This volume is intended to be a reference manual on the linguistics of the Caucasian languages, targeted at researchers, students, and the initiated public. The general outline of the volume, the choice of authors, and the quality of their contributions greatly contribute to achieving this ambition.

The book is well-crafted and thoroughly edited by Maria Polinsky. Its chapters are designed to make a whole, with a coherent and effective plan, a unique consolidated list of references at the end of the volume, and a 68-page index (which is, however, far from satisfactory, in terms of relevance and accuracy). It successfully fulfills the dual mission of being an effective handbook and a milestone in scientific research in its field, providing stimulating reading for scholars in typological, areal, and theoretical terms. The chapters are based on a substantial body of data, compiled in grammars or collected first-hand by the authors.

Most of the 28 contributors are experts in North-West Caucasian languages (hereafter NWC), Nakh-Daghestanian languages (hereafter ND), or Kartvelian, sometimes the leading authors for one or more specific language. Yuri Koryakov, a recognized expert in linguistic cartography of the region, provides four maps representing administrative divisions, language families, languages, and one specific map detailing the ND languages. No contributor has specific expertise in Armenian or Azerbaijani.

The book has six parts. The first part, together with the general introduction from the editor, provides a comprehensive linguistic, sociolinguistic, and demographic overview of the region (1–86). The following four parts (12 chapters of varying granularity in terms of languages covered) contain a sociolinguistic, linguistic, and typological description for each main family: ND (87–368), NWC (369–490), Kartvelian (491–572), and Indo-European (IE) (573–688). The last part, entitled ‘Phenomena’, cross-linguistically addresses ten descriptive and theoretical issues (689–1002). All references are compiled in a single bibliography section. The book is completed by two appendices ‘Languages and language names’ and ‘Transliteration tables’ by Yuri Koryakov as well as an Index (1091–1158).

In her general introduction, Maria Polinsky outlines the scope of the book, namely non-extinct languages of the Caucasus. She presents the languages and linguistic families of the region, its linguistic history, sociolinguistic and typological challenges, the state of research, and the structure of the handbook. The wide field covered makes a few factual errors or problematic formulations unavoidable, but this introduction succeeds in putting into perspective the whole historical, sociolinguistic, typological, and theoretical spectrum needed.

The main issue is the ambiguity of the geographical delimitation. The scope announced in the introduction and the back cover encompasses the whole Caucasus (Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), but the mismatch between so-called autochthonous Caucasian families (ND, NWC, Kartvelian) and the remaining languages is obvious. Armenian and some Iranian languages (Armenian, Ossetian, Talyshi) are discussed under the heading of IE languages spoken in the North Caucasus (two variants of Western Armenian, Nor-Nakhichevan and Hamshen, are briefly mentioned but not described) and in a few theoretical chapters. This is not the case for Azeri and Turkic, essentially confined to the sociolinguistic part, on the grounds that ‘the Turkic languages of the Caucasus do not appear to have attained features specific to the area and present clear examples of Turkic typology’ (20), which seems to disregard isomorphism phenomena reported in the literature (Stilo Reference Stilo, Comrie and Golluscio2015). It would have been more consistent to endorse the priority given to ND, NWC, and Kartvelian by referring to ‘Caucasian languages’ in the title, and to devote a single chapter to areal phenomena involving other language families.

This criticism does not apply to Chapter 1, ‘Languages and sociolinguistics of the Caucasus’ (Nina Dobrushina, Michael Daniel, and Yuri Koryakov), which systematically discusses all the languages spoken in the entire region, their scripts, their sociolinguistics, and their typology. It is also valuable for the statistical data that it brings together on the languages spoken in the different countries in recent decades. Chapter 2, ‘North Caucasus: Regions and their demography’ (Konstantin Kazenin), limited to the North Caucasus, deepens this aspect with a more in-depth demographic study.

