Languages of the Caucasus

The article is devoted to the analysis of the ethno-social and legal aspects of language policy in the Caucasus during the imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The information characterizing the specifics of language processes in the Caucasus is given. It is noted that the political and legal response to problems arising in the national-cultural sphere does not always correspond to the complexity and socio-political tension of the ethnocultural and linguistic processes taking place in the region. The importance of studying and using the historical experience
of national language policy to address the current, due to modern trends in the dynamics of ethnic language processes in the regions of the Caucasus is emphasized.

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Wisdom-Lies-Georgian-Discover/dp/9941961670/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1546537186&sr=8-7&keywords=book+of+wisdom+and+lies

The presented edition of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's "Book of Wisdom and Lies" is a reprint of Sir Oliver Wardrop's translation that he published in 1894. The publisher was William Morris at the Jelmscott Press, in the County of Middlesex.The idea of republishing of this book was born, because it was Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani's 360th anniversary in 2018 and Georgia dedicated this year to his commemoration. There were made several editions in Georgian, including illustrated edition, by Nino Gambashidze, together with Academic Book Publishing (acad.ge). The international community expressed their interest to get familiar to this author, and in particular with this text. To meet this interest we decided to publish this translation with minor corrections, such as: 1. changing 2nd person singular (thou) into 2nd person plural (you); 2. changing symbol & with conjunction "and"; 3. making more paragraphs, then they were done in existing publication, e.g. distinguishing dialogues.On edition of the text worked Maya Gambashidze and Nino Gambashidze, and the students of Guivi Zaldastanishvili American Academy in Tbilisi: Sopo Kevlishvili, Ana Zamtaradze, Ana Kostava and Giorgi Iashvil.About the design of the book worked Giorgi Kakabadze, who tried to bring the visual side of the text closer to modern reader

It is clear that the entire community of the Circassian population in Israel speaks the vernacular mother tongue. It is just as clear that the Circassian language symbolizes Circassian ethnicity and constitutes the 'core value'  of their culture.

This paper investigates reported speech constructions in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Sanzhi Dargwa. The language distinguishes direct and non-direct reported speech. The latter is marked in various ways such as non-finite verb forms and deictic shift. Deictic shift is a sufficient, but not a necessary criterion for non-direct speech, and frequently only some but not all deictic elements are shifted such that we get "semi-direct speech" or "biperspectival speech". In such utterances it is possible that the person feature of an argument in the speech report and its agreement exponent on the verb do not match. Furthermore, particles used to mark reported speech constructions have acquired a broader function and are also used to express hearsay evidentiality, epistemic modality, cognitive activities, etc. However, syntactically reported speech constructions differ from other complex clauses such as adverbial clauses or relative clauses due to the absence of markers that unequivocally express syntactic subordination. They can therefore be analyzed as instantiating secondary syntax. The quotative particle occurring in speech reports does not function as a syntactic subordinator, but rather signals at the pragmatic level that we deal with quotations.

Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel untersucht Konstruktionen zur Wiedergabe von Rede in der ostkaukasischen (nakh-dagestanischen) Sprache Sanzhi Dargwa. Die Sprache unter-scheidet direkte und indirekte Rede. Letztere wird auf verschiedene Weise grammatikalisiert, zum Beispiel durch infinite Verbformen und deiktische Verschiebung. Diese ist ein hin-reichendes, aber kein notwendiges Kriterium für die indirekte Rede, und häufig werden nur einige, aber nicht alle deiktischen Elemente so verschoben, dass wir 'semi-indirekte Rede' oder 'biperspekivische Rede' erhalten. In solchen Äußerungen ist es möglich, dass das Merk-mal Person eines Arguments in der Rede und der dazugehörige Personenmarker am Verb nicht übereinstimmen. Darüber hinaus haben Partikeln, die zum Markieren von indirekter Rede verwendet wurden, eine größere Bandbreite von Funktionen eingenommen und werden auch verwendet, um indirekte Evidenz (Hörensagen), epistemische Modalität, kognitive Aktivität und anderes auszudrücken. Syntaktisch unterscheidet sich indirekte Rede von ande-ren komplexen Sätzen, wie etwa adverbialen Nebensätzen oder Relativsätzen, durch das Feh-len grammatischer Marker, die die syntaktische Unterordnung eindeutig ausdrücken. Sie kön-nen daher als Beispiel für 'sekundäre Syntax' analysiert werden. Die in indirekter Rede vor-kommenden Zitatpartikeln fungieren nicht als syntaktische Subordinatoren, sondern signali-sieren auf pragmatischer Ebene, dass es sich um Zitate handelt.

