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| Northeast Caucasian
(Nakho-)Dagestanian, Caspian
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| Geographic distribution: |
Caucasus |
| Genetic classification: |
Alarodian ? Northeast Caucasian |
| Subdivisions: |
Nakh
Avar-Andi
Tsezic (Didoic)
Lak
Dargin
Khinalug
Lezgic
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Nakh Avar-Andi and Tsezic Dargin Lak Lezgic and Khinalug |
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The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Caspian, Nakho-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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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.
The term "Nakh-Dagestanian" comes from the old idea that the family is split in two primary branches, Nakh and Dagestanian. However, attempts at reconstructing the protolanguage at the turn of the 21st century made it clear that the Nakh languages are no more divergent than the other branches of Dagestanian, so that "Dagestanian" and "Nakh-Dagestanian" are now considered synonymous. The following tree, based on the work of linguist Bernard Comrie and others, has been adopted by Ethnologue. Population data is from Ethnologue 15th ed.
Spoken in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Georgia. Chechen and Ingush are official languages of their respective republics.
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.
Spoken mostly in Southwest Dagestan. None are literary languages.
Spoken in the Central Dagestan highlands. Lak is a literary language.
Spoken by 370,000 in the Central Dagestan highlands. Dargwa proper is a literary language.
Spoken in northern Azerbaijan.
Spoken in the Southeast Dagestan highlands and in Northern Azerbaijan. The Lezgian language or, as the Lezgins call it themselves - 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 - Tabasaran was once thought to be the language with the largest number of grammatical cases at 54, which could – depending on the analysis – as well be the Tsez language with 64). The Lezgic family along with a couple of other families (Avaro-Ando-Tsez, Lakh, Dargin) forms the Daghestanian part of the Nakh-Daghestanian language family (the Nakh part is constituted by Chechen, Ingush and related small languages).
Lezgian and Tabassaran are literary languages.
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.
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. Diakonoff proposed the name Alarodian for the union of Hurro-Urartian and Northeast Caucasian.
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 proto-language broke up.
