1 Generic terms for domestic animals in East Caucasian Wolfgang Schulze [Draft – not yet proofread! – Please, do not quote without permission.] 1. Introduction Since the very beginnings of comparative studies related to the world of East Caucasian languages (EC), it has been a common assumption that these languages are closely related forming the ‘East Caucasian’ or ‘Nakh(o)-Dagestanian’ language family (cf. for instance Müller 1887: 222; Erckert 1895: 365; Dirr 1928: 2; Trubetzkoy 1922: 186; Trombetti 1922: 128; Deeters 1963: 11). Even in larger (and extremely doubtful) contexts such as the North Caucasian hypothesis (e.g. Nikolayev and Starostin 1994) or the Ibero-Caucasian hypothesis (see Tuite 2008 for a comprehensive account), the East Caucasian languages have been generally treated as a fixed subgroup of the hypothetical North Caucasian resp. Caucasian language family. Still, it must be stated that the assumption of a Proto-East Caucasian language (PEC) is far from being ascertained in the way that holds e.g. for Proto-Indo- European. Many approaches to reconstruct this proto-language are impressionistic in nature, neglecting or even ignoring the well-established methodology of historical comparative linguistics. Moreover, three further factors have by large contributed to this situation: First, we do not have at hands a documented tradition for most of the twenty-nine or thirty East Caucasian languages: Except for Udi (Southeast-Caucasian), none of these languages seems to have been used in a written form prior to the 16 th century CE. With many of these languages, the written documentation has started even later (19 th and 20 th century). The recently discovered and deciphered texts that are contained in the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests allow us for the first time to draw a picture of an early medieval East Caucasian language (‘Caucasian Albanian’, see Gippert et al. 2099 for details) that is related to present-day Udi. Second, no comprehensive debate has taken place so far regarding the question whether the assessment of genetic relations should start from lexical or grammatical data. The East Caucasian languages share a number of grammatical features alien to the other languages of the Caucasus (cf. Schulze 2001), some expressions of which allow reconstructing fragments of the grammar of the assumed proto-language. However, the reconstruction of the corresponding morphological forms is rarely checked against systematic sound corresponces derived from safely established lexical parallels. As a matter of fact, a comprehensive comparative grammar of East Caucasian languages still is a scientific desideratum. Nevertheless, the data available suggest that the grammar of all East Caucasian languages is based on a common ‘design’ grounded in a corresponding PEC model. This does not mean that we can safely reconstruct a full inventory of grammatical forms and syntactic patterns as such. In fact, only a handful of such forms and patterns have been detected yet the reconstruction of which is ascertained by sound correspondences. Some of these elements are lexical in nature rather than grammatical, such as pronouns and numerals. The lexical layer itself has been dealt with in more details. However, we have again to note that the corresponding comparative approaches are far from being grounded in a sound methodology. The only treatments of lexical issues that aim at fully observing the principle of