The Akhvakh language (also spelled ''Axvax, Akhwakh'') is a Northeast Caucasian language from the Avar–Andic branch. Ethnologue lists 6500 speakers,Ethnologue entry for Akhvakh, which also mentions its divergent dialects
/ref> but Magomedova and Abulaeva (2007) list 20,000 speakers of the language. Akhvakh has several dialects, though sources do not agree on the number. Ethnologue lists Kaxib, Northern Akhvakh and Southern Akhvakh (which can be further subdivided into the Tlyanub and Tsegob subdialectsThe peoples of the Red Book: Akhvakhs
/ref>). Creissels (2010) lists Northern Akhvakh and three dialects of Southern Akhvakh (Cegob, Tljanub, and Ratlub). A few publications have been made in the Akhvakh language, but for the most part speakers of Akhvakh have adopted Avar as their literary language.

Phonology

Consonants

As with Avar, there are competing analyses of the distinction transcribed in the table with the length sign . Length is part of the distinction, but so is articulatory strength, so they have been analyzed as

fortis and lenis In linguistics, fortis and lenis ( and ; Latin for "strong" and "weak"), sometimes identified with tense and lax, are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as th ...

. The fortis affricates are long in the fricative part of the contour, e.g. (tss), not in the stop part as in geminate affricates in languages such as Japanese and Italian (tts). Laver (1994) analyzes e.g. as a two-segment affricate–fricative sequence ().Laver (1994) ''Principles of Phonetics'' p. 371.

Vowels

Akhvakh has a standard five-vowel system /i e a o u/ with distinctive vowel length.Magomedbekova (1967)

Grammar

Agreement classes

Akhvakh has three agreement classes. In the singular, these are human masculine, human feminine, and non-human. In the plural, there are only two—human plural and non-human plural. Akhvakh verbs agree with the absolutive argument (subject of an intransitive or object of a transitive.) Consider the following examples, which show the general principles. In the first example, the intransitive verb 'run' shows feminine agreement because its subject, 'girl', is feminine. In the second example, the transitive verb 'cook' shows neuter agreement because its object, 'meat', is neuter. (Creissels 2010:114) Note that in the second example, 'wife' is in the ergative case and appears to be the subject of both the verbs 'cook' and 'eat', but neither verb shows feminine agreement.

Cases

Akhvakh has an ergative-absolutive case-marking system. As the following examples (repeated from above) show, the transitive subject has the ergative case, while an intransitive subject has absolutive case. Absolutive case is not overtly marked by a suffix, but the noun phrase with absolutive case controls agreement on the verb: In addition to the ergative and absolutive cases, Akhvakh has eighteen other cases, for a total of twenty cases (Creissels 2010:108-9). The additional cases are *dative *genitive *comitative *purposive *fifteen spatial cases, arrayed in five series of three.

Notes

References

* Creissels, Denis. 2009. Participles and Finiteness: The Case of Akhvakh. Linguistic Discovery, vol 7:1. http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/2/xmlpage/1/article/334. *Creissels, Denis. 2010. Specialized converbs and adverbial subordination in Axaxdərə Akhvakh. In ''Clause linking and clause hierarchy: Syntax and pragmatics'', ed. by Isabelle Bril. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 105–142. *Magomedova, Patimat and Abdulaeva, Indira. 2007. Axkaxsko-russkij slovar'. Maxačkala: Dagestanskij Naučnyj Centr Rossiskoj Akademii Nauk.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Akhvakh Language Northeast Caucasian languages Andic languages Languages of Russia Endangered Caucasian languages