Ubykh or Päkhy was a
Northwest Caucasian language
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cau ...
once spoken by the
Ubykh tribe of
Circassians
The Circassians (also referred to as Cherkess or Adyghe; Adyghe and Kabardian: Адыгэхэр, romanized: ''Adıgəxər'') are an indigenous Northwest Caucasian ethnic group and nation native to the historical country-region of Circassia ...
who originally lived along the eastern coast of the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, ...
before being deported ''en masse'' to
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
in the
Circassian genocide
The Circassian genocide, or Tsitsekun, was the Russian Empire's systematic mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and expulsion of 80–97% of the Circassian population, around 800,000–1,500,000 people, during and after the Russo-Circassian War ( ...
.
The Ubykh language was
ergative and
polysynthetic, with a high degree of
agglutination
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative la ...
, with
polypersonal verbal agreement and a very large number of distinct
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...
s but only two
phonemically distinct vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (l ...
s. With around eighty consonants, it had one of the largest inventories of consonants in the world, and the largest number for any language without
clicks.
The name Ubykh is derived from (), its name in the
Adyghe language
Adyghe ( or ; ady, Адыгабзэ, Adygabzə, ), also known as West Circassian ( ady, link=no, кӏахыбзэ, khaxybzə), is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken by the western subgroups of Circassians. It is spoken mainly in Russia, ...
. It is known in
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
literature by many names: variants of Ubykh, such as ''Ubikh'', (
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
); and its
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
ised variant (from Ubykh ).
Major features
Ubykh is distinguished by the following features, some of which are shared with other Northwest Caucasian languages:
* It is
ergative, making no syntactic distinction between the
subject
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...
of an
intransitive
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
sentence and the
direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include bu ...
of a
transitive sentence.
Split ergativity
In linguistic typology, split ergativity is a feature of certain languages where some constructions use ergative syntax and morphology, but other constructions show another pattern, usually nominative–accusative. The conditions in which ergati ...
plays only a small part, if at all.
* It is highly
agglutinating and
polysynthetic, using mainly monosyllabic or bisyllabic roots, but with single
morphological words sometimes reaching nine or more syllables in length: ('if only you had not been able to make him take
tall out from under me again for them').
Affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...
es rarely fuse in any way.
* It has a simple
nominal system, contrasting just three
noun case
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...
s, and not always marking
grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
in the direct case.
* Its system of
verbal agreement is quite complex. English verbs must agree only with the subject; Ubykh verbs must agree with the subject, the direct object and the
indirect object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
, and
benefactive
The benefactive case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door ''for Tom''" or "This book is ''for Bob'' ...
objects must also be marked in the verb.
* It is
phonologically complex as well, with 84 distinct
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced ...
s (four of which, however, appear only in
loan word
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
s). It has three phonemic vowels
� ɜ ɨwhich correspond to Dumézil's
a a ərespectively and this is evident in the minimal triplet of /ɐsʃɨn/ ('I milk X'), /ɐsʃɜn/ ('I reap X'), and /ɐsʃɐn/ ('I milk them; I reap them').
Phonology
Ubykh has 84 phonemic consonants, a record high amongst languages without
click consonants, but only 3 phonemic vowels.
Four of these consonants are found only in loanwords and
onomatopoeiae. There are nine basic places of articulation for the consonants and extensive use of secondary articulation, such that Ubykh has 20 different
uvular phonemes. Ubykh distinguishes three types of
postalveolar consonant
Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but ...
s: apical, laminal, and laminal closed. Regarding the vowels, since there are only three phonemic vowels, there is a great deal of allophony.
Grammar
Morphosyntax
Ubykh is agglutinative and polysynthetic: ('we will not be able to go back'), ('if you had said it'). It is often extremely concise in its word forms.
The boundaries between nouns and verbs is somewhat blurred. Any noun can be used as the root of a stative verb ( 'child', 'I was a child'), and many verb roots can become nouns simply by the use of noun affixes ( 'to say', 'what I say').
Nouns
The noun system in Ubykh is quite simple. It has three main noun cases (the oblique-ergative case may be two homophonous cases with differing function, thus presenting four cases in total):
* direct or
absolutive case, marked with the bare
root
In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...
; this indicates the
subject
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...
of an intransitive sentence and the
direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include bu ...
of a transitive sentence (e.g. 'a man')
* oblique-
ergative case
In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that identifies the noun as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages.
Characteristics
In such languages, the ergative case is typically marked (most ...
