Ubykh is a language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people up until the early 1990s. ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... SIL International is a non-profit, Christian, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... Jump to: navigation, search This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. ... The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called Pontic or Abkhaz-Adyg/Circassian, are a group of languages spoken in Caucasian Russia, Turkey, Jordan, Kabardino-Balkaria (an autonomous republic in Russia) and Abkhazia ( de facto independent formally an autonomous republic in Georgia). ... The Ubykh people are a group who spoke the Northwest Caucasian Ubykh language, up until 1992. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1992 was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ...

The word is derived from wəbəx, its name in the Abdzakh Adyghe (Circassian) language. It is known in linguistic literature by many names: variants of Ubykh, such as Ubikh, Ubıh (Turkish) and Oubykh (French); and Pekhi (from Ubykh tʷaχə) and its Germanicised variant Päkhy. Adyghe (Адыгэ) is one of the two official languages of the Federal Republic of Adygeya in the Russian Federation. ... Jump to: navigation, search Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ...

The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... Jump to: navigation, search Unicode is an international standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ...

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 of an intransitive sentence and the direct object of a transitive sentence. Split ergativity plays only a small part, if at all.
• It is highly agglutinative, using mainly monosyllabic or bisyllabic roots, but with single morphological words sometimes reaching nine or more syllables in length: aχʲazbatɕʾaʁawdətʷaajlafaqʾajtʾmadaχ if only you had not been able to make him take (it) all out from under me again for them. Affixes rarely fuse in any way.
• It has a simple nominal system, contrasting just four noun cases, and not always marking grammatical number 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, and benefactive objects must also be marked in the verb.
• It is phonologically complex as well, with 83 distinct consonants (three of which, however, appear only in loan words). However, according to some linguistic analyses, it only has two phonological vowels, but these vowels have a large range of allophones because the range of consonants which surround them is so large.

Jump to: navigation, search An ergative-absolutive language (or simply ergative) is one that treats the subject of transitive verbs distinctly from the subject of intransitive verbs and the object of transitive verbs. ... See subject (grammar) for the linguistic definition of subject. ... In grammar, an intransitive verb is an action verb that takes no object. ... The accusative case of a noun is, generally, the case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... In grammar, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and an object. ... Split ergativity is shown by languages that have a partly ergative behaviour, but employ another syntax or morphology (usually accusative) in some contexts. ... An agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. ... Morphology is the following: In linguistics, morphology is the study of the structure of word forms. ... An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a base morpheme such as a root or to a stem, to form a word. ... A noun, or noun substantive, is a word or phrase that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... Jump to: navigation, search Number, in linguistics, is a grammatical category used to express the quantity of objects referred to by a noun. ... In linguistics, verbal agreement is a morpho-syntactic construct in which properties of the subject and/or objects of a verb are indicated by the verb form. ... The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. ... The benefactive is a noun case or an adposition which indicates movement towards or for someone. ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken in by one language from another. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ...

Curiosities

• Ubykh may hold the world record for consonant sounds. It is sometimes said to be eclipsed by Khoisan languages such as !Kung, which have been claimed to have over 100 click consonants alone, but it now seems that many of the more unusual Khoisan consonants are actually consonant clusters.
• Ubykh has 26 pure fricative phonemes, more than any other known language.
• Ubykh contains many rare phonemes: the sound [tʷ] only appears in Ubykh, its relatives Abkhaz and Abaza, and two other languages, both of which are found only in the Amazon rainforest; and the phoneme vˁ, a pharyngealised labiodental voiced fricative, may not exist in any other language on Earth.
• Ubykh has some 17 ejective phonemes, but lacks a phonemic glottal stop.
• Ubykh may be related to Hattic, a language spoken in Anatolia before 2000 BC and written in a cuneiform script.

A world record is the best performance in a certain discipline, usually a sports event. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... Kung-ekoka or !Xũ or !Kung as it is often spelled in English, is a Northern Khoisan language of Namibia, Angola, and Botswana. ... In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... Jump to: navigation, search Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken in Abkhazia and Turkey. ... The Abaza language (Абаза Бызшва/Abaza Byzšwa) is a language of the Caucasus mountains in the Russian autonomous republic of Turkey, where the Roman alphabet is used. ... Jump to: navigation, search A river in the Amazon rainforest The Amazon Rainforest is a term widely used to describe the moist broadleaf forests of the Amazon Basin, encompassing 7 million km2 (1. ... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... Hattic was a non-Indo-European language spoken in Asia Minor between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC, before the appearance of the Hittites. ... Jump to: navigation, search Asia Minor lies east of the Bosporus, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. ... (Redirected from 2000 BC) (21st century BC - 20th century BC - 19th century BC - other centuries) (3rd millennium BC - 2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC) Events 2064 - 1986 BC -- Twin Dynasty wars in Egypt 2000 BC -- Farmers and herders travel south from Ethiopia and settle in Kenya. ... Cuneiform (from the Latin word for wedge-shaped) can refer to: Mesopotamian clay tablet 492 BCE, Field Museum of Natural History,Chicago, Illinois. ...

