"Languages in contact in N W Georgia: Fact or Fiction?", in: Caucasian Perspectives (ed. B. G. Hewitt), 1992, 244-258.
"One of the most important problems of our discipline is to establish the date of the settlement of the Abkhazian population upon the territory of modern Abkhazia" -- the words of Svan linguist, Aleksandre Oniani, used to open his 2-part article Abkhazia and NW Georgia according to the linguistic evidence, published in saxalxo ganatleba (Narodnoe Obrazovanie) over the New Year 1989-90. Although we can all undoubtedly think of many other, rather more urgent tasks for Caucasologists in general and Kartvelologists in particular, Oniani has presented a case, and it has to be answered, however tedious this may be.
Some may wish to interpose at this point the observation that the article in question was answered in the self-same paper on the 8th March by Teimuraz Gvanceladze and Merab Chuxua. But, as we shall see, what these two individuals set out to achieve can in no way be regarded as an attempt to challenge the central proposition of Oniani's argument, namely that the people we call Abkhazians have resided in Abkhazia for no more than 400-500 years. How is this conclusion reached in terms of the linguistic data?
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