Languages of the World An Introduction

Dominated by the imposing Great Caucasus Mountains (which includes Europe’s highest mountain, Mount Elbrus), the Caucasus region stretches between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Although historically its location at the center of the Afro-Eurasian ecumene (essentially “the Old World”) made it a vital crossroads for many a century, nowadays it is more often than not overlooked in geographical descriptions. Yet it is fascinating from the ethnolinguistic perspective, not only because of the sheer number of ethnic groups that inhabit, and languages that are spoken in, this relatively small region, much of which is an uninviting terrain, but also because of a number of linguistic peculiarities that the languages here exhibit.