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NORTHEAST CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES

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The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Caspian, Nakh-Dagestanian, or Dagestanian, are a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia, in northern Azerbaijan, and in Georgia, as well as in diaspora populations.

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Linguistic features

This family is known for the complex phonology (up to 60 consonants or up to 30 vowels in some languages), noun classes, ergative sentence structure, and large number of noun cases, including several locative cases.

Language classification

The classification of the Northeast Caucasian languages has undergone some reorganization in recent years. The following tree is a typical recent proposal, based on the work of linguist Bernard Comrie and others. Population data is from Ethnologue 15th ed.

Nakh family

Spoken in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Georgia. Chechen and Ingush are official languages of their respective republics.

Avar-Andi family

Spoken in the Northwest Dagestan highlands and western Dagestan. Avar is the lingua franca for these and the Tsez languages, and the only literary language.

Tsez (Dido) family

Spoken mostly in Southwest Dagestan. None are literary languages.

Lak isolate

Spoken in the Central Dagestan highlands. Lak is a literary language.

  • Lak (120,000 speakers)

Dargi (Dargin) dialect continuum

Spoken by 370,000 in the Central Dagestan highlands. Dargwa proper is a literary language.

Khinalug (Xinalug) isolate

Spoken in northern Azerbaijan.

Lezgian family

Spoken in the Southeast Dagestan highlands and in Northern Azerbaijan. The Lezgian family includes the extinct Aghbanian language of the medieval Caucasian Albanian empire. Lezgi and Tabassaran are literary languages.

Traditionally the Nakh languages were classified as a separate North-Central Caucasian family, related to the languages of Dagestan only at a deeper level called Nakho-Dagestanian. The names Northeast Caucasian, East Caucasian, Dagestanian, and Caspian were coined for the other branches. Since then most linguists have come to accept that the Nakh languages are no more divergent than the other branches of Dagestanian.

Connections to other families

North Caucasian family

Many linguists think that the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian languages should be joined into a putative North Caucasian family, sometimes called Caucasic or Caucasian (even though it is not meant to include the South Caucasian (Kartvelian) family). However, this hypothesis is not well demonstrated. See the article on North Caucasian languages for details.

Connections to Hurrian and Urartian

Some linguists — notably I. M. Diakonoff and S. Starostin — also see similarities between the Northeast Caucasian family and the extinct languages Hurrian and Urartian. Hurrian was spoken in various parts of the Fertile Crescent in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. Urartian was the language of Urartu, a powerful state centered in the area of Lake Van in Turkey, that existed between 1000 BC or earlier and 585 BC.

The two extinct languages have been grouped into the Hurro-Urartian family. Sarostin proposed the name Alarodian for the union of Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian.

Agricultural vocabulary

The Proto-Northeast Caucasian language had many terms for agriculture, and Johanna Nichols has suggested that its speakers may have been involved in the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.[1] They have words for concepts such as yoke, as well as fruit trees such as apple and pear that suggest agriculture was already well developed when the protolanguage broke up.

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