The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani, Vainakh-Daghestani, North Caspian, or sometimes Caspian languages (from the Caspian Sea, in contrast to Pontic languages for the Northwest Caucasian languages), is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in Georgia and diaspora populations in Western Europe and West Asia. According to Glottolog, there are currently 36 Nakh-Dagestanian languages.
Name of the family Several names have been in use for this family. The most common term, Northeast Caucasian, contrasts the three established families of the Caucasian languages: Northeast Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz–Adyghean) and South Caucasian (Kartvelian). This may be shortened to East Caucasian. The term Nakh(o)-Dagestanian can be taken to reflect a primary division of the family into Nakh and Dagestanian branches, a view which is no longer widely accepted, or Dagestanian can subsume the entire family. The rare term North Caspian (as in bordering the Caspian Sea) is only used in opposition to the use of North Pontic (as in bordering the Black Sea) for the Northwest Caucasian languages.
Linguistic features Phonology Historically, Northeast Caucasian phonemic inventories were thought to be smaller than those of the neighboring Northwest Caucasian family. However, more recent research has revealed that many Northeast Caucasian languages are much more phoneme-rich than previously believed, with some languages containing as many as 70 consonants.
In addition to numerous front obstruents, many Northeast Caucasian languages also possess a number of back consonants, including uvulars, pharyngeals, and glottal stops and fricatives. Northeast Caucasian phonology is also notable for its use of numerous secondary articulations as contrastive features. Whereas English consonant classes are divided into voiced and voiceless phonemes, Northeast Caucasian languages are known to contrast voiced, voiceless, ejective and tense phones, which contributes to their large phonemic inventories. Some languages also include palatalization and labialization as contrastive features. Most languages in this family contrast tense and weak consonants. Tense consonants are characterized by the intensiveness of articulation, which naturally leads to a lengthening of these consonants.
In contrast to the generally large consonant inventories of Northeast Caucasian languages, most languages in the family have relatively few vowels, although more on average than the Northwest Caucasian languages. However, there are some exceptions to this trend, such as Chechen, which has at least twenty-eight vowels, diphthongs and triphthongs.
Morphology These languages can be characterized by strong suffixal agglutination. Weak tendencies towards inflection may be noted as well. Nouns display covert nominal classification, but partially overt cases of secondary origin can be observed too. The number of noun classes in individual languages range from two to eight. Regarding grammatical number, there may be a distinction between singular and plural, plurality itself may impact the class to which a noun belongs. In some cases, a grammatical collective is seen. Many languages distinguish local versus functional cases, and to some degree also casus rectus versus casus obliquus.
The inflectional paradigms are often based on partially classifying productive stem extensions (absolutive and oblique, ergative and genitive inflection.) Localization is mostly conveyed by postpositions, but it can be also partly based on preverbs. Noun phrases exhibit incomplete class agreement, group inflection (on the noun) with partial attributive oblique marking, which may, in turn, carry a partially determining function.
Verbs do not agree with person, with a few exceptions like Lak, in which first and second persons are marked with the same suffix and verbs agree with the P argument, and Hunzib in which verbs agree with A argument. Evidentiality is prominent, with reported, sensory and epistemic moods all appearing as a way of conveying the evidence. Epistemic modality is often tied to the tense.
Ergativity
Most Northeast Caucasian languages exhibit an ergative–absolutive morphology. This means that objects of transitive sentences and subjects of intransitive sentences both fall into a single grammatical case known as the absolutive. Subjects of transitive sentences, however, carry a different marking to indicate that they belong to a separate case, known as the ergative. This distinction can be seen in the following two Archi sentences. Objects and subjects of intransitive sentences carry no suffix, which is represented by the null suffix, -∅. Meanwhile, agents of transitive sentences take the ergative suffix, -mu.
Intransitive sentence Transitive sentence
Noun classes Northeast Caucasian languages have between two and eight noun classes. In these languages, nouns are grouped into grammatical categories depending on certain semantic qualities, such as animacy and gender. Each noun class has a corresponding agreement prefix, which can attach to verbs or adjectives of that noun. Prefixes may also have plural forms, used in agreement with a plural noun. The following table shows the noun–adjective agreement paradigm in the Tsez language.
Noun class Adjectival phrase example I (men) II (women) III (animals and inanimates) IV (other inanimates)
In many Northeast Caucasian languages, as well as appearing on adjectives and verbs, agreement can also be found on parts of speech which are not usually able to agree in other language families – for example on adverbs, postpositions, particles, and even case-marked nouns and pronouns. In the example from Archi below, 'big' and 'made', but also the adverb 'quickly' and the personal pronouns 'we' and 'to us', all agree in number and gender with the argument in the absolutive case, 'cow'.
This kind of clausal agreement has been labelled 'external agreement'. The same term is also used for the (cross-linguistically even rarer) phenomenon where a converb agrees with an argument which lies outside the converb's own clause. This is seen in the following example from Northern Akhvakh, where mīʟō 'not having gone' has a masculine adverbial suffix (-ō), agreeing with hugu ek'wa 'the man'.