Phonetics

Unfortunately, the phonetics of Ubykh are so complex that it still does not have a satisfactory ASCII transcription system. Ubykh had no native writing system, so all transcriptions here are in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Jump to: navigation, search There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ...

Vowels

(Vogt 1963, Dumézil 1965)

Ubykh has very few basic phonemic vowels. Vogt's 1963 analysis retains [o:] as a separate vowel, but most other linguists do not accept this analysis, preferring to maintain a simpler vertical distinction: /ə/ and /a/. Other vowels, notably [u], appear in some loanwords. The question of whether an additional vowel [aa] should be retained is of some debate, since it differs from [a] not in length but in quality. However, phonologically and diachronically, it is often derived from two instances of [a]. Vogt is a word of Germanic languages(except for English), originated from latin language vocatius, refers to: Alfred Elton (A. E.) van Vogt Jørgen Herman Vogt Karl Vogt Paul Vogt Roland Vogt Tom Vogt Andrea Vogt Funker Vogt Vogts Berti Vogts Howard C. Vogts This is a disambiguation page... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ...

Even with so few vowels, there are many vowel allophones, affected by the secondary articulation of the consonants that surround them. Ten basic phonetic vowels appear, derived from the two phonemic vowels adjacent to labialised or palatalised consonants. These ten phonetic vowels are [a e i o u] and [a: e: i: o: u:]. The phonetic vowels are the standard five found in many of the world's languages, such as Georgian, and the same five vowels with increased phonetic length. In general, the following rules apply: Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ... Labialisation is secondary articulatory feature of sounds in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

[Cʷa] > [Co] and [aw] > [o:]

[Cʲa] > [Ce] and [aj] > [e:]

[Cʷə] > [Cu] and [əw] > [u:]

[Cʲə] > [Ci] and [əj] > [i:]

Other, more complex vowels have been noted in Ubykh: [ajəwʃqʼa] you did it can become [ayʃqʼa], for instance. On occasion, nasal sonorants (particularly n) may even decay into vowel nasality. For instance, [najnɕʷ] young man has been noted as [nɛ̃jɕʷ], not [najnɕʷ] as the phonemic notation would indicate. A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... A nasal vowel is a vowel that produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through the mouth and the nose. ...

a appears initially very frequently, particularly in the function of the definite article. ə is extremely restricted initially, appearing only in ditransitive verb forms where all three arguments are third person, e.g. əntʷən he gave it to him (normally jəntʷən). Even then, ə itself may be dropped to provide an even shorter form ntʷən. Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzards 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. ... In grammar, a ditransitive verb is a verb which takes a subject and two objects. ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is used for the grammatical categories a language uses to describe the relationship between the speaker and the persons or things she is talking about. ...

Both vowels appear without restriction finally, although when ə is unstressed finally, it tends to be dropped: tʷə father becomes the definite form atʷ the father.

Consonants

(Dumézil 1975:13, Hewitt 2005:97)

Eighty (possibly eighty-three) basic consonants are noted at nine basic points of articulation. Labialisation is present on most classes, with the exception of the glottal, bilabial, labiodental and retroflex consonants; palatalisation may be noted on uvulars and velars. Pharyngealisation of consonants, rare among the world's languages, is a distinctive feature. The system is very symmetrical in the main - for instance, the sets of affricates are all complete - but some interesting asymmetries may be noted, such as the presence of a pharyngealised labiodental fricative vˁ in the absence of a non-pharyngealised version. An IPA rendition of the Ubykh consonant system is available in the Ubykh phonology article. Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-07-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... Labialisation is secondary articulatory feature of sounds in a language, most usually used to refer to consonants. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... Pharyngealisation is a secondary feature of phonemes in a language. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

All but three of the 83 consonants are found in native vocabulary. The plain velars [k g kʼ] are found only in loans: gaarga crow (from Turkish), kawar slat, batten (from Abdzakh Adyghe), makʼəf estate, legacy. As well, the pharyngealised labial consonants [pˁ pˁʼ] are almost exclusively noted in words where they are associated with another pharyngealised consonant (for instance, qˁʼaapˁʼa handful), but are occasionally found outside this context (the verb root tʼapˁʼ is an example, meaning to explode, to burst). Finally, h is mainly found in interjections and loans, with hənda now the only real native word to contain the phoneme.

