South Caucasian Kartvelian
Geographic distribution:	South Caucasus, Anatolia
Genetic classification:	One of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions:	Karto-Zan Georgian Zan Mingrelian Laz Svan
ISO 639-5:	ccs

The South Caucasian languages (also known as Kartvelian¹) are spoken primarily in Georgia, with smaller groups of speakers in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia and Israel.² There are approximately 5.2 million speakers of this language family worldwide. It is not known to be related to any other language family in the world.³ The first literary source (the inscription of Abba Antoni, composed in ancient Georgian script at the Georgian monastery near Bethlehem⁴) of the South Caucasian language dates back to 440 A.D.⁵⁴

Classification

The South Caucasian language family consists of four closely related languages:^1678910

• Karto-Zan languages
  • Georgian (ქართული ენა, kartuli ena) with approximately 4.5 million native speakers, mainly in Georgia. There are Georgian-speaking communities in Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and EU countries, but the current number and distribution of them are unknown.
  • Zan languages
    • Mingrelian (მარგალური ნინა, margaluri nina), with some 500,000 native speakers as of 1989, mainly in the western regions of Georgia of Samegrelo and Abkhazia (at present in Gali district only). The number of Mingrelian speakers in Abkhazia underwent dramatic decrease in the 1990s as a result of heavy ethnic cleansing of the Georgian population, the overwhelming majority of which were Mingrelians. The Mingrelians displaced from Abkhazia are scattered elsewhere in the Georgian government territory, with dense clusters in Tbilisi and Zugdidi.
    • Laz (ლაზური ნენა, lazuri nena), with 220,000 native speakers as of 1980, mostly in the Black Sea littoral area of northeast Turkey, and with some 30,000 in Adjara, Georgia.
• Svan language (ლუშნუ ნინ, lušnu nin), with approximately 35,000–40,000 native speakers mainly in the northwestern mountainous region of Svaneti, Georgia, and in the Kodori Gorge of Abkhazia, Georgia.

Genealogical tree

The connection was first reported in linguistic literature by J. Güldenstädt in the 18th century, and later proven by G. Rosen, M. Brosset, F. Bopp and others during the 1840s. Laz and Mingrelian are sometimes considered dialects of a single language, called "Zan".

On the basis of glottochronological analysis, G. Klimov dates the split of the Proto-Kartvelian into Svan and Proto-Karto-Zan to the 19th century BC ¹⁰¹¹, and the further division into Georgian and Zan to the 8th century BC¹¹, although with the reservation that such dating is very preliminary and substantial further study is required.¹⁰

Higher-level connections

No relationship with other languages has been demonstrated so far, not even with the two North Caucasian language families, due to the lack of sound correspondences between the South and North Caucasian families.¹² Some linguists have proposed that the Kartvelian family is part of a much larger Nostratic language family, but both the concept of a Nostratic family and Georgian's relation thereto are in doubt.

Certain grammatical similarities with Basque, especially in the case system, have often been pointed out. However, these theories, which also tend to link the Caucasian languages with other non-Indo-European and non-Semitic languages of the Near East of ancient times, are generally considered to lack conclusive evidence and must therefore be deemed purely hypothetical¹².

Any similarities to other linguistic phyla may be due to areal influences. Heavy borrowing in both directions (i.e. from North Caucasian to South Caucasian and vice versa) has been observed: therefore it is likely that certain grammatical features have been influenced as well. If the Dené-Caucasian hypothesis, which attempts to link Basque, Burushaski, the North Caucasian families and other phyla, is correct, then the similarities to Basque may also be due to these influences, however indirect. Certain Kartvelian-Indo-European lexical links are revealed at the protolanguage level.¹³, which are ascribed to the early contacts between Proto-Kartvelian and Proto-Indo-European populations.¹⁴

Comparative grammar

Regular correspondences

Noun classification

The South Caucasian languages classify objects as intelligent ("who"-class) and unintelligent ("what"-class) beings. Grammatical gender does not exist.