, marked in -; this indicates either the subject of a
transitive sentence, targets of
preverbs, or
indirect object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
s which do not take any other suffixes ( '(to) a child')
*
locative case
In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
, marked in -, which is the equivalent of English ''in'', ''on'' or ''at''.
There are X other cases that exist in Ubykh too:
*
instrumental case (-) was also treated as a case in Dumézil (1975).
*
instrumental-comitative case (-).
* Another pair of
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s, - ('to
ards
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a type of respiratory failure characterized by rapid onset of widespread inflammation in the lungs. Symptoms include shortness of breath (dyspnea), rapid breathing (tachypnea), and bluish skin col ...
) and - ('for'), have been noted as synthetic
dative
In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jaco ...
s (e.g. 'I will send it to the prince'), but their status as cases is also best discounted.
Nouns do not distinguish
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
. The
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ...
is (e.g. 'the man'). There is no
indefinite article directly equivalent to the English ''a'' or ''an'', but -(root)- (literally 'one'-(root)-'certain') translates French ''un'' : e.g. ('a certain young man').
Number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers ...
is only marked on the noun in the ergative case, with -. The number marking of the absolutive argument is either by
suppletive verb roots (e.g. 'he is in the car' vs. 'they are in the car') or by verb suffixes: ('he goes'), ('they go'). The
second person plural
The plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the ...
prefix - triggers this plural suffix regardless of whether that prefix represents the ergative, the absolutive, or an
oblique argument:
*Absolutive: ('I give you all to him')
*Oblique: ('he gives me to you all')
*Ergative: ('you all give it/them to me')
Note that, in this last sentence, the plurality of ''it'' (-) is obscured; the meaning can be either 'You all give ''it'' to me' or 'You all give ''them'' to me'.
Adjective
In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...
s, in most cases, are simply suffixed to the noun: ('pepper') with ('red') becomes ('red pepper'). Adjectives do not
decline.
Postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s are rare; most locative
semantic
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
functions, as well as some non-local ones, are provided with
preverbal elements: ('you wrote it for me'). However, there are a few postpositions: ('like me'), ('near the prince').
Pronouns
Free pronouns in all North-West Caucasian languages lack an ergative-absolutive distinction.
= Possession
=
Possessed nouns have their plurality marked with the affix .
Verbs
A
pastpresent
The present (or here'' and ''now) is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly and in the first time, not as a recollection (perceived more than once) or a speculation (predicted, hypothesis, uncertain). It is a period of ...
future
The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currentl ...
distinction of verb
tense exists (the suffixes - and - represent past and future) and an
imperfective aspect
The imperfective ( abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a ge ...
suffix is also found (-, which can combine with tense suffixes). Dynamic and stative verbs are contrasted, as in
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
, and verbs have several
nominal forms. Morphological
causative
In linguistics, a causative ( abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
s are not uncommon. The conjunctions ('and') and ('but') are usually given with verb suffixes, but there is also a free particle corresponding to each:
*- 'and' (free particle , borrowed from Arabic);
*- 'but' (free particle )
Pronominal
benefactive
The benefactive case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used where English would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the door ''for Tom''" or "This book is ''for Bob'' ...
s are also part of the verbal complex, marked with the preverb -, but a benefactive cannot normally appear on a verb that has three agreement prefixes already.
Gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures us ...
only appears as part of the
second person paradigm, and then only at the speaker's discretion. The feminine second person index is -, which behaves like other pronominal prefixes: ('he gives
tto you
ormal; gender-neutralfor me'), but compare 'he gives
tto you
emininefor me').
= Agreement
=
Oblique 1 markers are limited to marking the agreement of a noun before a relational preverb and Oblique 2 markers are used for not only marking agreement with local and directional preverbs but also the simple oblique, or dative, arguments.
The second-person is an archaic pronoun used to indicate that the person being referred to is a female, or heckling the speaker in some way.
= Dynamic Verb Conjugation
=
Dynamic Ubykh verbs are split up in two groups: Group I which contain the simple tenses and Group II which contain derived counterpart tenses. Only the Karaclar dialect uses the progressive tense and the plural is unknown.
The singular-plural distinction is used when the subject, the ergative, is singular or plural.
Square brackets indicate elided vowels; parenthesis indicate optional parts of the stem; and the colon indicates the boundary of a morpheme.
Simple Past
The verbs in the simple past tense are conjugated with - in the singular and
- in the plural.
