(Ibero-Caucasian languages), the indigenous languages of the Caucasus, which are represented by three groups: Kartvelian, Abkhazo-Adyg and Nakho-Dagestan. Although there is no doubt concerning the genetic relationship of the Nakh and Dagestan languages, they are sometimes regarded as two different groups. The Abkhazo-Adyg and Nakho-Dagestan groups are often conventionally referred to as the Mountain Caucasian or North Caucasian languages. There are approximately 40 Caucasian languages, which are spoken by more than 4.5 million persons. Only Georgian has an ancient literary tradition (dating back to the fifth century). The Udi also apparently had a writing system between the fifth and eighth centuries. The Abkhaz, Abaza, Adygei, Kabardin-Cherkess, Chechen, Ingush, Avar, Lak, Darghin, Lezgin, and Tabasaran languages have only recently been put into writing, although individual records in some of them date as far back as the Middle Ages.
The Caucasian languages are characterized by substantial divergences, in addition to the existence of structural parallelisms. Phonetically, they share complex consonant systems, which include stops (voiced and voiceless aspirates, glottalized stops, and voiceless unaspirated stops) and uvular and pharyngeal consonants. Harmonic consonant clusters (complexes) are frequent, although poorly represented in the Nakho-Dagestan languages. There are sharp differences in the vowel systems of the Caucasian languages, which include from two or three phonemes in the Abkhazo-Adyg languages to 15 to 20 or more phonemes in a number of Nakho-Dagestan languages (in which long and short, pharyngealized, nasalized, and umlauted vowels occur). There is also considerable variation in the phonological structure of roots. Stress in the Caucasian languages is dynamic and, in general, weakly expressed.
Morphologically, the Caucasian languages tend to be agglutinative, although elements of fusion and, in particular, ablaut are to be found in them. The Abkhazo-Adyg languages have very complex conjugations and rather elementary declensions, whereas the reverse is true for the Nakho-Dagestan languages. Subject-object prefixation is typical for the verb. Syntactically, the Caucasian languages distinguish absolute (usually with intransitive verbs), ergative (with transitive verbs), and affective (with verbs of perception) sentence constructions. Sentences have free word order.
The vocabulary of the Caucasian languages is rich in onomatopoetic words. There are many common lexical borrowings from the Arabic, Persian, and Turkic languages.
The Kartvelian linguistic group is intermediate between the Abkhazo-Adyg and Nakho-Dagestan languages with respect to a whole range of features. The Abkhazo-Adyg and Kartvelian languages display more features in common, such as the following interesting lexical parallelisms: Kartvelian *mz1e “sun” ˜ Abkhazo-Adyg *maza “moon”; Kartvelian *gwl “heart” ˜ Abkhazo-Adyg *gwd “heart”; and Kartvelian *pxa “framework” ˜ Abkhazo-Adyg *pqa “framework.”
There is no unanimity among linguists on the question of Caucasian linguistic interrelationships. Their genetic unity is often postulated on the basis of the presence of a number of structural and typological parallelisms and a certain number of common material features. This supposition, however, cannot be regarded as proved, which allows some linguists to maintain that a linguistic union exists here. The problem of external Caucasian linguistic relationships is even less clear.
G. A. KLIMOV