Some consonants are extremely rare: ɣ is noted in the words adəɣa Circassia and ɣa testis, and vˁ is noted in just five words: vˁa (four homophones meaning oak, to spy on, moustache and acorn), vˁatɕʼək^jʼ spark, vˁaʂa firebrand, avˁa thick (of fabric) and səpʼavˁa coarse flour. The frequency of consonants in Ubykh is very variable; the two phonemes n and qʼ account for over 20% of the consonant phonemes encountered.

Far fewer allophones of consonants are noted, mainly because a small acoustic difference can be phonemic when so many consonants are involved. However, the alveolopalatal labialised fricatives were sometimes realised as alveolar labialised fricatives, and the uvular ejective stop qʼ in the past tense suffix -qʼa was often pronounced as glottal stop, due to the influence of the Kabardian and Adyghe languages. Acoustics is a branch of physics and is the study of sound, mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids. ... The Kabardian language is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken in Russia, Jordan and Turkey. ... Adyghe (Адыгэ) is one of the two official languages of the Federal Republic of Adygeya in the Russian Federation. ...

The consonant pˁ has not been attested word-initially, and pˁʼ is found initially only in the personal name pˁʼapˁʼəʒʷ, but every other consonant can begin a word. Restrictions on word-final consonants have not yet been investigated; however, Ubykh has a slight preference for open syllables (CV) over closed ones (VC or CVC). The pharyngealised consonants mˁ, wˁ, pˁ and pˁʼ have not been noted word-finally.

Grammar

(Dumézil 1975, Hewitt 2005)

Ubykh is agglutinative and polysynthetic: ʃəkʲʼaajəfanamət we shall not be able to go back, awqʼaqʼajtʼba if you had said it. Ubykh is often extremely concise in its word forms. Polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i. ...

The boundaries between nouns and verbs in Ubykh is somewhat blurred. Any noun can be used as the root of a stative verb (məzə child, səməzəjtʼ I was a child), and many verb roots can become nouns simply by the use of noun affixes (qʼa to say, səqʼa my speech, what I say).

Nouns

The noun system in Ubykh is quite simple. Ubykh has three 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; this indicates the subject of an intransitive sentence and the direct object of a transitive sentence (tət a man)
• oblique-ergative case, marked in -n; this indicates either the subject of a transitive sentence, targets of preverbs, or indirect objects which do not take any other suffixes (məzən (to) a child)
• locative case, marked in -ʁa.

The instrumental (-awn(ə)) was treated as a case in Dumézil (1975), but this is probably a postposition rather than a case. Another pair of postpositions, -laaq and -ʁaafa, have been noted as synthetic datives (aχʲəlaaq astʷadaw I will send it to the prince), but their status as cases is also best discounted. Jump to: navigation, search In ergative-absolutive languages, the absolutive is the grammatical case used to mark both the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb. ... The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ... See subject (grammar) for the linguistic definition of subject. ... The accusative case of a noun is, generally, the case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... In ergative-absolutive languages, the ergative case identifies the subject of a transitive verb. ... In grammar, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and an object. ... While not a widely accepted linguistic term, the term preverb is used in both Northwest Caucasian and Caddoan linguistics to describe certain elements prefixed to verbs. ... The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. ... Locative is a case which indicates a location. ... An instrumental is, in contrast to a song, a musical composition or piece without lyrics or any other sort of vocal music; all of the music is produced by musical instruments. ... A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ... The dative case is a grammatical case for nouns and/or pronouns. ...

Nouns do not distinguish grammatical gender. The definite article is a-: atət the man. There is no indefinite article, but za-(root)-gʷara (literally one-(root)-certain) translates French un and Turkish bir: zanaynʃʷgʷara a certain young man. Jump to: navigation, search In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns requiring different agreement forms on determiners, adjectives, verbs or other words. ... Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzards 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. ... An article is a word that is put next to a noun to indicate the type of reference being made to the noun. ...