Examples:
* - to say → (s)he said
* - to eat → (s)he ate
* - to know → (s)he knew
* - to go → (s)he went
Mirative Past
The verbs in the mirative past tense are conjugated with
- in the singular and
- in the plural.
Examples:
* - to say → (s)he said apparently
* - to eat → (s)he ate apparently
* - to know → (s)he knew apparently
* - to go → (s)he went apparently
Present
The verbs in the present tense are conjugated with
- in the singular and
- in the plural.
Examples:
* - to say → (s)he says
* - to eat → (s)he eats
* - to know → (s)he knows
* - to go → (s)he goes
Future I
The verbs in the present tense are conjugated with
- in the singular and
- in the plural. It conveys a sense of certainty, immediacy, obligation, or intentionality.
Examples:
* - to say → (s)he certainly will say
* - to eat → (s)he certainly will eat
* - to know → (s)he certainly will know
* - to go → (s)he certainly will go
Future II
The verbs in the present tense are conjugated with
- in the singular and
- in the plural. It conveys a generic sense of the future as well as an exhortative sense such as: (let's go!).
Examples:
* - to say → (s)he will say
* - to eat → (s)he will eat
* - to know → (s)he will know
* - to go → (s)he will go
= Static Verb Conjugation
=
In all dialects and speakers, only two static tenses exist: present and past.
= Aspect
=
There are five basic aspects that exist besides the aspects that exist within the Ubykh tense system. They are: habitual, iterative, exhaustive, excessive, and potential.
A speaker may combine one of these aspects with another to convey more complex aspects in conjunction with the tenses.
A few meanings covered in
English by
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering q ...
s or
auxiliary verb
An auxiliary verb ( abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a ...
s are given in Ubykh by verb suffixes:
* ('I can eat it') - ('I can drink it')
* ('I eat it all the time') - ('I drink it all the time')
* ('I am eating it all up') - ('I am drinking it all up')
* ('I eat it too much') - ('I drink it too much')
* ('I eat it again') - ('I drink it again')
Questions
Question
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogat ...
s may be marked grammatically, using verb suffixes or prefixes:
*Yesno questions with -: ? ('did you see that?')
*Complex questions with -: ? ('what is your name?')
Other types of questions, involving the pronouns 'where' and 'what', may also be marked only in the verbal complex: ('where are you going?'), ('what had you said?').
Preverbs and determinants
Many local, prepositional, and other functions are provided by
preverbal elements providing a large series of
applicatives, and here Ubykh shows remarkable complexity. Two main types of preverbal elements exist: determinants and preverbs. The number of preverbs is limited, and mainly show
location
In geography, location or place are used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ...
and
direction. The number of determinants is also limited, but the class is more
open
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (Y ...
; some determinant prefixes include - ('with regard to a horse') and - ('with regard to the foot or base of an object').
For simple locations, there are a number of possibilities that can be encoded with preverbs, including (but not limited to):
* above and touching
* above and not touching
* below and touching
* below and not touching
* at the side of
* through a space
* through solid matter
* on a flat horizontal surface
* on a non-horizontal or vertical surface
* in a homogeneous mass
* towards
* in an upward direction
* in a downward direction
* into a tubular space
* into an enclosed space
There is also a separate directional preverb meaning 'towards the speaker': -, which occupies a separate slot in the verbal complex. However, preverbs can have meanings that would take up entire phrases in English. The preverb - signifies 'on the earth' or 'in the earth', for instance: ('they buried his body'; literally, "they put his body in the earth"). Even more narrowly, the preverb - signifies that an action is done out of, into or with regard to a fire: ('I take a brand out of the fire').
Orthography
Writing systems for the Ubykh language have been proposed,
but there has never been a standard written form.
Lexicon
Native vocabulary
Ubykh
syllables have a strong tendency to be CV, although VC and CVC also exist.
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education f ...
s are not as large as in Abzhywa
Abkhaz or in
Georgian, rarely being larger than two terms. Three-term clusters exist in two words - ('sun') and ('to swell up'), but the latter is a loan from Adyghe, and the former more often pronounced when it appears alone.
Compounding
In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...
plays a large part in Ubykh and, indeed, in all Northwest Caucasian
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...
. There is no verb equivalent to English ''to love'', for instance; one says "I love you" as ('I see you well').
Reduplication occurs in some roots, often those with
onomatopoeic
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...
values (, 'to curry
omb from 'to scrape'; , 'to cluck like a chicken'
loan from Adyghe; and , 'to croak like a frog').