Declension

Verb

South Caucasian verbs can indicate one, two, or three grammatical persons. A performer of an action is called the subject and affected persons are objects (direct or indirect). The person may be singular or plural. According to the number of persons, the verbs are classified as unipersonal, bipersonal or tripersonal.

• Unipersonal verbs have only a subject and so are always intransitive.
• Bipersonal verbs have a subject and one object, which can be direct or indirect. The verb is:
  • transitive when the object is direct;
  • intransitive if the object is indirect.
• Tripersonal verbs have one subject and both, direct and indirect objects and are ditransitive.

Subjects and objects are indicated with special affixes.

By means of special markers South Caucasian verbs can indicate four kinds of action intentionality ("version"):

• subjective — shows that the action is intended for oneself,
• objective — the action is intended for another person,
• objective-passive — the action is intended for another person and at the same time indicating the passiveness of subject,
• neutral — neutral with respect to intention.

Examples from inherited lexicon

Social and cultural status

Georgian is the official language of the Republic of Georgia (spoken by 90% of the population) and the main language for literary and business use for all Kartvelian speakers in Georgia. It is written with an original and distinctive alphabet, and the oldest surviving literary text dates from the 5th century AD — the only Caucasian language that does possess an ancient literary tradition. The old Georgian script seems to have derived from Aramaic, with Greek influences.¹²

Mingrelian has been written with the Georgian alphabet since 1864, especially in the period from 1930 to 1938, when the Mingrelians enjoyed some cultural autonomy, and after 1989.

The Laz language was written chiefly between 1927 and 1937, and now again in Turkey, with the Latin alphabet. Laz, however, is disappearing as its speakers are integrating into mainstream Turkish society.

See also

• Proto-Kartvelian language

Notes

References

• Boeder, W. (2002). Speech and thought representation in the Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages. In: Güldemann, T., von Roncador, M. (Eds.), Reported Discourse. A Meeting-Ground of Different Linguistic Domains. Typological Studies in Language, vol. 52. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, pp. 3–48. 
• Boeder, W. (2005). "The South Caucasian languages", Lingua, Vol. 115, Iss. 1-2 (Jan.-Feb.), Pages 5-89
• Dalby, A. (2002). Language in Danger; The Loss of Linguistic Diversity and the Threat to Our Future. Columbia University Press. 
• Fähnrich, H. (2002). Kartwelische Wortschatzstudien. Jena: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität. 
• Fähnrich, H. & Sardzhveladze, Z. (2000). Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages (in Georgian). Tbilisi. 
• Gamkrelidze, Th. (1966) "A Typology of Common Kartvelian", Language, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar.), pp. 69-83
• Gamkrelidze, Th. & Ivanov, V. (1995). Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture. 2 Vols. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 
• Kajaia, O. (2001). Megrelian-Georgian dictionary. Vol 1. (in Georgian). Tbilisi. 
• Kartozia, G. (2005). The Laz language and its place in the system of Kartvelian languages (in Georgian). Tbilisi. 
• Klimov, G. (1964). Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages (in Russian). Moscow. 
• Klimov, G. (1994). Einführung in die kaukasische Sprachwissenschaft. Hamburg: Buske. 
• Klimov, G. (1998a). Etymological Dictionary of the Kartvelian Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 
• Klimov, G. (1998b). Languages of the World: Caucasian languages (in Russian). Moscow: Academia. 
• Lang, D. M. (1966). The Georgians. New-York: Praeger. 
• Ruhlen, M. (1987). A Guide to the World’s Languages, Vol. 1: Classification. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 

External links

• Lazuri Nena - The Language of the Laz by Silvia Kutscher.
• The Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics, Georgian Academy of Sciences
• Arthur Holmer, The Iberian-Caucasian Connection in a Typological Perspective
• Atlas of the Caucasian Language, Kartvelian family.
• Map. Caucasian languages.
• The rise and fall and revival of the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis by Kevin Tuite (Université de Montréal).