Chapters 3 to 14 discuss salient linguistic features and the state of the art on several languages for each family, suggesting topics for further studies. Dmitry Ganenkov and Timur Maisak present the ND family, then Dargwa is introduced by Nina Sumbatova, Lak by Victor Friedman, Avar by Diana Forker, Archi by Marina Chumakina, and Chechen and Ingush by Erwin Komen, Zarina Molochieva, and Johanna Nichols. Chapter 9, ‘The Northwest Caucasian languages’, and Chapter 10, ‘Abaza and Abkhaz’, address NWC languages, with a general presentation by Peter Arkadiev and Yuri Lander, and Abaza and Abkhaz by Brian O’Herin. Chapter 11, ‘Kartvelian (South Caucasian) languages’, and Chapter 12, ‘Megrelian’, present Kartvelian languages, with a general overview by Yakov Testelets and Megrelian by Aleksander Rostovtsev-Popiel, respectively. Finally, Chapter 13, ‘Indo-European languages of the Caucasus (Oleg Belyaev), deals with the IE languages and Chapter 14, ‘Iron Ossetic’ (David Erschler), with Iron Ossetic. In addition to one erroneous example in Armenian (otherwise rather well informed overall), the bias of presenting Armenian and Iranian languages in parallel in Chapter 13 leads to a stocktaking effect. The section ‘Outstanding issues’ summarizes the whole, suggesting a ‘perfect testing ground for hypotheses concerning pan-Caucasian features’, but concludes that these are relatively few.

The last part of the book, entitled ‘Phenomena’, the most stimulating one, is directly linked to the theoretical literature and reflects original work by the authors. Beside typological information (each chapter begins with an overview of the variations in the languages of the three Caucasian families at least), the main purpose is to emphasize the theoretical potential of the area and to suggest avenues of research in the selected domain, which makes it possible to account for the observables from a language-internal or areal perspective, as well as discussing the theoretical model itself. However, the majority of these chapters emphasize theoretical approaches (with a fairly strong formalist bias, which may make the subject difficult to access for typologists) rather than areal approaches. Considering the skills gathered for this volume, it would have been worth taking the opportunity to highlight the types of mechanisms that are more likely to spread from an areal perspective.

In Chapter 15, ‘Segmental phonetics and phonology in Caucasian languages’, Gašper Beguš recalls some well-known properties (generalization of three-way obstruents throughout the area, typologically marginal consonants and reduced inventory of vowels in NWC, Kartvelian consonant clusters, posterior vowels for ND) and brings new instrumental data about phonemic inventories of the three families, discussing the realization of voiced stops in Georgian, the duration of ejectives and vowels, and the dissimilation of aspirates resulting from a perceptual hypercorrection. The properties of consonant clusters in Georgian (harmonic and non-harmonic) are addressed with their consequences for the sonority sequencing principle (719) as well as identical consonant deletion in Laz (theoretically predictable but rare) and typologically unusual processes targeting word-final voiceless stops (final gemination and final voicing).

Chapter 16, ‘Word stress in languages of the Caucasus’, and Chapter 17, ‘Tone and intonation in languages of the Caucasus’, by Lena Borise, concern ‘word stress’ and ‘tone and intonation’ including Armenian and Ossetian in their scope. The author highlights the diversity of systems: free versus fixed versus quantity-sensitive (unbound, or stress-window) stress, morphologically conditioned stress placement (with rare areal convergences, like prohibitive and negative attracting stress in a number of genetically unrelated languages: Armenian, Svan, Laz, Megrel, Rutul, Hunzib, etc.), and possible traces of a tonal system in NWC (742). Among tonal properties, Borise distinguishes limited tonal systems (Ingush-Chechen), languages with phonemic tonal contrast on stressed syllables, stressed syllable versus every syllable specified for tone, and tonal contrast on each syllable (Budukh, Akhvakh, etc.). She mentions conflicting accounts and the lack of instrumental studies to solve some theoretical issues (F0 association with the accent as an intrinsic property of the accent vs a part of the phrasal intonational contour). Borise highlights mechanisms concerning phrasal intonation from recently collected data, particularly in less-studied ND and Kartvelian languages (among the typologically unusual processes is ‘prosodic fusion’ in Kabardian).

Chapter 18, ‘Ergativity in the Caucasus’ (Dmitry Ganenkov), is in line with the renewal of interest in ergativity within the formal-syntactic framework. The three Caucasian families display different types of systems, with, on the one hand, morphologically ergative alignment of core argument marking (ND and NWC having different agreement mechanisms) and, on the other hand, Kartvelian, considerably different from the ergative prototype. Two types of account are mentioned for the split in case marking in Georgian: as an aspect-based split ergativity (Nash Reference Nash, Coon, Massam and Travis2017), or in line with the Unaccusativity hypothesis (Harris Reference Harris1981). This leads to a theoretical discussion about the absence of syntactic ergativity in the area, an illustration of split ergativity by detailing bi-absolutive constructions found in ND and ergative/absolutive pronoun syncretism, and a description of split intransitivity in Georgian.

