* Dené – Caucasian superfamily: Based on the possible Caucasian link, some linguists, for example John Bengtson and Merritt Ruhlen, have proposed including Basque in the Dené – Caucasian superfamily of languages, but this proposed superfamily includes languages from North America and Eurasia, and its existence is highly controversial.

The only exception was Yeniseian, which has been related to a wider Dené – Caucasian grouping, also including Sino-Tibetan.

In 2008 Edward Vajda related Yeniseian to the Na-Dené languages of North America in a Dené – Yeniseian family.

Others, however, consider one or both to be members of another macrofamily called Dené – Caucasian.

There are a number of hypotheses incorporating Nostratic into an even broader linguistic ' mega-phylum ', sometimes called Borean, which would also include at least the Dené – Caucasian and perhaps the Amerind and Austric superfamilies.

The Sino-Caucasian hypothesis has been expanded by others to " Dené – Caucasian " to include the Na-Dené languages of North America, Burushaski, Basque and, occasionally, Etruscan.

( A narrower binary Dené – Yeniseian family has recently been well-received, but is not yet conclusively demonstrated.

* Dené – Caucasian languages ( John Bengtson )

Several attempts have been made to establish a genealogical relationship between Burushaski and the Caucasic languages, with the Yeniseian languages in a family called Karasuk, as a non-Indo-Iranian Indo-European language, or to include Burushaski in the Dené – Caucasian proposal, which includes both Caucasic and Yeniseian.

In 2008 Edward Vajda attempted to demonstrate Merritt Ruhlen's proposal that Yeniseian was most closely related to Na-Dene in a Dené – Yeniseian family, but the evidence adduced has not been extended to Burushaski.

* Dené – Caucasian languages

The Na – Dené, Algic, and Uto-Aztecan families are the largest in terms of number of languages.

Na – Dené and Algic have the widest geographic distributions: Algic currently spans from northeastern Canada across much of the continent down to northeastern Mexico ( due to later migrations of the Kickapoo ) with two outliers in California ( Yurok and Wiyot ); Na – Dené spans from Alaska and western Canada through Washington, Oregon, and California to the U. S. Southwest and northern Mexico ( with one outlier in the Plains ).

# Na – Dené ( United States, Canada & Mexico ) ( 39 )

# Na – Dené ( United States, Canada & Mexico ) ( 40 )

# Dené – Yeniseian

# Dené – Caucasian

# Sapir's Na – Dené including Haida

Some consider the proposed North Caucasian family to be a member of the Dené – Caucasian macrofamily ; however, the Dené – Caucasian hypothesis is itself unproven and highly controversial, and attempts to categorize Abkhaz as a Dené – Caucasian language are thus premature.

South Slavey language ( ᑌᓀ ᒐ Dene-thah, Dené Dháh or Dene Zhatıé ), is spoken by the Slavey ( South Slavey ) people, which were also known as Dehghaot ' ine, Deh Cho, Etchareottine-“ People Dwelling in the Shelter ”, in the region of Great Slave Lake, upper Mackenzie River ( Deh Cho-“ Big River ”) and drainage in Mackenzie District, northeast Alberta, northwest British Columbia.

The Mescalero language is a Southern Athabaskan language which is a subfamily of the Athabaskan and Dené – Yeniseian families.

Dené – Caucasian is a proposed language family that includes the Sino-Tibetan, North Caucasian, Na-Dené, and Yeniseian language families and the Basque and Burushaski languages.

The existence of Dené – Caucasian is supported by:

Ruhlen argues that Eurasiatic is supported by stronger and clearer evidence than Dené – Caucasian, and that this also indicates that the spread of Dené – Caucasian occurred before that of Eurasiatic.

The existence of a Dené – Caucasian family is disputed or rejected by some linguists, including Lyle Campbell, Ives Goddard, and Larry Trask.

Although the Dené – Yeniseian language family is now widely accepted, the same cannot be said about his inclusion of the Dingling.

