Footnotes
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
  | This article on a Canadian linguist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
John Colarusso | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American, Canadian |
| Occupation | Linguist |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | McMaster University |
| Main interests | Northwest Caucasian languages |
John Colarusso is a linguist specializing in Caucasian languages. Since 1976, he has taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. [1]
Colarusso has published more than sixty-five articles on linguistics, myths, politics, and the Caucasus; he has also authored three books, edited one, and is finishing two further books. [2]
Among other works, he has published grammar books of the Kabardian language.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
| | This article on a Canadian linguist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.
The Caucasus or Caucasia, is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have conventionally been considered as a natural barrier between Europe and Asia, bisecting the Eurasian landmass.
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes Pontic languages, is a family of languages spoken in the northwestern Caucasus region, chiefly in three Russian republics, the disputed territory of Abkhazia, Georgia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East.
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or Vainakh-Daghestani, or sometimes Caspian 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 the Middle East. According to Glottolog, there are currently 36 Nakh-Dagestanian languages.
A sprachbund, also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.
Pontic is a proposed language family or macrofamily, comprising the Indo-European and Northwest Caucasian language families, with Proto-Pontic being its reconstructed proto-language.
The Nart sagas are a series of tales originating from the North Caucasus. They form much of the basic mythology of the ethnic groups in the area, including Abazin, Abkhaz, Circassian, Ossetian, Karachay-Balkar, and to some extent Chechen-Ingush folklore.
The North Caucasian languages, sometimes called simply Caucasic, is a proposed language family consisting of a pair of well established language families spoken in the Caucasus, predominantly in the north, consisting of the Northwest Caucasian family and the Northeast Caucasian family. There are some 34 to 38 distinct North Caucasian languages.
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, and other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives, which has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants, which includes ejectives.
The Alarodian languages are a proposed language family that encompasses the Northeast Caucasian (Nakh–Dagestanian) languages and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages.
In historical linguistics, the homeland or Urheimat of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the reconstructed or historically-attested parent language of a group of languages that are genetically related.
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages.
The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Tlepsh is a mythological figure who appears in some cycles of the Nart sagas of the Caucasus, in which his Ossetian counterpart is the smith Kurdalægon. Tlepsh's name is a borrowing from Indo-European languages into Circassian, cognate with Ancient Greek χάλυψ (khálups) borrowed into Latin as chalybs - 'iron' - Tlepsh is thus the embodiment of the metal with which he works.
John D. Bengtson (1948-2024) was an American historical and anthropological linguist. He had been president and vice-president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and had served as editor of the journal Mother Tongue. Since 2001 he had been a member/researcher of Evolution of Human Languages, an international project on the linguistic prehistory of humanity coordinated by the Santa Fe Institute. His areas of specialization included Scandinavian languages and linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, Dené–Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) languages, and paleolinguistics.
Batraz, Batradz, or Pataraz is a central character in the North Caucasian myths known as the Nart sagas. The Narts were the central figures of the folklore of peoples of the North Caucasus.
The Armenian hypothesis, also known as the Near Eastern model, is a theory of the Proto-Indo-European homeland, initially proposed by linguists Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov in the early 1980s, which suggests that the Proto-Indo-European language was spoken during the 5th–4th millennia BC in "eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus, and northern Mesopotamia".
The Germanic parent language (GPL), also known as Pre-Germanic Indo-European (PreGmc) or Pre-Proto-Germanic (PPG), is the stage of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family that was spoken c. 2500 BC – c. 500 BC, after the branch had diverged from Proto-Indo-European but before it evolved into Proto-Germanic during the First Germanic Sound Shift.
The Proto-Indo-European homeland was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of the different branches of the Indo-European language family.
The Kartvelian languages are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primarily in Georgia. There are approximately 5 million Georgian language speakers worldwide, with large groups in Russia, Iran, the United States, the European Union, Israel, and northeastern Turkey. The Kartvelian family has no known relation to any other language family, making it one of the world's primary language families.