Review of Charles Dowsett. Sayat-Nova, An 18th-century Troubadour: A Biographical and Literary Study. Louvain, Belgium/Washington, D.C.: Peeters Publishers/Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium of the Catholic University of Louvain and the Catholic University of America, 1997, xviii, 507 pp., in Central Asian Survey, Vol. 21, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 211-215.

Ногайцы Северо-Западного Прикаспия называют сынтасами каменные намогильные стелы. До сих пор они почти не привлекали внимания исследователей. Доклад представляет результаты одного из первых специальных исследований арабоязычной ногайской эпиграфики Северного Дагестана. Он вводит в научный оборот материал с ногайских намогильных стел двух родовых кладбищ Шийх-Али-оьлик и Шепкен-тыккан-оьлик XVIII–XX вв. Время самых ранних сохранившихся ногайских сынтасов — последняя четверть XVIII в. Авторы рассматривают тексты, форму и орнаментику сынтасов, изображения на них различных предметов, связанных как с исламским вероисповеданием ногайцев, так и с одеждой, украшениями и занятиями мужчин и женщин. Особое внимание уделено эпиграфической характеристике отдельных памятников и родовых кладбищ ногайцев в целом.

The Nogays who inhabit the north-west to the Caspian Sea call their funeral steles syntaslar (pl. from the sg. syntas). To date they mostly lacked for the interest of historians. This paper is one of the first attempts to provide readers with a substantial analysis of Arabographic Nogay inscriptions in Northern Dagestan. It introduces into the research use 48 Nogay funeral steles from the two clan cemeteries of Shiykh-Ali-elik and Shepken-tykkan-elik dating from the 18th through the late twentieth century. The most recent Nogay syntaslar were made in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The authors investigate inscriptions, form and ornamental stylistics of the Nogay funeral steles, as well as different images related to Islamic faith of the Nogays, their clothes, embellishments and different male and female professions. The focus is made on epigraphic characteristics of separate monuments as well as of clan cemeteries as a whole.

Eurasia's exuberant linguistic diversity can best be seen through the lens of the 'core' Eurasian linguistic regions: the Steppe, the Caucasus, and the Himalaya-Pamir-Tian Shan mountain ranges. They also present citation examples of how geography affects the distribution and evolution of language families: spread-zones vs. residual zones.

Encyclopedia article for International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology

В статье обсуждается проблема разработки учебников и учебных пособий по ингушскому языку для начинающих изучать ингушский язык с нулевого уровня и проживающих вне ингушской языковой среды. Автором предлагается новый учебник по ингушскому языку, основанный на коммуникативном подходе к обучению и направленный на формирование всех составляющих языковой коммуникативной компетенции учащихся. В учебнике «ГIалгIай мотт (юххьанцара дарж). Ингушский язык (элементарный уровень)» особое внимание уделяется развитию навыков общения. Ключевые слова: учебник ингушского языка, методика преподавания ингушского языка.

The article deals with the problem of the Ingush textbooks development for beginners to learn Ingush language and living outside the Ingush language environment. The author presents a new effective Ingush textbook based on the communicative approach to the Ingush language teaching and aimed at formation of all components of language communicative competence. The textbook «Ingush language (elementary level)» gives special emphasis to communication skills. Keywords: a textbook of the Ingush language, methods of teaching Ingush language.

Abkhaz folklore recordings in the Abzhywa dialect. Three tales: Nart Sasryqwa from the Nart Epics (birth and heroic deeds), mythological story about the wizzard sister, explaining the moon eclipse, and a tale about the mythical hero Abrskil, chained in the cave - the Abkhaz version of the Prometheus myth. With Russian translation and comments.

Abstract: This essay provides a selected bibliography on the history and cultures of the Caucasus region. A great part of this study consists of books, articles, symposiums papers, undergraduate and postgraduate thesis and Ph.D dissertations written in Turkey. This study reveals that, although there are numerous studies on the region, the Caucasian history and cultures still calls for scholarly attention due to its geo-strategic importance.

