circassian (West Caucasian) languages, where specificity-driven differential marking of noun phrases is attested in all syntactic positions and with the absolutive and the oblique cases alike. We call this phenomenon differential nominal marking (DNM). We show that the presenсe resp. absenсe of overt case marking in Circassian fits in the two-level (DP vs. NP) structural model for nominal constructions and is in some ways similar to the phenomenon of pseudo-incorporation described for various languages with differential object marking. For instance, unmarked nominals in Circassian show number-neutrality and scope inertness with respect to negation and quantifiers. However, DNM in Circassian crucially differs from all known instances of pseudo-incorporation or case alternation in that it is not restricted to any particular syntactic position. We argue that this feature of the Circassian DNM calls all the existing approaches (both functionalist and generative) to the phenomenon of differential case marking in question.

To the attention of researchers: All major linguistics research of Aygen are listed here for reference. Almost all publications have been presented publicly at conferences and invited talks at much earlier dates than the actual publications.

Abaza, a polysynthetic ergative Northwest Caucasian language, possesses a typologically unique system of forming content questions by means of inflectional marking in the verb. I offer a detailed description of this peculiar system showing how it is grounded in the more general pattern of encoding relativization by means of prefixes forming part of the basic cross-referencing paradigms. I also discuss a tentative diachronic scenario explaining how at least a subpart of the synthetic interrogative marking in Abaza (and its close relative Abkhaz) could have emerged via univerbation of pseudocleft focus constructions.