Classification
The classification of the Archi language has not been definitively established. Peter von Uslar felt it should be considered a variant of Avar, butPhonology
Archi has, like its Northeast Caucasian relatives, a very complicated phonological system, with Archi being an extreme example. It has 26 vowelVowels
Archi has a symmetric six-vowel system (). All except can occur in five varieties: short, pharyngealized, high tone, long (with high tone), and pharyngealized with high tone (e.g. , , , , and ). Of all these, only and do not occur word-initially. Examples of non-initial are ('to be fat') and ('brain').Consonants
Of all known languages, Archi has the world's largest phonemic non- click consonant inventory, with only the recently extinct Ubykh of the Northwest Caucasian languages having a few more. The table below shows all consonants that can be found in the Archi Language Tutorial and the Archi Dictionary. Of the consonants listed above, the ones in orange have no word-initial dictionary entries (even though , , and are relatively common), the one in green does not appear in the Tutorial but does have a word-internal dictionary entry (in , 'alpine pasture used in summer'), and the ones in blue appear in the Tutorial but have no dictionary entries. Some of these sounds are very rare. For example, has only one dictionary entry word-internally (in , 'heavy') and two entries word-initially. Likewise, has only two dictionary entries: ('blue; unripe') and ('crooked, curved'). The fortis consonants are not simply two instances of the same consonant, though they do appear largely complementary, with the double instances , , and being the most common and less so. That said, can still be found in ('three'). This is also noted by , who describes the fortis consonants as follows:"Strong phonemes are characterized by the intensiveness (tension) of the articulation. The intensity of the pronunciation leads to a natural lengthening of the duration of the sound, and that is why strong onsonantsdiffer from weak ones by greater length. owever,the adjoining of two single weak sounds does not produce a strong one Thus, the gemination of a sound does not by itself create its tension."The voiceless velar lateral fricative , the voiced velar lateral fricative , and the corresponding voiceless and ejective affricates , are extremely unusual speech sounds among the languages of the world, because velar fricatives are usually central rather than lateral. The velar laterals are further forward than velars in most languages and could better be called prevelar, like the Tutorial does.
Orthography
Until recently Archi did not have a written form, except in studies by specialists who used theGrammar
Archi is 5 grammaticals: Noun class currently has been replaced.Nouns
Archi nouns inflect forCase
Depending on the specifics of the analysis, the ergative and the absolutive cases are not always marked by a specific suffix. Rather, they are marked by the use of the basic (for the absolutive) and oblique (for the ergative) stems in the absence of other markers. There is also a locative-case series in which 6 directional-case suffixes are combined with 5 spatial cases to produce a total of 30 case-localization combinations. However, they do not constitute 30 distinct case forms because they are easily derivable from a pair of morphemes.Noun classes
The four noun classes of Archi are only evident from verbal inflection. This table summarizes the noun classes and their associated verbal morphology:Example phrases
The following phrases were phonetically transcribed from Archi:Diminutive
The inclusions of "little" and "young" in the phrases translate a diminutive, which in Archi language commonly refers either to a smaller or younger version of the subject. The non-diminutive nouns in the above examples belong to noun class III, while their diminutives belong to noun class IV. This difference in noun class is reflected on the verb in all of these examples, by the contrast between class III agreement in ''b'' from class IV in ∅ (with no ''b''). The ''-b-'' in the past tense appears in front of the ''-x̄u'' / ''-č̣u'' / ''-ku'' inflection, while in the present tense the ''b-'' is the first letter of the verb. For the nouns referring to inanimate objects, the class shift is the only sign of the diminutive: the noun itself does not change in form. E.g. ''x́it'' means both "ladle" (III) and "spoon" (IV), ''k̂ut̄ali'' both "bag" (III) and "little bag" (IV). Nouns pertaining to younger animals have different words, e.g. ''dogi'' "donkey" (III) but ''ḳêrt'' "young donkey" (IV), ''nôiš'' "horse" (III) but ''uri'' "young horse" (IV).References
Bibliography
* * * *Bond, Oliver, Greville G. Corbett, Marina Chumakina & Dunstan Brown (eds.). 2016. ''Archi: Complexities of agreement in cross-theoretical perspective.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press.Further reading
* * * * * * * * * * * * *External links
* Appendix:Cyrillic script