Keywords: Caucasus, Bibliography, Culture, Historiography, Turkey

Öz: Bu makale çalışması dünyanın en önemli coğrafyalarından biri olan Kafkasya’nın tarihi ve kültürü üzerine hazırlanmış bir bibliyografya denemesidir. Bibliyografya denemesinin büyük bir bölümünü Türkiye’de, Kafkasya tarihi üzerine hazırlanmış kitap, makale, sempozyum, bildiri, lisans, yüksek lisans ve doktora tezleri
oluşturmaktadır. Tarihin ilk dönemlerinden günümüze çok önemli olaylara sahne olan bu zorlu topraklar günümüzde de tarihçilerin ve sosyal bilimcilerin ilgisini çeken bir alandır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Kafkasya, Bibliyografya, Kültür, Tarihçilik, Türkiye

Person and gender are typical agreement features within the clause, and cross-linguistically they are frequently part of one and the same agreement system and even expressed through the same morphological exponents. Some theories even go so far as to claim that person and gender agreement on different targets, e.g. verbs and adjectives, are instances of one and the same agreement phenomenon. This paper discusses gender and person agreement in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Lak. It shows that the two agreement systems are formally and functionally completely separated from each other. Corpus data from Lak does not prove that gender agreement in this language is used to establish reference. Therefore it should rather be treated as concord, that is, similar to modifier agreement within the noun phrase.

This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in the Dark Ages became converted to Judaism. Khazaria was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Khan, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the cradle of Western Jewry… The Khazars' sway extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain. In the second part of this book, " The Heritage, " Mr. Koestler speculates about the ultimate faith of the Khazars and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced. Yet should this theory be confirmed, the term " anti-Semitism " would become void of meaning, since, as Mr. Koestler writes, it is based " on a misapprehension shared by both the killers and their victims. The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated. " ISBN 0-394-40284-7

An overview of the main phonological, morphological amd lexical traits of the Tsabal dialect of Abkhaz. Before the period of Muhajirism, the mountain ethnographic group of Tsabals lived in the middle reaches of the Kodor River in the present-day Gulrypsch region of Abkhazia. The dialect has survived only in Turkey.

Funde, Eigennamen und Schriftzeichen beweisen Roms lange Zugehörigkeit zur etruskischen Kultur. Die historisch faßbaren Anfänge des Etruskertums in Italien fallen mit der mythischen  Gründungzeit Roms (datiert auf 753 v. Chr.) zusammen. Die Sage berichtet vom korinthisch-etruskischen Ursprung der letzten römische Könige und von Einfällen der Etrusker unter dem König von Clusium Lars Porsenna nach dem Sturz der Tarquinier.  Die zwei römischen Gründungsmythen, die Äneas- und die Romulus-Sage, bezeugen die enge Verbindung Roms mit den etruskischen Nachbarn. Von den sieben sagenhaften Königen Roms, von Romulus bis Tarquinius Superbus, waren vier etruskischer Herkunft. Romulus ist der mythische Ahnherr der *Ruma, eines aus lat. Roma erschlossenen Geschlechternamens. Die erschlossene etruskische Form von Romulus lautet *Rumle. Von ihm leiten sich auch die Gentilizien Romulius bzw. Romilius ab. Auf die Romulii oder Romilii ist auch die erste der  sechzehn ältesten römischen Landtribus, die Romulia zurückzuführen. Remus gilt als der Ahnherr der Remmii, eines Geschlechts, das es wohl im ältesten Rom gegeben haben muß. Dem Gentilnamen liegt der etruskische Name  Rem-ne oder Rem-ni zugrunde. Von diesem Gentilizium leiten sich in und um Rom die Toponyme Rem-ona und Rem-oria her. Tyrrhener  und Römer wurden von den Griechen häufig synonym benutzt: Tyrrhenoì  è Rhomaîoi („Tyrrhener oder Römer“), ebenso wie Tyrrhenía è Italía. Einige Sprachelemente seien zusätzlich genannt: Im Etruskischen lauten die Namensbezeichnungen für Rom Ruma, für Römer Rumach, für Troja Truia, für Trojaner Truial. In der Frühzeit herrschte ein Priesterkönig (lauchme oder lochume, lat. lucumo) in jeder etruskischen Stadt, ein Titel, der möglicherweise auf die Heilskönige und Richter der nordostgeorgischen Bergstämme verweist, die häufig den Namen Luchumi trugen.

