The highland varieties of Chechen, a Nakh-Daghestanian language spoken in the central Caucasus range in Russia and Georgia, are not all mutually intelligible with each other or the (lowland) standard Chechen language. They preserve some of the most archaic grammar, vocabulary, epic literature, and oral traditions of their very ancient family, which is possibly the only surviving linguistic link to ancient north Mediterranean civilization. They are among the world's most complex languages and have many rare structural properties of phonology, grammar, and lexicon. Important aspects of grammar, lexicon, and language-related knowledge in the Caucasus are transmitted fully, or only, when individuals grow to linguistic adulthood in their traditional and ancestral locations. Highland Chechen towns were cleared and the population deported in 1944, so the entire body of highland language and knowledge will pass with the passing of speakers now over 75 years. This project will bring together Chechen and U.S. scholars to make extensive audio and video recordings of these elders and jointly begin transcription and analysis, gathering enough material to make clear the importance of Chechen to historical and comparative linguistics, sociolinguistics, ethnography, archaeology, and comparative mythology.
If extensive documentation can be done while enough of the generation over 75 can still be recorded, the body of material will be large and varied enough to be useful for advanced corpus and language processing work for the foreseeable future and beyond. This is a magnitude now available only in corpora of large national languages, and the world's last chance to bank for future research on these very distinctive linguistic varieties.