Number is only marked on the noun in the ergative case, with -na. The number marking of the absolutive argument is either by suppletive verb roots (e.g. akʷən blas he is in the car vs akʷən blaʒʷa they are in the car) or by verb suffixes: akʲʼan he goes, akʲʼaan they go. Interestingly, the second person plural prefix ɕʷ- triggers this plural suffix regardless of whether that prefix represents the ergative, the absolutive or the oblique argument: A number is an abstract entity used originally to describe quantity. ... In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is used for the grammatical categories a language uses to describe the relationship between the speaker and the persons or things she is talking about. ... Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ...

• ɕʷastʷaan I give you all to him (abs.)
• səɕʷəntʷaan he gives me to you all (obl.)
• asəɕʷtʷaan you all give it/them to me (erg.)

Note that in this last sentence, the plurality of it (a-) is obscured; the meaning can be either I give it to you all or I gave them to you all.

Adjectives, in most cases, are simply suffixed to the noun: tʃəbʒəja pepper with pɬə red becomes tʃəbʒəjapɬə red pepper. Adjectives do not decline. Jump to: navigation, search An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually making its meaning more specific. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ...

Postpositions are rare; most locative semantic functions, as well as some non-local ones, are provided with preverbal elements: awəsχʲatxəɬqʼa you wrote it for me. However, there are a few postpositions: səʁʷa səgʲaatɕʼ like me; aχʲəlaaq near the prince. A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... While not a widely accepted linguistic term, the term preverb is used in both Northwest Caucasian and Caddoan linguistics to describe certain elements prefixed to verbs. ...

Verbs

(Dumézil 1975 passim)

A past-present-future distinction of verb tense exists (the suffixes -qʼa and -awt represent past and future) and an imperfective aspect suffix is also found (-jtʼ, which can combine with tense suffixes). Dynamic and stative verbs are contrasted, as in Arabic, and verbs have several nominal forms. Morphological causatives are not uncommon. The conjunctions and and but are given with verb suffixes: Jump to: navigation, search The past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past. ... Jump to: navigation, search The present tense is the tense (form of a verb) that is often used to express: Action at the present time A state of being A habitual action An occurrence in the near future An action that occurred in the past and continues up to the... Jump to: navigation, search In linguistics, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by a verb as not having happened yet, but expected to in the future. ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... The imperfective aspect, sometimes known as the continuous or progressive aspect, is a grammatical aspect. ... Jump to: navigation, search In linguistics, grammatical aspect is a property of a verb that defines the nature of temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ... Jump to: navigation, search Arabic (Arabic: العربية; transliterated: al-carabiyyah, less formally, عربي transliterated: carabÄ«) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... Jump to: navigation, search In linguistics, a gerund is a kind of verbal noun. ...

• -gʲə and;
• -gʲəla but, however, although.

Pronominal benefactives are also part of the verbal complex, marked with the preverb χʲa-, but a benefactive cannot normally appear on a verb that has three agreement prefixes already. The benefactive is a noun case or an adposition which indicates movement towards or for someone. ...

Gender only appears as part of the second person paradigm, and then only at the speaker's discretion. The feminine second person index is χa-, which behaves like other pronominal prefixes: awəsχʲantʷən he gives it to you (normal; gender-neutral) for me, but compare aχasχʲantʷən he gives it to you (feminine) for me. Jump to: navigation, search In a variety of different contexts, gender refers to the masculinity or femininity of words, persons, organisms, or characteristics. ... Grammatical person, in linguistics, is used for the grammatical categories a language uses to describe the relationship between the speaker and the persons or things she is talking about. ...

Adverbials

A few meanings covered in English by adverbs or auxiliary verbs are given in Ubykh by verb suffixes: The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... An adverb is a part of speech that usually serves to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, and sentences. ... In linguistics, an auxiliary or helping verb is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic information about the main or full verb which follows it. ...

• asfəpχa I need to eat it
• asfəfan I can eat it
• asfəgʲan I eat it all the time
• asfəlan I am eating it all up
• asfətɕʷan I eat it too much
• asfaajən I eat it again

Questions

Questions may be marked grammatically, using verb suffixes or prefixes: A question is any of several kinds of linguistic expressions normally used by a questioner to request the presentation of information back to the questioner, in the form of an answer, by the audience. ...

• Yes-no questions with -ɕ: wana awbjaqʼaɕ? did you see that?
• Complex questions with -j: saakʲʼa wəpʼtsʼaj? what is your name?