Examples of proposed macro-families range from relatively recent such as Macro-Jê, Macro-Waikurúan, Macro-Mayan, Macro-Siouan, Penutian, Na-Dene or Congo-Saharan ( Niger-Saharan ) to older ones such as Austric, Dené – Caucasian, Eurasiatic, Nostratic or Ural-Altaic.

The connection between two of its members has recently been accepted by many linguists ( see Dené – Yeniseian languages ).

Linguists such as Sergei Starostin have proposed a Dené – Caucasian macrofamily, which includes the North Caucasian languages together with Basque, Burushaski, Na-Dené, Sino-Tibetan, and Yeniseian.

In 1998, Vitaly V. Shevoroshkin rejected the Amerind affinity of the Almosan ( Algonquian-Wakashan ) languages, suggesting instead that they had a relationship with Dené – Caucasian.

According to Starostin, the Dené – Caucasian and Austric macrofamilies, together with the Nostratic macrofamily ( as envisaged by Vladislav Illich-Svitych, with some modifications ), can further be linked at an earlier stage, which Starostin called the Borean ( i. e. ' Northern ') languages.

" According to him, the root can also be found in Nilo-Saharan, Niger – Kordofanian, Afroasiatic, Eurasiatic, Dené – Caucasian, Austric, and Amerind.

Merritt Ruhlen suggests that the geographical distribution of Eurasiatic shows that it and the Dené – Caucasian family are the result of separate migrations.

The Eurasiatic expansion overwhelmed Dené – Caucasian, leaving speakers of the latter restricted mainly to isolated pockets ( the Basques in the Pyrenees mountains, Caucasian peoples in the Caucasus mountains, and the Burushaski in the Hindu Kush mountains ) surrounded by Eurasiatic speakers.

The Algic, Salishan, Wakashan, and Sumerian comparisons should be regarded as especially tentative because regular sound correspondences between these families and the more often accepted Dené – Caucasian families have not yet been reconstructed.

The Ket language has been linked to the Na-Dené languages of North America in the Dené – Yeniseian language family.

The Dene ( Dené ) are an aboriginal group of First Nations who live in the northern boreal and Arctic regions of Canada.

The Dené speak Northern Athabaskan languages.

Related proposals include Sino-Austronesian ( Laurent Sagart ), Austro-Tai ( Paul K. Benedict ), and Dené – Caucasian ( Sergei Starostin ).

The current resistance to Russian rule has its roots in the late 18th century ( 1785 – 1791 ), a period when Russia expanded into territories formerly under the dominion of Turkey and Persia ( see also the Russo-Turkish Wars and Russo-Persian War ( 1804 – 1813 )), under Mansur Ushurma — a Chechen Naqshbandi ( Sufi ) Sheikh — with wavering support from other North Caucasian tribes.

Other languages that use the ergative case are Georgian, Chechen, and other Caucasian languages, Mayan languages, Mixe – Zoque languages, Wagiman and other Australian Aboriginal languages as well as Basque, Burushaski, Hindi, Yaghnobi and Tibetan.

* Caucasian War ( 1817 – 1864 )

* The Extinction Website – Caucasian European bison ( Bison bonasus caucasicus ).

oxycarpa – Caucasian Ash

The Northwest Caucasian languages (, ), also called Abkhazo-Adyghean, or sometimes Pontic as opposed to Caspian for the Northeast Caucasian languages, are a group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region, chiefly in Russia ( Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay – Cherkessia ), the disputed territory of Abkhazia, and Turkey, with smaller communities scattered throughout the Middle East.

For these reasons, Proto – Northwest Caucasian is widely accepted as being one of the most difficult proto-languages to deal with, and it is therefore more difficult than most to relate to other families.

A few linguists have proposed even broader relationships, of which the Dene – Caucasian hypothesis is perhaps the most popular.

Dene – Caucasian links the North Caucasian ( including Northwest Caucasian ), Basque, Burushaski, Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, and Na – Dene families.