This volume is a collection of seventeen papers, on languages of all three indigenous Caucasian families as well as other languages spoken on the territory of the former Soviet Union. Several papers are concerned with diachronic questions, either within individual families, or at deeper time depths. Some authors utilize their field data to address problems of general linguistic interest, such as reflexivization. A number of papers look at the evidence for contact-induced change in multilingual areas. Some of the most exciting contributions to the collection represent significant advances in the reconstruction of the prehistory of such understudied language families as Northeast Caucasian, Tungusic and the baffling isolate Ket. This book will be of interest not only to specialists in the indigenous languages of the former USSR, but also to historical and synchronic linguists seeking to familiarize themselves with the fascinating, typologically diverse languages from the interior of the Eurasian continent.

Dee Ann Holisky is Professor of English and Linguistics, and Associate Dean for Academic Programs of the College of Arts & Sciences at George Mason University. She is the author of Aspect and Georgian Medial Verbs (Caravan Books, 1981) and of numerous articles on Georgian and Kartvelian linguistics. Kevin Tuite is Professor of Anthropology at the Université de Montréal. Among his books are An Anthology of Georgian Folk Poetry (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994) and Ethnolinguistics and Anthropological Theory (co-edited with Christine Jourdan; Montréal: Éditions Fides, 2003).

Table of contents

Introduction Kevin Tuite vii Foreword Victor A. Friedman xix Towards a Phonological Typology of Native Siberia Gregory D.S. Anderson 1–22 On the Syntax of Possessive Reflexive Pronouns in Modern Georgian and Certain Indo-European Languages Shukia Apridonidze 23–28 How Many Verb Classes Are There in Mingrelian? Marcello Cherchi 29–39 More Pontic: Further Etymologies Between Indo-European and Northwest Caucasian John Colarusso 41–60 The Bulgarians of Moldova and Their Language Donald Dyer 61–74 Lak Folktales: Materials for a Bilingual Reader: Part Two Victor A. Friedman 75–83 Typology of Writing, Greek Alphabet, and the Origin of Alphabetic Scripts of the Christian Orient Thomas V. Gamkrelidze 85–96 The Case for Dialect Continua in Tungusic: Plural Morphology Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. Whaley 97–122 Ingush Inflectional Verb Morphology: A Synchronic Classification and Historical Analysis with Comparison to Chechen Zev Handel 123–175 The Prehistory of Udi Locative Cases and Locative Preverbs Alice C. Harris 177–191 Vowels and Vowel Harmony in Namangan Tatar K. David Harrison and Abigail R. Kaun 193–206 The Nakh-Daghestanian Consonant Correspondences Johanna Nichols 207–264 Constraints on Reflexivization in Tsez Maria Polinsky and Bernard Comrie 265–289 The Diachrony of Demonstrative Pronouns in East Caucasian Wolfgang Schulze 291–348 On Double Dative Constructions in Georgian Kora Singer 349–362 Kartvelian Series Markers Kevin Tuite 363–391 Tone and Phoneme in Ket Edward J. Vajda 393–418 Index 419–426