The Hinuq language (autonym: гьинузас мец ''hinuzas mec'', also known as Hinukh, Hinux, Ginukh, or Ginux) is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Tsezic subgroup. It is spoken by about 200 to 500 people, the

Hinukhs The Hinukh ( Hinukh: гьинухъес ''hinuqes'', av, гьинухъесел , translit=hinuqesel) are a people of Dagestan living in 2 villages: Genukh, Tsuntinsky District - their 'parent village' and Novomonastyrskoe, Kizlyarsky District ...

, in the

Tsuntinsky District Tsuntinsky District (russian: Цунти́нский райо́н) is an administrativeLaw #16 and municipalLaw #6 district (raion), one of the forty-one in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia. It is located in the southwest of the republic. The are ...

of southwestern Dagestan, mainly in the village of Genukh (Hinukh: ''Hino''). Hinukh is very closely related to Tsez, but they are not entirely mutually intelligible. Only half of the children of the village speak the Hinukh language. As Hinukh is unwritten, Avar and

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

are used as literary languages. Hinukh is not considered to have dialects, but due to its linguistic proximity to Tsez, it was once considered a Tsez dialect. The Hinukh people were already mentioned in the

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

chronicles of the

Early Middle Ages The Early Middle Ages (or early medieval period), sometimes controversially referred to as the Dark Ages, is typically regarded by historians as lasting from the late 5th or early 6th century to the 10th century. They marked the start of the Mi ...

. The language itself was first described in 1916 by

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-eig ...

n ethnographer A. Serzhputovsky.

Phonology

Vowels

Hinukh distinguishes 6 vowel qualities , all of which can be either long or short. Two vowels can occur

pharyngealized Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the Human pharynx, pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. IPA symbols In the International Phonetic Alphabet, pharyngealization can ...

: and . However, these are only used by the older generation. Today they are usually replaced by .

Consonants

Like many Caucasian languages, Hinuq has a large number of consonants. In addition to voiced and unvoiced consonants, there are also ejectives.

Morphology

It is an agglutinative language which makes mainly use of suffixes.

Nouns

Hinukh is an ergative-absolutive language and, like most Northeast Caucasian languages, shows a rich case system. There are six non-spatial cases (Absolutive, Ergative, First Genitive, Second Genitive, Dative, Instrumental) as well as 35 spatial cases. The spatial case system itself consists of two categories, location and orientation, expressed by the use of direction markers (Essive, Lative, First Ablative, Second Ablative, Directional). The plural suffix is almost invariably ''-be''. Hinuq distinguishes a direct and

oblique stem In linguistics, a word stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning. The term is used with slightly different meanings depending on the morphology of the language in question. In Athabaskan linguistics, for example, a verb stem ...

. Case suffixes are primarily added to the oblique stem. To form the oblique stem, there are different options, including oblique suffixes, epenthetic vowels, deletion of the base-stem-final consonant, vowel, or semivowel; stress shift or ablaut. The oblique stem suffixes are ''-mo'', ''-a'', ''-la'', ''-i'', ''-ya'', ''-o'', ''-li'', ''-yi'', ''-ra'', ''-ro'', ''-ru'', ''-do'', ''-u'', ''-na'', ''-nu''. Some examples of nominal declension are given below. There are five genders in Hinuq which play an important role in the language's grammar.

Verbs

Tenses In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, ...

are marked synthetically on the verbs by means of affixes. As its sister languages Bezhta and Tsez, Hinukh differentiates between "witnessed past" (ending in ''-s'' or ''-š'') and "unwitnessed past" (in ''-no''); the present tense is marked with the suffix ''-ho''. In the future tense, Hinukh distinguishes a "direct future" (''-n''), which is used only in the first person and an "indirect future" (''-s'') used for all other persons.

Numerals

The numeral system is vigesimal, which means that it is a base-20 system, a feature commonly found among the languages of the Caucasus.

References

* Forker, Diana
A Grammar of Hinuq
Mouton Grammar Library GL63. DE GRUYTER Mouton, 2013. - 827 pages.

External links

The Peoples of the Red Book: THE HINUKHS

Hinuq basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

Rosetta Project: Hinukh Swadesh List
Agglutinative languages Northeast Caucasian languages Languages of Russia {{NEC-lang-stub