Das etruskische Erbe Roms gelangte erst Jahrhunderte später, während des Humanismus und in der Renaissance wieder zum Vorschein. Bei der Hinwendung zur Antike in der Rinascita spielte in der Toskana und in Latium, vor allem in Florenz und Viterbo, die Etruscheria, die Begeisterung für die Etrusker, eine besondere Rolle. Das Etruskertum diente als Modell gesellschaftlicher Erneuerung und fand Eingang in die kulturellen Programme der Renaissancefürsten, nicht zuletzt  der Medici. Der römische Baumeister Vitruv hatte  in seinem Augustus gewidmeten Werk De architectura  die tuskische Säulenordnung beschrieben. Diese Schrift regte die Renaissancearchitekten Andrea Palladio und Giorgio Vasari an. Der Palladianismus bildet zwei Jahrhunderte später eine der wichtigsten Stilrichtungen des Klassizismus. Durch die Lektüre von Palladio inspiriert, errichtete Thomas Jefferson sein Haus „Monticello“ mit toskanischem Portikus – die  erste toskanische Villa in der Neuen Welt.  Den Etruskern verdankt das  abendländischen Denken  schließlich  eine zentrale Kategorie – die Person.

Altaic-related German words represent namely substrate, i. e. basic (not cultural) lexicon which might be inherited from ‘macro-Altaic’ (Y haplogroup C, longhouses) Linear Pottery culture. ‘Hamitic’ (non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic)-related cultural lexicon was possibly accepted from Ertebølle (fishing and swine-herding, reflected in language, while ox may be wild). Pictish as well as several pre-Proto-Germanic substrate words might be Yenisseian-related. Kartvelian and North Caucasian elements might be preserved from Basque (Caucasian, mainly Daghestanian-related) Bell Beaker culture. Hurrian elements in Proto-Germanic are confirmed by genetic link with Cyprys and Aegean influence on the Nordic Bronze Age. Etruscan consonantism is similar to Armenian and Germanic as a result of the substrate influence or preservation of archaic features

This paper reviews ancient human DNA from sites around the Black Sea and the Pontic-Caspian steppes in order to clarify the genetic evolution of the Yamnaya population in the steppes, and to connect the genetic evidence from Yamnaya and pre-Yamnaya Eneolithic mating networks with archaeologically defined groups. The overall purpose is to analyze A. Bomhard's hypothesis that Proto-Indo-European was a contact language that developed from interference between a pre-Northwest Caucasian type of language and a pre-Proto-Uralic type of language. I was asked to evaluate this linguistic hypothesis from genetic and archaeological perspectives.

My old paper on middle ("hissing-hushing") sibilants in the West Caucasian languages. One corrective: now I regard the simple hissing-hushing ones just as palatalized (sign j) dental sibilants (dzj, cj, c'j, sj, zj), and the labialized ones - the labialized  counterparts of dz, c, c', z, s.

An overview of the main features of the Guma sub-dialect of the Abkhaz language in the field of phonology, morphology and vocabulary. The Guma speech occupied an intermediate position between the Bzyp and Abzhywa dialects. It is now fully preserved only in Turkey. Before the period of Muhadzhirism, the Central Abkhaz ethnographic group, Guma Abkhazians, used to live in the areas of the present-day Sukhum and Gulrypsh districts.

This paper compares the expression of information structure in the three indigenous language families of the Caucasus (West Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestanian and Kartvelian) by means of the concepts of focus, contrast, topic and givenness. I concentrated on constituent order and the use of particles, thereby largely ignoring other formal means such as intonation. When comparing all three Caucasian language families we can see a number of parallels in the way information structure is expressed.
First of all, there are obvious (and expectable) similarities in the constituent order at the clause level. All three language families show a clear preference for SOV, but other orders are, in general, possible, whereby Ubykh and Laz are more rigid than the other languages (which might be due to Turkish influence on both languages). The major focus position is preverbal, but postverbal focus is also attested and although focal items are frequently positioned in adjacency to the verb this is not a strict requirement. All three language families allow for verb-initial order for presentational focus in introductory statements of narratives.
By contrast, at the phrasal level we find a sharp difference between West Caucasian with its prenominal and postnominal modifiers as well as nominal complexes on the one hand side and Kartvelian and Nakh-Daghestanian language on the other hand side. Only the latter two families make use of postnominal modifiers for emphasis, contrast or focus, although their syntactic status as belonging to the preceding head noun and forming one NP with it is rather doubtful.
The second major parallel is the existence of cleft-like and pseudo-cleft constructions that normally express constituent focus. Although the exact syntactic nature of these constructions has been investigated only for a handful of languages and their status as genuine cleft constructions is rather doubtful, we can generalize that these constructions have a bipartite structure without necessarily being biclausal and make use of subordinate clause structures that are otherwise found in relative clauses. Cleft-like and pseudo-cleft constructions are commonly found in WH-questions, in particular in West Caucasian and a number of Nakh-Daghestanian languages (e.g. Ingush, Avar, Udi). In general, the extent of use of these constructions varies from family to family, but they seem to be most frequent in West Caucasian because they represent the default strategies for the formation of content questions.
The third similarity concerns the frequent use of enclitics and suffixes for information-structuring purposes, but also dedicated focus particles in some languages. In a great number of languages, modal markers, interrogative markers, additives, scalar-additives, discourse markers, and markers with grammatical meaning (person, tense, negation, etc.) are used as focus-sensitive particles and usually placed after the item they scope over or after the head of the phrase.

