The Lezgic languages are one of seven branches of the
Northeast Caucasian language family.
Lezgian are
literary language
A literary language is the form (register) of a language used in written literature, which can be either a nonstandard dialect or a standardized variety of the language. Literary language sometimes is noticeably different from the spoken langua ...
s aside from being extant (currently spoken).
Classification
* Peripheral:
Archi – 970 speakers
[Ethnologue report for Archi](_blank)
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* Samur[Languages in the Caucasus, by Wolfgang Schulze (2009)](_blank)
(Nuclear Lezgic)
** Eastern Samur
*** Udi – 6,600 speakers
*** Lezgin–Aghul–TabasaranKryts Kryts may refer to:
* Kryts people, of the Caucasus of Azerbaijan
* Kryts language, Lezgic language spoken by the Kryts people
{{Disambig
Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
– 5,000
*** Budukh – 200 speakers
** Western Samur
*** Rutul – 36,400 speakers
*** Tsakhur – 22,300 speakers
The voicing of ejective consonants
The Lezgic languages are relevant to the glottalic theory
The glottalic theory is that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, , instead of the plain voiced ones, as hypothesized by the usual Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions.
A forerunner of the theory was proposed by the Danish lingu ...
of Indo-European, because several have undergone the voicing of ejectives that have been postulated but widely derided as improbable in that family. The correspondences have not been well worked out (Rutul is inconsistent in the examples), but a few examples are:
*Non-Lezgic: Avar ; Lezgic: Rutul , Tsakhur 'name'
*Non-Lezgic: Archi , Lak ; Lezgic: Rutul , Tabassaran , Aɡul 'beard'
*Non-Lezgic: Avar ; Lezgic: Tabassaran 'moon'
A similar change has taken place in non-initial position in the Nakh languages
The Nakh languages are a group of languages within Northeast Caucasian family, spoken chiefly by the Chechens and Ingush in the North Caucasus.
Bats is the endangered language of the Bats people, an ethnic minority in Georgia.
The Chechen, I ...
.[Paul Fallon, 2002. ''The synchronic and diachronic phonology of ejectives'', p 245.]
See also
* Languages of the Caucasus
The Caucasian languages comprise a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than ten million people in and around the Caucasus Mountains, which lie between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
Linguistic comparison allows t ...
* Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in ...
References
External links
Lezgic basic lexica at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{Authority control
Lezgian languages
Northeast Caucasian languages
Languages of Azerbaijan
Languages of Russia
tr:Lezgice