This grant supports the fieldwork and research for Tamrika Khvtisiashvili's doctoral dissertation on the grammar of Khinalug, an endangered Northeast Caucasian language which is spoken primarily in a single village in the mountains of Azerbaijan. Documentation of this endangered language will provide new data from a language and a language family that are very poorly known, situated in a geographically diverse and isolated area, data which contribute to the scientific advancement of linguistic theory. The descriptive grammar of Khinalug will contribute to linguistic scholarship in several ways, among them an analysis of unusual structural traits that have not been studied and materials for historical linguistics analysis, needed for the study of language change, language contact, and investigation of controversial proposals of genetic relationships. The research will be enhanced by and integrated with training of native speakers in recording and transcription and in development of teaching and literacy materials, which will in turn insure the long-range sustainability of Khinalug language and culture.
The grammar will be based on linguistic analysis that is informed by current linguistic theory and language typology. The phonology, morphology, and syntax will be analyzed and presented in formats that are accessible to linguists worldwide, to members of the local community, and to other scholars and interested non-scientists. A number of members of the community will be involved in actual research and in developing language maintenance/revitalization materials for teaching and learning the language. Linguists will benefit by having access to data and analysis valuable for further research in a number of areas of linguistics; non-specialists and the public generally can benefit from having access to historical and anthropological information about a little known group with a long and fascinating history and their language.
The main goal of this project was fully achieved. It was to write a grammar of Xinaliq to document this endangered indigenous language of Azerbaijan. The dissertation was completed and Tamrika Khvtisiashvili received her PhD in August, 2013. The dissertation's title is: "Principal Aspects of Xinaliq Phonology and Morphosyntax." Xinaliq belongs to the North East Caucasian (Nakh Daghestanian) language family; it is spoken primarily in one single village. Its classification within the East Caucasian language family is not completely settled. Though some consider Xinaliq to be one of Lezgian languages, most agree that Xinaliq is a separate branch of its own within that group. Only one dialect of Xinaliq has been identified, spoken in the village of Xinaliq, which lies at an altitude of c.7,000 feet above sea level in the Kuba district of Azerbaijan. Although most speakers, including the children, are bilingual in Azeri and Xinaliq, the number of speakers is relatively small, 1,500 according to the 1995 census done by Ethnologue. Indications are that this number is declining at a very rapid rate. My initial fieldwork in 2010 demonstrated that these figures for numbers of speakers were outdated and that the situation was much more dire than those data from 1995 suggested. The descriptive grammar of Xinaliq language was the major goal and the main outcome of this project. Another significant aspect of this research was the texts collected and their use for producing teaching and literacy materials. Also, native speakers were trained in basic linguistic analysis for documentation, transcription and materials development. In the fieldwork for the grammar, the data were collected and analysis with native speakers was undertaken in Azeri and Russian, two contact languages known in the village (Azeri generally known, Russian by mostly older males). Tamrika Khvitisiashvili’s knowledge of Georgian (another Caucasian language, from Kartvelian language family) was also useful in the project for language classification and areal context involving Xinaliq. The texts collected represent several different genres of discourse, including casual conversations. Data were obtained from different social groups, including also children, women, and elders, not just men. The descriptive grammar of Xinaliq presents a thorough linguistic analysis, emphasizing the phonology and morphosyntax, where some of the more interesting features particular to this language are found: very complex phonology and phoneme inventory; ergative verb alignment; noun classes based on unusual semantic class distributions; 16 cases; an inclusive/exclusive pronoun contrast; complex deictic pronouns; complex class-number markers in the verb; differences in present tense due to the orientation of the subject; rich past tense forms; an extensive system of derivational verbal prefixes with directional-spatial connotations, etc. All of those traits required investigation which was only possible through the fieldwork documentation research in 2012-2013.
