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Matasović: A Short Grammar of Kabardian© No part of this publication should be copied or edited without permission from theauthor.LIST OF ABBREVIATIONSAbkh. = AbkhazAdyg. = Adygheanadm. = admirativeADV = adverbialadvers. = adversativeaff. = affirmativeant. = anteriorassoc.= associative, associative pluralcaus. = causativecond. = conditionalconj. = conjunctivity prefixdeb. = debitative participledir. = directional (directional prefix)ERG = ergativeevid. = evidentialfut. = futureger. = gerundimpf. = imperfectinf.= infinitiveINST = instrumentalinter. = interrogativeinvol. = involuntativeintrans. = intransitiveKab. = Kabardianneg. = negationNOM = nominativeopt. = optativepart. = participleperm. = permissivepl. = pluralplup. = pluperfectposs. = possessive prefixpot. = potentialpref. = prefixpret. = preteritequot.part. = quotative particlerec. = reciprocal prefixrefl. = reflexivityRus. = Russiansg. = singulartrans. = transitiveUb. = Ubykhver. = version2
Matasović: A Short Grammar of KabardianPREFACEThis grammar should be used with some caution, not only because it was written by alinguist who is far from being a fluent speaker of Kabardian. It is largely compilatoryin nature, and many examples were drawn from the existing works on Kabardian byM. L. Abitov, Mukhadin Kumakhov, and others. However, I have also excerpted andanalyzed many sentences from the literature, especially from the Nart corpus (Nārtxar1951, Nārtxar 2001), and some examples were elicited from native speakers.Although I have relied heavily on the published scholarly works on Kabardian, myinterpretations of the data are sometimes very different from those in the availableliterature. I have tried to approach the Kabardian language from a typological point ofview, comparing its linguistic features, that may appear strange to speakers of Indo-European languages, to similar features found in other languages of the world.Although primarily designed for linguists, I hope that at least parts of this overview ofKabardian grammar may be of some use to laymen. If it succeeds in attracting at leasta few people to the study of Kabardian, this grammar will have served its purpose.Apart from John Colarusso's grammar (1992) and his recently published grammaticalsketch (2006), and the largely outdated monograph by Aert Kuipers (1960), this is, tomy knowledge, the only general overview of the structure of Kabardian available inEnglish. In contrast to these three works, which were composed as a result of fieldwork with native speakers from the Kabardian diaspora, this grammar attempts todescribe the standard Kabardian language used in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic ofthe Russian Federation.This grammar is a result of my long-standing endeavor to learn this exciting andfascinating, though incredibly difficult language. In a world in which a language diesout every fortnight, the linguist's task is at least to describe the small languagesthreatened by extinction. Although the statistics on the number of speakers ofKabardian does not lead one to think that Kabardian is in immediate danger ofextinction, especially if compared with other small Caucasian languages in Russia,sociolinguistic data show that the number of native speakers is decreasing among theyounger generations; it seems that it is especially in the diaspora that Kabardian isfacing extinction. As R. M. W. Dixon wrote, anyone who calls themselves a linguistshould assume the task of saving at least one endangered language from oblivion.This work is my response to this greatest challenge that linguists, as well as otherpeople who care about the preservation of linguistic diversity, are facing today.Finally, I would like to thank Lemma Maremukova and Alim Shomahua for their helpand for the examples they provided as native speakers of Kabardian. Globalization,which is partly responsible for the mass extinction of languages, has, on the otherhand, opened some, until recently unimaginable, possibilities for the investigation oflanguages over large distances, for "field work" via Internet. F'əś'ašx w a.Zagreb, 19 November 20093
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w(ə)-/b- 2nd person sg. verbal pre
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TABLE OF CONTENTSList of abbreviati
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PRAGMATICS AND THE ETHNOGRAPHY OFCO
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