Roots and affixes can be as small as one phoneme. The word , 'they give you to him', for instance, contains six phonemes, each a separate morpheme:
* - 2nd singular absolutive
* - 3rd singular dative
* - 3rd ergative
* - to give
* - ergative plural
* - present tense
However, some words may be as long as seven
syllables (although these are usually compounds): ('staircase').
Slang and idioms
As with all other languages, Ubykh is replete with
idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...
s. The word ('door'), for instance, is an idiom meaning either "magistrate", "court", or "government." However, idiomatic constructions are even more common in Ubykh than in most other languages; the representation of abstract ideas with series of concrete elements is a characteristic of the Northwest Caucasian family. As mentioned above, the phrase meaning "I love you" translates literally as 'I see you well'; similarly, "you please me" is literally 'you cut my heart'. The term ('Russian'), an Arabic loan, has come to be a slang term meaning "infidel", "non-Muslim" or "enemy" (see
History
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
below).
Foreign loans
The majority of loanwords in Ubykh are derived from either
Adyghe or
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
, with smaller numbers from
Persian,
Abkhaz, and the
South Caucasian languages
The Kartvelian languages (; ka, ქართველური ენები, tr; also known as South Caucasian, Kartvelic, and Iberian languagesBoeder (2002), p. 3) are a language family indigenous to the South Caucasus and spoken primari ...
. Towards the end of Ubykh's life, a large influx of Adyghe words was noted; Vogt (1963) notes a few hundred examples. The phonemes were borrowed from Arabic and Adyghe. also appears to come from Adyghe, although it seems to have arrived earlier on. It is possible, too, that is a loan from Adyghe, since most of the few words with this phoneme are obvious Adyghe loans: ('proud'), ('testis').
Many loanwords have Ubykh equivalents, but were dwindling in usage under the influence of Arabic, Circassian, and Russian equivalents:
* ('to make a hole in, to perforate' from Iranic languages) =
* ('tea' from Chinese) =
* ('enemy' from Persian) =
Some words, usually much older ones, are borrowed from less influential stock: Colarusso (1994) sees ('pig') as a borrowing from a proto-
Semitic
Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta.
Semitic may also refer to:
Religions
* Abrahamic religions
** ...
*''huka'', and ('slave') from an
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
root; however, Chirikba (1986) regards the latter as being of Abkhaz origin ( ← Abkhaz ''agər-wa'' 'lower cast of peasants; slave', literally 'Megrelian').
Evolution
In the scheme of Northwest Caucasian evolution, despite its parallels with Adyghe and Abkhaz, Ubykh forms a separate third branch of the family. It has fossilised palatal class markers where all other Northwest Caucasian languages preserve traces of an original labial class: the Ubykh word for 'heart', , corresponds to the reflex in Abkhaz, Abaza, Adyghe, and Kabardian. Ubykh also possesses groups of pharyngealised consonants. All other NWC languages possess true pharyngeal consonants, but Ubykh is the only language to use pharyngealisation as a feature of secondary articulation.
With regard to the other languages of the family, Ubykh is closer to Adyghe and Kabardian but shares many features with Abkhaz due to geographic influence; many later Ubykh speakers were bilingual in Ubykh and Adyghe.
Dialects
While not many dialects of Ubykh existed, one divergent
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...
of Ubykh has been noted (in Dumézil 1965:266-269). Grammatically, it is similar to standard Ubykh (i.e.
Tevfik Esenç
Tevfik Esenç (1904 – 7 October 1992) was a Turkish citizen of Circassian origin, known for being the last speaker of the Ubykh language. He was fluent in Ubykh, Adyghe and Turkish. After his death in 1992, the Ubykh language went extinct de ...
's dialect), but has a very different sound system, which had collapsed into just 62-odd phonemes:
* have collapsed into .
* are indistinguishable from .
* seems to have disappeared.
* Pharyngealisation is no longer distinctive, having been replaced in many cases by
geminate
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
consonants.
* Palatalisation of the uvular consonants is no longer phonemic.
History
Ubykh was spoken in the eastern coast of the
Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, ...
around
Sochi until 1864, when the Ubykhs were driven out of the region by the
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...
ns. They eventually came to settle in
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
, founding the villages of
Hacı Osman
Hacı is the Turkish spelling of the title and epithet Hajji. It may refer to:
People
* Hacı I Giray (died 1466), founder and the first ruler of the Crimean Khanate
* Hacı Ahmet ( 1566), purported Turkish cartographer
* Hacı Arif Bey (1831–1 ...
