The Northeast Caucasian languages, or Nakh-Daghestanian languages, are a language family spoken in
the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in northern Azerbaijan
as well as in diaspora populations in Western Europe, Turkey and the Middle East.
They are occasionally called North Caspian, as opposed to North Pontic for the Northwest
Caucasian languages.
== Name of the family == Several names have been in use for this family.
The most common term, Northeast Caucasian, contrasts the three established families of
the Caucasus language area: Northeast Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz–Adyghean), and
South Caucasian (Kartvelian).
This may be shortened to East Caucasian.
The term Nakh(o)-Dagestanian can be taken to reflect a primary division of the family
into Nakh and Dagestanian branches, a view which is no longer widely accepted, or Dagestanian
can subsume the entire family.
The rare term North Caspian (as in bordering the Caspian Sea) is only used in opposition
to the use of North Pontic (as in bordering the Black Sea) for the Northwest Caucasian
languages.
== Linguistic features ==
=== Phonology === Historically, Northeast Caucasian phonemic
inventories were thought to be significantly smaller than those of the neighboring Northwest
Caucasian family.
However, more recent research has revealed that many Northeast Caucasian languages are
much more phoneme-rich than previously believed, with some languages containing as many as
70 consonants.In addition to numerous oral obstruents, many Northeast Caucasian languages
also possess a number of back consonants, including uvulars, pharyngeals, and glottal
stops and fricatives.
Northeast Caucasian phonology is also notable for its use of numerous secondary articulations
as contrastive features.
Whereas English consonant classes are divided into voiced and voiceless phonemes, Northeast
Caucasian languages are known to contrast phones into voiced, voiceless, ejective, and
tense variants, which contributes to their large phonemic inventories.
Some languages also include palatalization and labialization as contrastive features.
Most languages in this family contrast tense and weak consonants.
Tense consonants are characterized by the intensiveness of articulation, which naturally
leads to a lengthening of these consonants.
In contrast to the generally large consonant inventories of Northeast Caucasian languages,
most languages in the family have relatively few vowels.
However, there are some exceptions to this trend, such as Chechen, which has at least
twenty-eight vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs.
=== Morphology === These languages can be characterized by strong
suffixal agglutination.
Weak tendencies towards inflection may be noted as well.
Nouns display covert nominal classification, but partially overt cases of secondary origin
can be observed too.
The number of noun classes in individual languages range from two to eight.
Regarding grammatical number, there may be a distinction between singular and plural,
plurality itself may impact the class to which a noun belongs.
In some cases, a grammatical collective is seen.
Many languages distinguish local versus functional cases, and to some degree also casus rectus
versus casus obliquus.
The inflectional paradigms are often based on partially classifying productive stem extensions
(absolutive, and oblique, ergative, and genitive inflection.
Localization is mostly conveyed by postpositions, but it can be also partly based on preverbs.
Noun phrases exhibit incomplete class agreement, group inflection (on the noun) with partial
attributive oblique marking, which may, in turn, carry a partially determining function.
==== Ergativity ==== Most Northeast Caucasian languages exhibit
an ergative–absolutive morphology.
This means that objects of transitive sentences and subjects of intransitive sentences both
fall into a single grammatical case known as the absolutive.
Subjects of transitive sentences, however, carry a different marking to indicate that
they belong to a separate case, known as the ergative.
This distinction can be seen in the following two Archi sentences.
Note that objects and subjects of intransitive sentences carry no suffix, which is represented
by the null suffix, -∅. Meanwhile, agents of transitive sentences take the ergative
suffix, -mu.
Blue is used to mark ergative markers, as well as and transitive agents in the English
translations.
Red is used to mark null morphemes, as well as transitive objects and intransitive subjects
in the English translations.
==== Noun classes ==== Northeast Caucasian languages have between
two and eight noun classes.
In these languages, nouns are grouped into grammatical categories depending on certain
semantic qualities, such as animacy and gender.
Each noun class has a corresponding agreement prefix, which can attach to verbs or adjectives
of that noun.
Prefixes may also have plural forms, used in agreement with a plural noun.
The following table shows the noun–adjective agreement paradigm in the Tsez language.
Colors are used to emphasize agreement between adjectival prefixes and noun classes.
== Language classification ==
A long-time classification divided the family into Nakh and Dagestanian branches, whence
the term Nakho-Dagestanian.
However, attempts at reconstructing the protolanguage suggest that the Nakh languages are no more
divergent from Dagestanian than the various branches of Dagestanian are from each other,
although this is still not universally accepted.
The following outline, based on the work of linguist Bernard Comrie and others, has been
adopted by Ethnologue.
An Avar–Andi–Dido branch was abandoned, but has been resurrected as the "New Type"
languages in Schulze (2009, 2013), and Lak–Dargwa has likewise returned.
Population data is from Ethnologue 16th ed.
=== Avar–Andic family ===
Spoken in the Northwest Dagestan highlands and western Dagestan.
Avar is the lingua franca for these and the Tsezic languages and is the only literary
language.
