იახონტოვის სია და იბერიულ-კავკასიური ენები

Abstract

The genetic relationship of the Iberian-Caucasian languages and the reality of the genealogical classification of these languages is confirmed according to the principle (methods) of researching their kinship relationships. However, proving that ICE comes from a common ancestor language is a very difficult task. The situation is getting complicated due to a number of objective reasons. These are: a) mainly monosyllabic composition of morphemes, which is valid for all Iberian- Caucasian groups; b) special brevity of comparable lexical units in verbs, which reduces the quality of verification; c) the mountainous landscape of the Caucasus is attached to this, which dis not contribute to the unification of peoples in one or another location while contributed the acceleration of the processes of differentiation between languages as well as the conception and development of convergent events in a synchronous mode. This is accompanied by another linguistic contradiction that the Caucasian languages do not necessarily develop independently of each other even after their separation. Thus, if they continue to operate in contiguous areas, under conditions that allow contact and interaction to be stable, then the differences in their vocabulary will be less than expected, and the estimated time for divergence will turn out to be shorter than it really is. Hence the conclusion: the basic tenets of glottochronology are not true for all possible cases. The simplicity of the phonemic composition of the root and its subsequent transformations, together with the shortness of the root, led to the blurring of the historically existing real picture in the Iberian-Caucasian languages, which is not at all an insurmountable contradiction. If we consider the three main theories of the ethnogenesis of the peoples of the Caucasus – migratory, autochthonous and migratory-autochthonous – we share the second theory, which does not ignore the possibility of using the theory of migration in relation to individual peoples. For example, the assumption that the ancestors of the Abkhazians and Georgians lived in the territory of modern Western Georgia (Abkhazia) in prehistoric times has quite solid arguments. The preservation of onomastic names that can be explained in the endemic languages in Abkhazia should indicate the long-term coexistence of the ancestors of the Abkhazians [= Apsuas] and Georgians in this area, from ancient times to the present day. The same can be said about the relationship between Dagestanian languages and peoples, which, at the same time, in both considered cases, based on the theory of prehistoric great migration of peoples, does not exclude the possibility that the modern Caucasian peoples, before finding themselves in the current residential areas, went through a long way of settlement. In the paper, the problem of the kinship of the Iberian-Caucasian languages according to the famous list of Yakhontov will be discussed in more detail.