Language classification
A long-time classification divided the family into Nakh and Dagestanian branches, whence the term Nakho-Dagestanian.See Nichols (2003) However, attempts at reconstructing the protolanguage suggest that the Nakh languages are no more divergent from Dagestanian than the various branches of Dagestanian are from each other,See Schulze (2009) although this is still not universally accepted. The following outline, based on the work of linguist Bernard Comrie and others, has been adopted by Ethnologue. An Avar–Andi–Dido branch was abandoned, but has been resurrected as the "New Type" languages in Schulze (2009, 2013) and Lak–Dargwa has likewise returned.
One factor complicating internal classification within the family is that the diachronic development of its respective branches is marked both by an extreme degree of diffusion and divergence followed by secondary convergence, which complicates the comparative method.
Population data is from Ethnologue 16th ed.
Avar–Andic family
Spoken in the Northwest Dagestan highlands and western Dagestan. Avar is the lingua franca for these and the Tsezic languages and is the only literary language. Schulze (2009) gives the following family tree for the Avar–Andic languages:
Avar–Andic family Avar (761,960) Andic languages Andi (Qwannab) (5,800) Akhvakh–Tindi Akhvakh (210 as of 2010) Karata–Tindi Karata (Kirdi) (260 as of 2010) Botlikh–Tindi Botlikh (210 as of 2010) Godoberi (130 as of 2010) Chamalal (500 as of 2010) Bagvalal–Tindi Bagvalal (1,450) Tindi (2,150)
Figures retrieved from Ethnologue. These languages are spoken in the following rayons of Dagestan: Axvax, Botlikh, Buynaksk (Shura), Čarodinsky (Tsurib), Gergebil, Gumbetovsky (Baklul), Gunib, Karabudaxkent, Kazbekovsky (Dylym), Lavaša, Tsumada (Agvali), Untsukul, Xebda, Xunzaq and Zaqatala rayon in Azerbaijan.
Dargic (Dargin) dialect continuum
Spoken by 492,490 in Dagestan, as well as Azerbaijan, Central Asia and Ukraine. Dargwa proper is a literary language. Dargin Northern-central group Mehweb (1,300) Gapshima (2,300) Muira (35,000) Tsudaqar-Usisha-Butri Tsudaqar (35,000) Usisha-Butri (8,000) Northern Dargwa (133,000) Kadar Murego-Gubden Mugi Upper Mulebki Aqusha Aqusha proper Levashi Urakhi Southern group Ashti-Kubachi Ashti Kubachi Sanzhi-Itsari (1,500-2,000) Sanzhi Itsari Sanakari-Chakhrizhi (900, unclassified) Amuzgi-Shiri (1,500-2,000) Amuzgi Shiri Southwestern Dargwa (14,000) Tanti (800) Sirhwa Upper Vurkuni Chirag (2,100-2,400) Kaitag group Shari (1,200) Kaitag (24,000) Dargwa is spoken in the following rayons of Dagestan: Aquša, Kaitak, Kayakent, Kubači, Sergokala. Figures derived from Koryakov 2021.
Khinalug (Xinalug) isolate
Spoken in Quba region of Azerbaijan. Khinalug (Xinalug) (1,000 speakers)
Lak isolate
Spoken in the Central Dagestan highlands. Lak is a literary language. Lak (152,000 speakers) Lak is spoken in two rayons of Dagestan: Kumux and Kuli (Vači).
Lezgic family
Spoken in the Southeast Dagestan highlands and in Northern Azerbaijan. The Lezgian language or, as the Lezgian people themselves call it, (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 Aghul, Tabasaran, Udi, Tsakhur and Rutul). They are spoken in the following rayons of Dagestan: Agul, Akhty, Derbent (Kvevar), Suleyman-Stalsky, Kurakh, Magaramkent, Rutul, Tabasaran, Usukhchay, Khiv and Qusar, Khamchmaz, Quba, Qabala, Oguz, Ismayilli and Zaqatala in Azerbaijan.
Tabasaran was once thought to be the language with the largest number of grammatical cases at 54, which could, depending on the analysis, instead be the Tsez language with 64.
Lezgi, Agul, Rutul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur and Udi are literary languages.
Lezgic family Peripheral: Archi (970 speakers) Samur (or Nuclear Lezgian) Eastern Samur Tabasaran (128,900) Lezgian (655,000) Aghul (29,300) Udi (6,590) Southern Samur Kryts (5,000) Budukh (1,000) Western Samur Rutul (47,400) Tsakhur (23,673)
All figures retrieved from Ethnologue.
Nakh family
Spoken in Chechnya, Ingushetia and Georgia. Chechen and Ingush are official languages of their respective republics.
Nakh family Bats (3,420 speakers in Georgia in 2000) Vainakh languages Chechen (1,350,000) Ingush (322,900)
Tsezic (Didoic) family
Spoken mostly in Southwest Dagestan. None are literary languages. Formerly classified geographically as East Tsezic (Hinukh, Bezta) and West Tsezic (Tsez, Khwarshi, Hunzib), these languages may actually form different subgroupings according to the latest research by Schulze (2009):
Tsezic family Tsez–Hinukh Tsez (Dido) (17,574) Hinukh (Hinux, Ginukh) (635) Bezhta–Hunzib–Khwarshi Bezhta (Kapucha) (8,138) Hunzib (Gunzib) (3,466) Khwarshi (Khvarshi) (8,500)
All figures except for Khwarshi were retrieved from the 2021 Russian census. These languages are spoken in the Tsunta and Bezhta areas of Dagestan.
Disputed connections to other families North Caucasian family