NYT on Georgian and its relatives...

[Douglas G. Wilson]

I have only a layman's understanding of these matters, but I think the
long-range comparative linguistics buffs nowadays tend to group _North_
Caucasian languages with Basque (and also Chinese, Navajo, etc.!) in the
"Dene-Caucasian" macrophylum (regarded by many as science fiction).
Georgian is a member of the Kartvelian or South Caucasian family (if I'm
understanding this right), which has no definite relationship to North
Caucasian.

Joseph Greenberg opines in his last book that the position of Kartvelian
vis-a-vis Eurasiatic or Afroasiatic is uncertain.

-- Doug Wilson

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