,
Kırkpınar, Masukiye and
Hacı Yakup.
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
and
Circassian eventually became the preferred languages for everyday communication, and many words from these languages entered Ubykh in that period.
The Ubykh language
died out on 7 October 1992, when its last fluent speaker,
Tevfik Esenç
Tevfik Esenç (1904 – 7 October 1992) was a Turkish citizen of Circassian origin, known for being the last speaker of the Ubykh language. He was fluent in Ubykh, Adyghe and Turkish. After his death in 1992, the Ubykh language went extinct de ...
, died.
[ Before his death, thousands of pages of material and many audio recordings had been collected and collated by a number of linguists, including Georges Charachidzé, ]Georges Dumézil
Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French philologist, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology. He was a professor at Istanbul University, École pratique ...
, Hans Vogt, George Hewitt George Hewitt or Hewett may refer to:
* George Hewitt (footballer) (1878–?), English footballer for Burslem Port Vale and Luton Town
* Brian George Hewitt (born 1949), English linguist specialising in Caucasian languages
* George Wattson Hewitt ( ...
and A. Sumru Özsoy, with the help of some of its last speakers, particularly Tevfik Esenç and Huseyin Kozan.[ Ubykh was never written by its speech community, but a few phrases were transcribed by ]Evliya Çelebi
Derviş Mehmed Zillî (25 March 1611 – 1682), known as Evliya Çelebi ( ota, اوليا چلبى), was an Ottoman Empire, Ottoman explorer who travelled through the territory of the Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands over a period of forty ye ...
in his Seyahatname and a substantial portion of the oral literature, along with some cycles of the Nart saga
The Nart sagas ( Abkhaz: Нарҭаа ражәабжьқәа; ''Nartaa raƶuabƶkua''; ady, Нарт тхыдэжъхэр, translit=Nart txıdəĵxər; os, Нарты кадджытæ; ''Narty kaddžytæ''; ''Nartı kadjıtæ'') are a series of ...
, was transcribed. Tevfik Esenç also eventually learned to write Ubykh in the transcription that Dumézil devised.
Julius von Mészáros, a Hungarian linguist, visited Turkey in 1930 and took down some notes on Ubykh. His work ''Die Päkhy-Sprache
''Die Päkhy-Sprache'' (which means ''The Ubykh Language'' in German) is the title of a treatise in the Ubykh language, written by Gyula Mészáros and published in 1934 by the University of Chicago Press.
It was the first major descriptive wor ...
'' was extensive and accurate to the extent allowed by his transcription system (which could not represent all the phonemes of Ubykh) and marked the foundation of Ubykh linguistics.
The Frenchman Georges Dumézil
Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French philologist, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology. He was a professor at Istanbul University, École pratique ...
also visited Turkey in 1930 to record some Ubykh and would eventually become the most celebrated Ubykh linguist. He published a collection of Ubykh folktales in the late 1950s, and the language soon attracted the attention of linguists for its small number of phonemic vowels. Hans Vogt, a Norwegian, produced a monumental dictionary that, in spite of its many errors (later corrected by Dumézil), is still one of the masterpieces and essential tools of Ubykh linguistics.
Later in the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Dumézil published a series of papers on Ubykh etymology
Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words ...
in particular and Northwest Caucasian etymology in general. Dumézil's book ''Le Verbe Oubykh'' (1975), a comprehensive account of the verbal and nominal morphology of the language, is another cornerstone of Ubykh linguistics.
Since the 1980s, Ubykh linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...
has slowed drastically with the most recent treatise being Fenwick's ''A Grammar of Ubykh'' (2011), who was also working on a dictionary. The Ubykh themselves have shown interest in relearning their language.
The Abkhaz writer Bagrat Shinkuba's historical nove
Bagrat Shinkuba. ''The Last of the Departed''
treats the fate of the Ubykh people.
People who have published literature on Ubykh include
* Brian George Hewitt
Brian George Hewitt, FBA (born 11 November 1949) is an English academic linguist who is Emeritus Professor of Caucasian languages as the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), University of London.CURRICULUM VITAE', Official webpage of ...
* Brian Fell
* Catherine Paris
* Christine Leroy
* Georg Bossong
* Georges Dumézil
Georges Edmond Raoul Dumézil (4 March 189811 October 1986) was a French philologist, linguist, and religious studies scholar who specialized in comparative linguistics and mythology. He was a professor at Istanbul University, École pratique ...
