Khinalug, a minority language spoken by some 1,500 people mainly in the village of Khinalug in the Quba district of Azerbaijan Republic, is generally regarded as the most divergent East Caucasian language. Its exact genealogical place within the group of around 30 East Caucasian languages has been debated since long. Still, at least some of the relevant contributions to this debate, ground their arguments in a rather small piece of evidence, usually taken from a handful of assumed lexical correspondences and typological analogies. In the present paper, I discuss some methodological problems related to the enterprise of determining the place of Khinalug among the East Caucasian languages, addressing both selected lexical and grammatical features. I also include some sociolinguistic features that are crucial to the discussion. As an alternative to the current hypotheses, I suggest to consider the possibility that Khinalug is not an East Caucasian language from a genetic point of view, but a non-East Caucasian language that has become "Caucasianised" over times. In the first part of my paper I will focus on some general issues and on the lexicon.

中文翻译：

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Khinalug的遗传背景：方法论上的一些考虑。第1部分：问题，贷款和认识

Khinalug是一种少数族裔语言，大约有1500人讲这种语言，主要是在阿塞拜疆共和国Quba区的Khinalug村，通常被认为是最多样化的东高加索语。长期以来，它在约30种东高加索语种中的确切族谱位置一直受到争议。尽管如此，至少有一些对这场辩论的相关贡献使他们的论点仅基于很小的证据，通常取自一些假定的词汇对应和类型学类比。在本文中，我讨论了一些有关确定Khinalug在东方高加索语言中的位置的企业的方法论问题，同时解决了选定的词汇和语法特征。我还包括一些对讨论至关重要的社会语言学特征。作为当前假设的替代方案，我建议考虑从遗传学角度来看，基纳卢格不是东高加索语的可能性，而是随着时间的流逝已成为“高加索语”的非东高加索语的可能性。在本文的第一部分中，我将重点介绍一些一般性问题和词典。