Other types of questions, involving the pronouns where and what, may also be marked only in the verbal complex: maawkʲʼanəj where are you going?, saawqʼaqʼajtʼəj what had you said?

Preverbs and determinants

Many local, prepositional, and other functions are provided by preverbal elements, and it is in this that Ubykh is hideously complex. Two main types of preverbal elements exist in Ubykh: determinants and preverbs. The number of preverbs is limited, and mainly show location and direction. The number of determinants is also limited, but the class is more open; some determinant prefixes include tʃa- with regard to a horse and ɬa- with regard to the foot or base of an object. While not a widely accepted linguistic term, the term preverb is used in both Northwest Caucasian and Caddoan linguistics to describe certain elements prefixed to verbs. ... The term direction can be applied to various topics. ... An open word class, in linguistics, is a word class that accepts the addition of new items, through such processes as compounding, derivation, coining, borrowing, etc. ...

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: j-, which occupies a separate slot in the verbal complex. However, preverbs can have meanings that would take up entire phrases in English. The preverb jtɕʷʼaa- signifies on the earth or in the earth, for instance: ʁadja ajtɕʷʼaanaaɬqʼa they buried his body (lit. they put his body in the earth). Even more narrowly, the preverb faa- signifies that an action is done out of, into or with regard to a fire: amdʒan zatʃətʃaqʲa faastχʷən I take a brand out of the fire.

Lexicon

Native vocabulary

Ubykh syllables have a strong tendency to be CV, although VC and CVC also exist. Consonant clusters are not so large as in Abzhui Abkhaz or in Georgian, rarely being larger than two terms. Three-term clusters exist in two words - ndʁa sun and psta to swell up, but the latter is a loan from Adyghe, and the former more often pronounced nədʁa when it appears alone. Compounding plays a large part in Ubykh and, indeed, in all Northwest Caucasian semantics. There is no verb to love, for instance; one says I love you as tʂʼanə wəzbjan I see you well. Jump to: navigation, search This article discusses the unit of speech. ... In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ... Jump to: navigation, search Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken in Abkhazia and Turkey. ... Jump to: navigation, search A compound is an area of land that is surrounded by fences, walls, or barbed wire and is used for a particular purpose, especially an area containing buildings and where the entry and exit of people is controlled. ... In the main, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ...

Reduplication occurs in some roots, often those with onomatopoeic values (χˁaχˁa to curry(comb) from χˁa to scrape; kʼərkʼər, to cluck like a chicken (a loan from Adyghe); warqwarq, to croak like a frog). Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ... The sound of hitting a ball can be described as Whack. In rhetoric, linguistics and poetry, onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that employs a word, or occasionally, a grouping of words, that imitates, echoes, or suggests the object it is describing, such as bang, click, fizz, hush or buzz...

Roots and affixes can be as small as one phoneme. The word wantʷaan they give you to him, for instance, contains six phonemes, and each is a separate morpheme:

• w - 2nd singular absolutive
• a - 3rd singular dative
• n - 3rd ergative
• tʷ - to give
• aa - ergative plural
• n - present tense

However, some words may be as long as seven syllables (although these are usually compounds): ʂəqʷʼawəɕaɬaadətʃa staircase. Jump to: navigation, search This article discusses the unit of speech. ...

Slang and idioms

As with all other languages, Ubykh is replete with idioms. The word ntʷa 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. I love you translates literally as I see you well; you please me is literally you cut my heart. The term wərəs Russian, a Turkish loan, has come to be a slang term meaning infidel, non-Muslim or enemy (see section History). Look up Idiom on Wiktionary, the free dictionary An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not compositional—that is, whose meaning does not follow from the meaning of the individual words of which it is composed. ...

Foreign loans

The majority of loanwords in Ubykh are derived from either Adyghe or Turkish. Towards the end of Ubykh's life, a large influx of Adyghe words was noted; Vogt (1963) notes a few hundred examples. The phonemes [g k kʼ] were borrowed from Turkish and Adyghe. ɬʼ also appears to be an Adyghe loan, although at a greater time depth. It is possible, too, that ɣ is a loan from Adyghe, since most of the few words with this phoneme are obvious Adyghe loans: paaɣa proud, ɣa testis.

