Characteristic word-formation methods of the Circassian language based on prefixes and suffixes in comparison with the literary Kabardino-circassian language

This article presents the results of an analysis of the Circassian language in comparison with the literary Kabardino-Circassian language. The article aims to explore the distinctive characteristics and identify the unique word-formation methods of the Circassian language. For this purpose, a review of the works of linguists who in one way or another touched upon this topic was carried out and, in connection with the fact that the existing works were prepared on the basis of materials collected several decades ago, we conducted a survey of native speakers living in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic to collect new field data. In preparing the article, the following linguistic research methods were used: field method, observation, descriptive-analytical method and comparative-contrastive method.
It has been established that in most cases the speech of the Circassians and the literary Kabardino-Circassian language coincide, but have some discrepancies that appeared as a result of alienated development from each other and close proximity and cooperation with various peoples. The work proves that, despite the fact that both variants represent a single language, the speech of the Circassians reveals some distinctive ways of using prefixes and suffixes in comparison with the literary language: the replacement of some word-formation forms with others, truncation, augmentation, etc.
The study uses new field data collected by the author in 2023 in Circassian-populated areas. Respondents were selected based on their place of residence, gender, age, and education. In addition, this text is written on the basis of the new linguistic terminology of the Kabardino-Circassian language, developed by Doctor of Philological Sciences B.Ch. Bizhoev.

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