Chapter 19, ‘The nominal domain in languages of the Caucasus’ (Balkiz Öztürk and Ömer Eren), is also theory-internal. The authors summarize the DP hypothesis, bringing relevant arguments from the three Caucasian families. There is a typological diversity regarding the encoding of definiteness and specificity in the languages of the area: Kartvelian and ND lack articles, using word order and demonstratives; among NWC, Abaza and Abkhaz have articles, while Kabardian-Adyghe use case markers. The authors examine the NP/DP dichotomy using data from Pazar Laz, Abkhaz, and Kabardian, and argue for a new typology including, besides NP, DP, and null-DP languages, an additional value, i.e. KP (Kase-Phrase).

Chapter 20, ‘Agreement in languages of the Caucasus’, is by Steven Foley. Considering typologically simple cases (one controller and one target) and more complex cases (cf. Archi), the author states that each of the three languages families represents a typologically distinct agreement system (with microvariations internal to each family): absolutive-controlled gender agreement for ND, ergative-aligned polysynthetic agreement for NWC, and complex interactions between features and between argument controllers for Kartvelian. Foley discusses notable phenomena (ergativity, multiple exponence, LD agreement, morphemic-blocking, omnivorous agreement, wh-agreement, inverse agreement) and provides full agreement paradigms for several languages.

Chapter 21, ‘Binding and indexicality in the Caucasus’, is authored by Dmitry Ganenkov and Natalia Bogomolova. They discuss the issue of pronominal and full-DP anaphora as well as the syntactic properties of anaphoric expressions. Pronominal inventories of the three Caucasian families are provided, highlighting the fact that, for both ND and Kartvelian, third person pronouns stem from demonstratives (this is not specified for NWC), which is in fact typologically rare around the world, but also represented in Armenian and Turkic, making it a candidate for an areal feature in the broad sense. Another feature that would have benefited from incorporating Armenian data is the developed reflexive and reciprocal system, including the use of reflexive pronouns with other functions (intensifying, resumptive), discussed in section 21.5, and anaphora exemption and long-distance reflexives (section 21.4). The authors contrast the use of different types of pronouns using Testelets and Toldova’s (Reference Testelets and Toldova1998) binding hierarchy and examine possible structural positions of antecedents as well as the indexical shift in logophoric context.

Chapter 22, ‘Correlatives in languages of the Caucasus’ (Ömer Demirok and Balkiz Öztürk), presents well-known correlatives in Indo-Aryan languages and also widely represented in the Caucasus. In Georgian, they are one of the relativization strategies based on interrogative pronouns. One issue is to what extent one can postulate a syncretism between interrogative and relative pronouns. The authors argue that their formal identity rather signals an identity between their semantic imports and, indeed, interrogative and correlatives in languages like Laz differ from relative pronouns and are semantically based on wh-questions, which leads the authors to postulate two patterns of correlativization, one based on relativization, the other based on wh-questions. They mention that interrogative pronouns used in correlatives are semantically declarative, just as in Abkhaz, embedded interrogatives are not morphologically interrogative, and end with a typological sketch of correlatives in a formalized approach.

Chapter 23, ‘Ellipsis in languages of the Caucasus’ (David Erschler), examines ellipsis, including Ossetian and Armenian. After a 12-page account of the ellipsis types listed in the literature, he examines their properties in the area, adding information about a few undescribed types, which leads to an inventory of Caucasian ellipsis varieties, their distribution among the linguistic families (971), and theoretical conclusions. The repartition shows a strong convergence between the types represented in Kartvelian and Ossetian, as opposed to Armenian. Some types (sluicing, fragments, and probably forward gapping) seem to be represented in the whole area, while others, such as pseudogapping, are extremely marginal.

Finally, in Chapter 24, ‘Information structure in languages of the Caucasus’, Diana Forker examines information structure, following Krifka’s definition of focus, givenness, and topics. For each of the three families she provides an inventory of encoding processes, in a somewhat repetitive way, whereas the recurrences mentioned in the conclusion would have allowed for a more synthetic presentation: SOV order and pre-verbal focus, both of which are non-exclusive (cf. Skopeteas and Fanselow (Reference Skopeteas and Fanselow2010) on post-verbal focus in Georgian), initial verb possible for presentational focus in NP, widespread clefts, as well as enclitic focus-sensitive particles stemming from modal markers, interrogatives, additive affixes, and grammatical markers. The author points out that much remains to be studied, and that prosody is largely understudied.