Relationship To Other Language Families
A number of factors make the reconstruction of the Northwest Caucasian proto-language problematic:
- most roots in Northwest Caucasian languages are monosyllabic, and many are single consonants;
- the sound changes are often intricate, and a large number of consonants and sibilant contrasts provides further complexity;
- ablaut was extensive and still plays some part in the modern languages;
- borrowings between languages of the family were frequent;
- extensive homophony occurs in the modern languages.
For these reasons, Proto–Northwest Caucasian is widely accepted as being one of the most difficult proto-languages to deal with, and it is therefore more difficult than most to relate to other families.
Read more about this topic: Northwest Caucasian Languages
Famous quotes containing the words relationship to, relationship, language and/or families:
“... the Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Language is filled
with words for deprivation
images so familiar
it is hard to crack language open
into that other country
the country of being.”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)
“Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances ... in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)