Several basic-lexicon etymologies, with regular sound correspondences, suggest Hurro-Urartian (HU) might be derived from (or related to) Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Preliminary evidence suggests North-Caucasian (NC) languages might also be related to PIE – in particular, to Iranian languages and Armenian.

[Extracto de páginas seleccionadas y capítulos. 144 páginas de un total de 352 en el libro]

Un exordio sobre la hipótesis del idioma íbero como miembro de la antiquisíma superfamilia Eurasiática y su relación con las lenguas de la macrofamilia Altaica (túrquicas, mongoles y tungúsicas) y de la familia Sino-Caucasiana, a la luz de los más recientes estudios sobre lingüística histórica, epigrafía, antropología y genética poblacional (ADNmt y ADN-Y) de los íberos, sus ancestros y los antiguos pobladores de la península ibérica.

Más información, álbumes de fotos, dibujos y páginas gratuitas en: http://goo.gl/ookWQ7

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Master de Sciences du Langage Spécialité Langage, Langues, Textes, Sociétés mémoire de recherche de master 1 présenté par Neige Rochant Soutenu le 2 septembre 2017 Discipline : linguistique Morphologie, syntaxe et sémantique des verbes causatifs synthétiques dans un dialecte andi Mémoire dirigé par : M. Anton Antonov Maître de conférence, Inalco M. Gilles Authier Directeur d'études, EPHE Membres du jury : M. Guillaume Jacques Directeur de recherche, CNRS La réalisation de ce mémoire a été possible grâce au concours de plusieurs personnes à qui je voudrais témoigner ma reconnaissance. En premier lieu, je remercie M. Gilles Authier, qui m'a fait découvrir les langues du Daghestan et m'a conseillée de m'intéresser à l'andi, puis, en tant que directeur de ce mémoire, m'a guidée dans mon travail et mes recherches de terrain. Je voudrais aussi exprimer ma reconnaissance à Mme Hélène Gérardin et à M. Timur Maisak de m'avoir initiée au terrain et à la linguistique dans le Caucase, pour leur soutien et leurs conseils. Je remercie également M. Antonov d'avoir accepté de co-diriger mon mémoire. Je dois aussi beaucoup à M. Guillaume Jacques, qui a accepté d'être dans mon jury et a si aimablement fait le nécessaire pour que ma soutenance puisse avoir lieu. Je le remercie d'ailleurs pour les commentaires et les conseils qu'il m'a fournis à cette occasion. Je souhaite témoigner ma plus grande gratitude à tous mes informateurs andis, en particulier à la famille de M. Aligadji Magomedov, pour leur précieuse collaboration. Sans eux, ce travail n'aurait pas vu le jour faute de données sur le dialecte de Zilo. i J'adresse encore des remerciements à Mme Hélène Gérardin, ainsi qu'à M. Arthur Laisis, pour avoir relu et corrigé des extraits de mon mémoire. Je souhaite remercier également Mmes Nina Dobrushina et Natalia Zevakhina, ainsi que la Haute École d'Économie de Moscou, de m'avoir aidée à obtenir mon visa pour la Russie afin que je puisse y effectuer mes missions de terrain. Enfin, je remercie mes parents de m'avoir soutenue dans ce projet, ainsi que mes co-expéditionnaires George Moroz, Alexandra Martynova, Samira Verhees et Aigul Zakirova d'avoir été à mes côtés et pour tous les conseils qu'ils m'ont donnés.

