The group's relationship to any otherlanguage family is uncertain and unproven. One language,Ubykh, became extinct in 1992, while all of the other languages are in some form of endangerment, with UNESCOclassifying all as either "vulnerable", "endangered", or "severely endangered".[4] Within the Northwest Caucasian languages, only Abkhaz has afirst-set code in the ISO 639 standard.
The Northwest Caucasian languages possess highly complex sets of consonant distinctions paired with a lack of vowel distinctions, often providing archetypical cases ofvertical vowel systems, also known as "linear" vowel systems.[5][6]
Linguistic reconstructions suggest that both the richness of the consonantal systems and the poverty of the vocalic systems may be the result of a historical process, whereby vowel features such aslabialization andpalatalization were reassigned to adjacent consonants. For example, ancestral*/ki/ may have become/kʲə/ and*/ku/ may have become/kʷə/, losing the old vowels*/i/ and*/u/ but gaining the new consonants/kʲ/ and/kʷ/. The linguistJohn Colarusso has further postulated that some instances of this may also be due to the levelling of an oldgrammatical class prefix system (so*/w-ka/ may have become/kʷa/), on the basis of pairs like Ubykh/ɡʲə/ vs. Kabardian and Abkhaz/ɡʷə/heart. This same process is claimed by some[who?] to lie behind the development oflabiovelars inProto-Indo-European, which once neighbouredProto-NWC.
Lack of distinctive vowels and wealth of distinctive consonants
The entire family is characterised by a paucity ofphonemic vowels (two or three, depending upon the analysis) coupled with rich consonantal systems that include many forms ofsecondary articulation.[3]Ubykh (Ubyx), for example, had two vowels and probably the largest inventory of consonants outside SouthernAfrica.
Northwest Caucasian languages have rather simple noun systems, with only a handful of cases at the most, coupled with highlyagglutinative verbal systems that can contain almost the entire syntactic structure of the sentence. All finite verbs are marked for agreement with three arguments:absolutive,ergative, andindirect object,[7] and there are also a wide range ofapplicative constructions. There is a split between "dynamic" and "stative"verbs, with dynamic verbs having an especially complex morphology. A verb's morphemes indicate the subject's and object's person, place, time, manner of action, negative, and other types of grammatical categories.
All Northwest Caucasian languages areleft-branching, so that the verb comes at the end of the sentence and modifiers such asrelative clauses precede a noun.
Northwest Caucasian languages do not generally permit more than one finite verb in a sentence, which precludes the existence ofsubordinate clauses in theIndo-European sense. Equivalent functions are performed by extensive arrays ofnominal andparticipial non-finite verb forms, though Abkhaz appears to be developing limited subordinate clauses, perhaps under the influence of Russian.
There are five recognized languages in the Northwest Caucasian family:Abkhaz,Abaza,Kabardian or East Circassian,Adyghe or West Circassian, andUbykh.[3][8] They are classified as follows:
Adyghe is one of the more widely spoken Northwest Caucasian languages. It has 500,000 speakers spread throughoutRussia and theMiddle East: 280,000 inTurkey; 125,000 in Russia, where it is official in theRepublic of Adygea; 45,000 inJordan, 25,000 inSyria, 20,000 inIraq, and 4,000 inIsrael. There is even a small community in theUnited States. Four main dialects are recognised:Temirgoy,Abadzekh,Shapsugh andBzhedugh, as well as many minor ones such asHakuchi spoken by the last speakers of Ubykh in Turkey. Adyghe has many consonants: between 50 and 60 consonants in the various Adyghe dialects but it has only three phonemic vowels. Its consonants and consonant clusters are less complex than the Abkhaz–Abaza dialects.
Kabardian has just over one million speakers: 550,000 inTurkey and 450,000 inRussia, where it is an official language of the republics ofKabardino-Balkaria andKarachay-Cherkessia. Kabardian has the fewest consonants of any North-Western Caucasian language, with 48, including some rather unusualejectivefricatives and a small number of vowels. Kabardian itself has several dialects, including Terek, the literary standard, and Besleney, which is intelligible with both Terek andAdyghe. Unlike the Adyghe, Kabardian lost many of the consonants that existed in theProto-Circassian language, for example, the consonants/ʃʷʼ,ʐʷ,ʂʷ,ʐ,ʂ,tsʷ,dzʷ/ became/fʼ,v,f,ʑ,ɕ,f,v/.
Abkhaz has 100,000 speakers inAbkhazia (ade facto independent republic, but ade jure autonomous entity withinGeorgia), where it is the official language, and an unknown number of speakers inTurkey. It has been a literary language from the beginning of the 20th century. Abkhaz and Abaza may be said to be dialects of the same language, but each preserves phonemes which the other has lost. Abkhaz is characterised by unusual consonant clusters and one of the world's smallest vowel inventories: It has only two distinctive vowels, an open vowel /a/ and a mid vowel /ə/. Next topalatalized orlabialized consonants, /a/ is realized as [e] or [o], and /ə/ as [i] or [u]. There are three majordialects:Abzhuy andBzyp inAbkhazia andSadz in Turkey.
Abaza has some 45,000 speakers, 35,000 inRussia and 10,000 inTurkey. It is a literary language, but nowhere official. It shares with Abkhaz the distinction of having just two phonemic vowels. Abaza is phonologically more complex than Abkhaz, and is characterised by large consonant clusters, similar to those that can be found inGeorgian. There are two major dialects,Tapant andAshkhar. Some are partially intelligible with Abkhaz.
Ubykh forms a third branch, with parallels to both Adyghe and Abkhaz. The population switched to speaking Adyghe, and Ubykh became extinct on 7 October 1992, with the death ofTevfik Esenç. A dialectal division within Ubykh was suspected byGeorges Dumézil, but the divergent form he described in 1965 was never investigated further. With eighty-one consonants, Ubykh had perhaps the largest inventory in the world aside from theKx'a andTuu families of southern Africa with their extensive system ofclicks. There arepharyngealised consonants and a four-way place contrast amongsibilants. It was the only Northwest Caucasian language never to have a literary form.
^Liljencrafts, Johan and Lindblom, Björn. 1972. "Numerical Simulation of Vowel Quality Systems: The Role of Perceptual Contrast".Language, vol 48, no 4. Page 845: ", a 'linear' vowel system, is described by Trubetzkoy (1958:87). He attributes such systems to Caucasian languages ... Abkhaz and Adyge... and with some hesitation Ubykh... The phonetic realizations of these vowels exhibit rich consonant-determined variation." page 857: "These observations bear to mind the phonological systems of Caucasian languages such as Kabardia whose underlying vowel segments are confined to /a/ and /a/ but whose consonant system is extreme".
^Halle, M. 1970. "Is Kabardian a vowel-less language?".Foundations of Language 6: pages 95–103.
Chirikba, Viacheslav (1996).Common West Caucasian. The Reconstruction of its Phonological System and Parts of its Lexicon and Morphology. Leiden: Research School CNWS, School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies.ISBN978-9073782716.
Colarusso, John (1997). "Phyletic Links between Proto-Indo-European and Proto–Northwest Caucasian".The Journal of Indo-European Studies.25 (1–2). Chicago Linguistic Society:119–151.