Schulze (2009) gives the following family tree for the Avar–Andic languages:
Avar (761,960) Andic languages
Andi (Qwannab) (5,800) Akhvakh–Tindi
Akhvakh (210 as of 2010) Karata–Tindi
Karata (Kirdi) (260 as of 2010) Botlikh–Tindi
Botlikh (210 as of 2010) Godoberi (130 as of 2010)
Chamalal (500 as of 2010) Bagvalal–Tindi
Bagvalal (1,450) Tindi (2,150)Figures retrieved from Ethnologue.
These languages are spoken in the following rayons of Dagestan: Axvax, Botlikh, Buynaksk
(Shura), Čarodinsky (Tsurib), Gergebil, Gumbetovsky (Baklul), Gunib, Karabudaxkent, Kazbekovsky
(Dylym), Lavaša, Tsumada (Agvali), Untsukul, Xebda, Xunzaq and Zaqatala rayon in Azerbaijan.
=== Dargic (Dargin) dialect continuum ===
Spoken by 492,490 in Dagestan, as well as Azerbaijan, Central Asia, and Ukraine.
Dargwa proper is a literary language.
Dargwa (Dargva) Kajtak
Kubachi Itsari
ChiragDargwa is spoken in the following rayons of Dagestan: Aquša, Kaitak, Kayakent, Kubači,
Sergokala.
=== Khinalug (Xinalug) isolate ===
Spoken in Quba rayon of Azerbaijan.
Khinalug (Xinalug) (1,000 speakers)
=== Lak isolate ===
Spoken in the Central Dagestan highlands.
Lak is a literary language.
Lak (152,000 speakers)Lak is spoken in two rayons of Dagestan: Kumux and Kuli (Vači).
=== Lezgic family ===
Spoken in the Southeast Dagestan highlands and in Northern Azerbaijan.
The Lezgian language or, as the Lezgian people themselves call it, Лезги чlал (lezgi
ch'al), is the biggest in terms of the number of native speakers of all the languages of
the Lezgic group (other languages from this group include Tabasaran, Udi, Tsakhur, and
Rutul).
They are spoken in the following rayons of Dagestan: Agul, Axty, Derbent (Kvevar), Kasumxur,
Kurax, Magaramkent, Rutul, Tabasaran, Usuxčay, Xiv and Quba and Zaqatala in Azerbaijan.
Tabasaran was once thought to be the language with the largest number of grammatical cases
at 54, which could, depending on the analysis, instead be the Tsez language with 64.
Lezgian and Tabasaran are literary languages.
==== Lezgic family tree ==== Peripheral: Archi (970 speakers)
Samur (or Nuclear Lezgian) Eastern Samur
Tabasaran (128,900) Lezgian (655,000)
Aghul (29,300) Udi (6,590)
Southern Samur Kryts (5,000)
Budukh (1,000) Western Samur
Rutul (47,400) Tsakhur (23,673)All figures retrieved from
Ethnologue.
=== Nakh family ===
Spoken in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Georgia.
Chechen and Ingush are official languages of their respective republics.
Bats (3,420 speakers in Georgia in 2000) Vainakh languages
Chechen (1,350,000) Ingush (322,900)
=== Tsezic (Didoic) family ===
Spoken mostly in Southwest Dagestan.
None are literary languages.
Formerly classified geographically as East Tsezic (Hinukh, Bezta) and West Tsezic (Tsez,
Khwarshi, Hunzib), these languages may actually form different subgroupings according to the
latest research by Schulze (2009):
Tsez–Hinukh Tsez (Dido) (12,500)
Hinukh (Hinux, Ginukh) (5 as of 2010) Bezhta–Hunzib–Khwarshi
Bezhta (Kapucha) (6,800) Hunzib (Gunzib) (1,420)
Khwarshi (Khvarshi) (8,500)All figures except for Khwarshi were retrieved from Ethnologue.
These languages are spoken in Tsuntsin and Bežta areas of Dagestan.
== Connections to other families ==
=== North Caucasian family (hypothetical) ===
Some linguists such as Sergei Starostin think that the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian
languages should be joined into a putative North Caucasian family, citing shared vocabulary
and typological features as evidence.
This proposed family does not usually include the neighboring Kartvelian languages.
This hypothesis is not well demonstrated.
=== Connections to Hurrian and Urartian (disputed) ===
Some linguists—notably Igor M. Diakonoff and 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 that existed between 1000 BC or earlier
and 585 BC in the area centered on Lake Van in current Turkey.
The two extinct languages have been grouped into the Hurro-Urartian family.
Diakonoff proposed the name Alarodian for the union of Hurro-Urartian and Northeast
Caucasian.However, the validity of both Alarodian and North Caucasian hypothetical families
is rejected or viewed as doubtful by most historical linguists.
==== 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.
They had 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 proto-language broke up.
== See also == Northwest Caucasian language
North Caucasian language
== References ==
=== Bibliography ===
== External links == Various Northeast Caucasian language dictionaries
online from IDS (select simple or advanced browsing)
CIA linguistic map of the Caucasus