* Hans Vogt
* John Colarusso
John Colarusso is a linguist specializing in Caucasian languages. Since 1976, he has taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Colarusso has published more than sixty-five articles on linguistics, myths, politics, and the Caucasus; he ...
* Julius von Mészáros
* Rieks Smeets
* Rhona (formerly Rohan) Fenwick
* Tevfik Esenç
Tevfik Esenç (1904 – 7 October 1992) was a Turkish citizen of Circassian origin, known for being the last speaker of the Ubykh language. He was fluent in Ubykh, Adyghe and Turkish. After his death in 1992, the Ubykh language went extinct de ...
* Viacheslav Chirikba
Viacheslav Chirikba is a linguist and politician from Abkhazia. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia between 2011 and 2016.
Personal life
Chirikba was born on 17 March 1959 in Gagra. From 1966 until 1976, he attended School No.5 in ...
* Wim Lucassen
Notable characteristics
Ubykh had been cited in the ''Guinness Book of Records'' (1996 ed.) as the language with the most consonant phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s, but since 2017 the !Xóõ language
Taa , also known as ǃXóõ (also spelled ǃKhong and ǃXoon; ), is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consona ...
(a member of the Tuu languages) has been considered by the book to have broken that record, with 130 consonants. Ubykh has 20 uvular and 29 pure fricative
A fricative is a consonant manner of articulation, produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation, articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the ba ...
phonemes, more than any other known language.
Samples
All examples from Dumézil 1968.
*Notes
Notes
: Fenwick lists a plural form for ('to give') but it is never used in the grammar even when a plural form is expected.
See also
* North Caucasian languages
References
Bibliography
* Viacheslav Chirikba
Viacheslav Chirikba is a linguist and politician from Abkhazia. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia between 2011 and 2016.
Personal life
Chirikba was born on 17 March 1959 in Gagra. From 1966 until 1976, he attended School No.5 in ...
(1986). Abxazskie leksicheskie zaimstvovanija v ubyxskom jazyke (Abkhaz Lexical Loans in Ubykh). Problemy leksiki i grammatiki jazykov narodov Karachaevo-Cherkesii: Sbornik nauchnyx trudov (Lexical and Grammatical Problems of the Karachay-Cherkessian National Languages: A Scientific Compilation). ''Cherkessk'', 112–124.
* Viacheslav Chirikba
Viacheslav Chirikba is a linguist and politician from Abkhazia. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Abkhazia between 2011 and 2016.
Personal life
Chirikba was born on 17 March 1959 in Gagra. From 1966 until 1976, he attended School No.5 in ...
(1996). ''Common West Caucasian. The Reconstruction of its Phonological System and Parts of its Lexicon and Morphology''. Leiden: CNWS Publications.
* Colarusso, J. (1994). Proto-Northwest Caucasian (Or How To Crack a Very Hard Nut). ''Journal of Indo-European Studies'' 22, 1-17.
* Dumézil, G. (1961). ''Etudes oubykhs'' (Ubykh Studies). Paris: Librairie A. Maisonneuve.
* Dumézil, G. (1965). ''Documents anatoliens sur les langues et les traditions du Caucase (Anatolian Documents on the Languages and Traditions of the Caucasus), III: Nouvelles études oubykhs'' (New Ubykh Studies). Paris: Librairie A. Maisonneuve.
* Dumézil, G. (1968). Eating Fish Makes You Clever. Annotated recording available vi
.
* Dumézil, G. (1975). ''Le verbe oubykh: études descriptives et comparatives'' (The Ubykh Verb: Descriptive and Comparative Studies). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.
* Hewitt, B. G. (2005). North-West Caucasian. ''Lingua''. 115, 91-145.
* Mészáros, J. von. (1930). ''Die Päkhy-Sprache'' (The Ubykh Language). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
* Hans Vogt (linguist), Vogt, H. (1963). ''Dictionnaire de la langue oubykh'' (Dictionary of the Ubykh Language). Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.
* Fenwick, R. (2011). ''A Grammar of Ubykh''. Munich: Lincom Europa.
External links
Two proposals for a practical orthography for Ubykh
* YouTube
Tevfik Esenç narrating the story of the two travellers and the fish in Ubykh
A number of narrations by Tevfik Esenç, WAV format
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ubykh Language
Agglutinative languages
Northwest Caucasian languages
Extinct languages of Europe
Languages of Russia
Languages of Turkey
Vertical vowel systems