STUF - Language Typology and Universals | 2019
Languages of the Caucasus and contact-induced language change
Abstract
This issueof the journalLanguageTypologyandUniversalsdealswith contact-induced changes in some of the languages of the Caucasus. The linguistically diverse area of the Caucasus (Comrie 2008) houses three autochthonous language families: Northwest Caucasian (or Abkhaz-Adyghean) (Hewitt 1989; Hewitt 2005), Northeast Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) (Smeets 1994; Job 2004; van den Berg 2005), and South Caucasian (or Kartvelian) (Harris 1991; Boeder 2005). Throughout the history, languages of the three families have been in contact with each other as well as with other languages of the Caucasus of the Indo-European, Turkic and other origin (Klimov 1994). The widespread multilingualism of most of the speech communities of the Caucasus (Dobrushina 2016) and the wealth and diversity of borrowed material on all levels of grammar (in the form of both matter and/or pattern borrowing (Matras and Sakel 2007a)) make the languages of the area valuable for the theories of language contact as well as for the typology of contact-induced changes. The present selection of papers focuses on four speech communities of the Caucasus: – Ardeshen Laz (Kartvelian (/South Caucasian)), being in close contact with Turkish, – Hinuq (Daghestanian branch of the Northeast Caucasian), being under the strong influence of Russian and Avar (a major Northeast Caucasian language of the area), – Caucasian Urum (Turkic), being in contact with Russian, and – Batsbi (Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian), a moribund language of Georgia, being under a heavy influence of Georgian.