Kabardian
(East Circassian)
John Colarusso
McMaster University
Kabardian, the eastern form of Circassian, is a member of the Northwest Caucasian language family, which includes the Western Circassian or Adighé dialects, the transitional Besleney Circassian, the distinct Abkhaz and its closely related, Abaza, and Ubykh, transitional between Circassian and Abkhaz-Abaza. It is native to the northwestern portion of the Caucasus where it is spoken by roughly 360,000 people. It is the household language of a large portion of the 4.5 million Circassian of the diaspora (Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Israel, with a few communities in Europe and the United States). The languages of this family are notable for their extreme complexity at all levels of grammar. While Kabadian is quite rich syntactically, morphologically, and phonologically, it is the simplest member of the family phonetically, with only 49 consonants, where Ubykh 81 for a maximum. The grammar includes chapters on Phonetics, Phonology, Inflectional Morphology, Derivational Morphology, Discourse, and a sample text.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations
0. Introduction
0.1. Social setting
0.2. Linguistic typology
1. Phonetics
1.1. Inventory
1.2. Consonants
1.3. Vowels
1.4. Syllable canon
1.5. Vowel coloring
2. Phonology
2.1. Stress
2.2. Schwa
2.3. Assimilation of vowels to syllable rhyme (Auslaut)
2.4. Stressed (or reducing) /a/ (/ee/)
2.5. Recursive reduction of /a/
2.6. Stable /a/
2.7 Consonantal phonology
2.8. Reduction of plural suffix before predicative complementizer
3. Inflectional Morphology
3.1. Nominal inflection
3.2. Pronominal inflection
3.3. Possession
3.4. Adjectives
3.5. Postpositions
3.6. Verbal inflection
4. Derivational Morphology
4.1. Noun formation
4.2. Verb formation
4.3. Adjective formation
4.4. Counting and Quantification
5. Syntax
5.1. Ergativity
5.1.1. Case-marking and word order
5.1.2. Symmetry Breaking
5.1.3. PTF, the priority of transitive fulfillment
5.1.4. Animacy hierarchy
5.1.5. Switch reference
5.1.6. Passives
5.1.7. Di-transitives
5.1.8. Anti-ergatives
5.1.9. Causatives
5.1.10. Transitivity reduction of a “strong” di-transitive
5.1.11. Subject demotion in aversive forms
5.1.12. Oblique (logical) subjects
5.2. Split anaphors
5.2.1. Reflexives (ergative)
5.2.2. Reciprocals (anti-ergative)
5.3. Relative clauses
5.3.1. Restrictive relatives
5.3.2. Non-restrictive relatives clause
5.3.3. Headless relatives
5.3.4. Relative clauses and the overlap of control categories
(cross-over violations) 5.4. Embedded clauses
5.4.1. Embedded clauses
5.5. Verb-chaining with generic object
5.5.1. Copying of [+generic] of the absolutive onto the verb
5.5.2. Plural copying of the absolutive onto the verb
5.6. Rightward movement
6. Discourse
6.1. Causal sequences
6.2. Conjunction
6.3. Tense-suppression in linked verbs
Text sample
Bibliography
ISBN 9783895862458. Languages of the World/Materials 200. 122pp. 2006.
