Abkhaz Author:George Hewitt Abkhaz belongs to the small North West Caucasian language-family, whose other members are the various Circassian dialects and Ubykh, extinct since 1992. It is spoken by (a) upto 100,000 Abkhazians either in the historical homeland of the Republic of Abkhazia, located in north-west Transcaucasia, or in Russia, and (b) an indeterminate number of m... more »embers of the diaspora-communities, which have been centred on Turkey since the great exodus from Abkhazia following Russia's conquest of the North Caucasus in 1864; ethnic Abkhazians in Turkey number between 300,000 and half a million, and smaller communities are found elsewhere in the Near East (plus Europe and America). Each member of the language-family is characterised by (i) large consonantal phoneme-inventories coupled with minimal vowel-systems, (ii) morphs often consisting of just a consonant(-complex) ± vowel, and (iii) extreme polysynthetic verbal complexes, all of which combine to present the learner/speaker with considerable challenges. Whilst grammatical sketches and grammars of Abkhaz designed for linguists exist in a variety of languages (including the author's grammar 'Lingua Descriptive Studies 2: Abkhaz', originally published in 1979, though it was most recently reprinted), this is the first attempt to produce a comprehensive, graded self-tutor. It is based on the literary dialect, Abzhywa, which is one of only two dialects remaining in the ancestral territory (the other being Bzyp). The work consists of: Introduction, 19 explanatory chapters with exercises plus one chapter of texts, an Appendix dealing with mathematical terms, Key to the exercises, and a grammatical Summary. LINCOM Student Grammars 03. 332pp. 2010.« less