Iberian-Caucasian languages

Iberian-Caucasian languages includes 38 languages spoken by more than 7 million people. It comprises several unrelated families of languages, spoken in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe. In the Caucasus exists the scientific school of Iberian-Caucasian linguistics. The Georgian scientist and academician Arnold Chikobava was the founder of this school.

The name of this language group derives from its two branches - "Iberian" comes from the Caucasian Iberia (an old kingdom in modern Georgia), while "Caucasian" comes from the South Caucasus area.

Table of contents

1 Kartvelian (Georgian) languages (South Caucasus)
2 North Caucasian
3 Other languages in the Caucasus
4 Additional information about Iberian-Caucasian languages

Kartvelian (Georgian) languages (South Caucasus)

Georgian,
- Svan,
- Laz,
- Mingrelian (Megrelian)

Svans, Lazs and Mingrelians (Megrels) are ethnic Georgians, ethnographic groups of the Georgian people. Svan, Laz and Mingrelian are archaic dialects of the old Georgian language.

North Caucasian

Northwest Caucasian languages or Abkhaz-Adygh languages
- Abkhaz language
- Abaza language
- Adyghe
- Kabardian
- Cherkess language
- Ubykh language
- Hattic language
Alarodian languages
- North-east Caucasian or Dagestan languages
  - Lezgian
  - Andi
  - Botlikh
  - Chamalal
  - Gigatl
  - Ghodoberi
  - Karata
  - Bagvalal
  - Tindi
  - Avar
  - Dido (Tsez)
  - Hinukh (Ginukh)
  - Hunzib
  - Bezhta
  - Khvarshi
  - Dargwa
  - Kajtak
  - Kubachi
  - Lak
  - Aghul
  - Archi
  - Budukh
  - Khinalugh
  - Kryts
  - Akhvakh
  - Rutul
  - Tabassaran
  - Tsakhur
  - Udi
- Hurro-Urartian languages
  - Hurrian
  - Urartian
- North-central Caucasian or Vaynakh languages
  - Chechen
  - Ingush
  - Batsb

The last two groups sometimes are called Nakh-Dagestan. They have a number of common features in phonetics and grammar, for example, ergative case and sentence structure, but their genetic relationship is not clear.

Other languages in the Caucasus

In addition to Iberian-Caucasian languages, there are linguistic 'islands' of:

Indo-European languages
- Iranian - Ossetian language, Talysh language, Judeo-Tat
- Armenian
Altaic languages
- Turkic - Azeri, Karachay, Balkar, Nogai and Kumyk
- Mongolian - Kalmyk at the mouth of the Volga.

Additional information about Iberian-Caucasian languages

South Caucasian (Kartvelian (Georgian) and North Caucasian are two distinct, unrelated phyla even in Greenberg's classification. Generally, the former are spoken south of the Caucasus and the latter north of the Caucasus watershed. According to some linguists North Caucasian split in two about five thousand years ago giving rise to the northwest or Pontic group comprising: Circassian (= Adyghe + Kabard-Cherkess), Ubykh and Abkhaz; and the northeast or Caspian group which early split into western, central and southern branches. The western branch divided early into Nakh and Avar-Andi-Dido. The chief extant languages of these two are Chechen and Avar respectively. The central branch gave rise to Lak and Dargwa, the southern branch to Lezgi and Khinalugh.

Udi is an aberrant form of Lezgi and Dido an aberrant form of Avar.

The Caucasus has the largest concentration of ergative languages in Europe. Ergativity is relevant to all the languages of the Caucasus except for Mingrelian and Georgian. The so-called ergative case in Georgian is merely a misnomer; the underlying structure of the langugage is not ergative. The Kartvelian and Northwestern families tend to be verb-focused, with much information about nouns encoded in the verb.

Languages of the Iberian-Caucasian language family have been linked with various other language families, some with more success than others.

Basque has been linked with the Kartvelian (Georgian) languages, due to the fact that Basque is the only ergative language remaining in western Europe. However, the application of the ergative case differs between the families, and this hypothesis is not widely accepted.
* The Northwest and Northeast Caucasian families have been linked with each other to form a hypothetical Common North Caucasian language family. This theory is not yet widely accepted; many of the parallels which have been drawn depend on cognates which may, in fact, be loan words.
Some analyses of Proto-Kartvelian (Proto-Georgian) indicate that this protolanguage possessed just one phonemic vowel. This compares well to the two phonemic vowels found in most Northwest Caucasian languages. However, this relationship is disputed and, as yet, uncertain.