International Kartvelological Congress I Problems and Prospects of Kartvelology was held on 11 - 13 November, 2015 in Tbilisi. The Congress was organized by the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and the Georgian Patriarchate.
Among the participants were representative kartvelologists from France, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Romania, Japan, Israel, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Russia, Armenia, Russia, Chechnya, Ingushetia etc.
The International Kartvelological Congress was opened on 11 November in the Georgian National Academy of Sciences by welcome speech of Academician Roin Metreveli, the Vice-President of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, the chairman of the organizing committee of the Congress.
After the plenary meeting the sessions continued in the sections. There were three sections: Section of Linguistics, Section of Georgian History and Religion and Section of Literature and Art.

Based on the study and analysis of ancient near eastern sources and current scientific literature in the field, we believe the following conclusion can be drawn about the ethno-genesis of Georgian tribes: the relationship between genetically related Ancient Anatolian and Georgian (in the II millennium BC: Hatti, Kaška, Muška; in the I millennium BC–Daiaeni/Diaohi, Kulha) tribes developed based on and largely due to the metallurgical manufacturing processes (obtaining and manufacturing of ore and processing the metal). The engagement in the metallurgical production processes of the local tribes and their neighboring ethnic groups led to the emergence of a common culture, religious and ideological systems, and the formation of a united consciousness across the entire geographic area of settlements of Georgian tribes. This, created pre-conditions for the formation of Kolkhian end Iberian kingdoms later on.

This thesis presents a study of the syntax and typology of relative clauses in colloquial Armenian. It proposes a syntactic analysis and classification of the relativization strategies available in Armenian within the framework of existing syntactic theoretical and typological proposals concerning relative clauses, and to identify the decisive factors associated with the distribution of these different strategies. As each of the available strategies is paralleled in other languages of the area, it is possible that language contact will have an impact on the choice of strategy. There is also evidence that the role of the relativized element in the relative clause is relevant for the choice of strategy; in particular, evidence presented in previous studies of Armenian suggests that the distribution of participial RCs may violate the Relativization Accessibility Hierarchy if this is envisaged as operating directly in terms of syntactic grammatical relations. The study is mainly based on data from sound recordings of native speaker consultants from various areas of Armenia, both spontaneous speech and responses to stimuli designed to elicit relative clauses with particular properties that have been proposed to affect the choice of relativization strategy. The relative clauses are entered into a database with filters for relevant features, which contains approximately 2000 examples.
The results show that accessibility to relativization is determined by semantic (affectedness) and pragmatic (topicality) role prominence, and by frequent role-reference association patterns, rather than directly by syntactic grammatical relations. This provides a coherent explanation of the apparent Accessibility Hierarchy violations found in Armenian, as well as other phenomena that have proved problematic for syntactic structure-based interpretations of accessibility to relativization.

In order to describe a language situation it is necessary to choose an adequate model which is a very complicated task owing to the fact that every language situation is unique in itself. During the 1960s, there were efforts made to discover general patterns for multilingual communities. Those efforts led to the identification of national sociolinguistic typologies and profile formulae. Their advantage is that they have been designed based on objective criteria and that they allow designations for newly discovered circumstances. I thus picked the sociolinguistic profile formula and applied it to the language situation in Georgia's province of Kvemo (Lower) Kartli. The choice appeared to be successful in two ways: 1) the sociolinguistic profile formula appeared to be an adequate model for the language situation in this case; 2) a new function (viz., use as a language of ballot papers) was identified, so far not dealt with in the sociolinguistic literature. Hence, a new designation was added to the formula.

Published in International Journal of Multilingual Education 11, 2018: 84-86.

Hurro-Urartian, due to their Indo-European-like elements, might be an archaic branch which splitted from other Indo-European long before Hittite-Luwian and even Tyrsenian. An initial language of IJ haplogroups might be Indo-Hurro-Tyrsenian. Altaic-like element in Hurro-Urartian, Kassite, Hittite-Luwian link these languages with another Nostratic family. Hurrian might be among languages of the Kura-Araxes culture (together with Kartvelian and Northeast Caucasian), influenced Proto-Germanic Nordic Bronze, and was used in the Bronze Age Cyprus. Names of metals and metalworkers in Sumerian, Semitic, Kartvelian are Hurrian. The spread of arsenical bronze in Mesopotamia was related to the Kura-Araxes southward migration