Many loanwords have Ubykh equivalents, but were dwindling in usage under the influence of Turkish, Circassian and Russian equivalents:

• bərwə to make a hole in, to perforate (Turkish) = pɕaatχʷ
• tʃaaj tea (Turkish) = bzəpʂə
• wərəs enemy (Turkish) = bˁaqˁʼa
• kawar slat, batten (Abdzakh) = sətχa

Some words, usually much older ones, are borrowed from less influential stock: χˁʷa pig is believed to be borrowed from a proto-Semitic *huka, and agʲarə slave from an Iranian root. 12th century Hebrew Bible script The Semitic languages are a family of languages spoken by more than 250 million people across much of the Middle East, where they originated, and North and East Africa. ...

Evolution

In the scheme of Northwest Caucasian evolution, despite its parallels with 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, gʲə, corresponds to the reflex gʷə in Abkhaz, Abaza, Kabardian and Adyghe. Ubykh also possesses groups of pharyngealised consonants otherwise found in the Northwest Caucasian family only in some dialects of Abkhaz and Abaza. 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 Abkhaz than to any other member, but shares many features with Adyghe due to geographic and cultural influence; many Ubykh speakers were bilingual in Ubykh and Adyghe.

Dialects

(Dumézil 1965:266-269)

While not many dialects of Ubykh exist, one divergent dialect of Ubykh has been noted. Grammatically, it is similar to standard Ubykh, but has a very different sound system, which has collapsed into just 62-odd phonemes: A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ...

• [dʷ tʷ tʷʼ] have collapsed into [b p pʼ].
• [ɕʷ ʑʷ] are indistinguishable from [ʃʷ ʒʷ].
• ɣ seems to have disappeared.
• Pharyngealisation is no longer distinctive, having been replaced in many cases by geminate consonants.
• Palatalisation of the uvular consonants is no longer phonemic.

In phonetics, gemination is when a spoken consonant is doubled, so that it is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a single consonant. ...

History

Ubykh was spoken in the eastern coast of the Black Sea around Sochi until 1864, when the Ubykhs were driven out of the region by the Russians. They eventually came to settle in Turkey, founding the villages of Hacı Osman, Kırkpınar, Masukiye and Hacı Yakup. Turkish and Circassian eventually became the preferred languages for everyday communication, and many words from these languages entered Ubykh in that period. Map of the Black Sea. ... Sochi Coat of Arms, adopted on 15 June 1967 Sochi (Russian: Со́чи) is the most popular Russian resort, situated in the Krasnodar Krai, near the Russian border with Abkhazia, Georgia. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1864 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Haci Osman köyü is a small village in the vilayet Balikesir, in the region of Manyas in Turkey. ... The Kabardian language is a Russia, Jordan and Turkey. ...

The Ubykh language died out on October 7, 1992, when its last fluent speaker (Tevfik Esenç) passed away in his sleep. Fortunately, before that time thousands of pages of material and many audio recordings had been collected and collated by a number of linguists, including Georges Dumézil, Hans Vogt and George Hewitt, with the help of some of its last speakers, particularly Tevfik Esenç and Huseyin Kozan. Ubykh was never written except for the few phrases Evliya Celebi transcribed in the Seyahatname, but a substantial portion of the oral literature, along with some cycles of the Nart saga, was transcribed. An extinct language (also called a dead language) is a language which no longer has any native speakers. ... Jump to: navigation, search October 7 is the 280th day of the year (281st in leap years). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1992 was a leap year starting on Wednesday. ... Tevfik Esenç at age 82 Tevfik Esenç (1904 – October 7, 1992) was a circassian exile in Turkey and the last known speaker of the Ubykh language. ... Georges Dumézil (March 4, 1898 - October 11, 1986) was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Indo-European religion and society. ... A written language is a language that uses a writing system to convey meaning, or more generally the written form of any language that has such written components. ... Evliya Celebi (also known as Dervis Mehmed Zilli) was one of the most famous Ottoman travelers, who traveled throughout the territories of the Ottoman Empire and the neighbouring lands over a period of 40 years. ... Seyahatname is the Turkish name of Evliya Celebis seventeenth century travelogue through Istanbul (his native city), Anatolia, Persia, Ottoman Europe, North Africa, Austria and Cairo. ... The Nart sagas are a series of tales originating from the Caucasus Mountains. ...

Julius von Mészáros, a Hungarian linguist, visited Turkey in 1930 and took down some notes on Ubykh. His work Die Päkhy-Sprache 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. Jump to: navigation, search 1930 is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... Die Päkhy-Sprache is the title of a treatise on the Ubykh language, written by Gyula Mészáros and published in 1934 by the University of Chicago Press. ...

The Frenchman Georges Dumézil also visited Turkey in 1930 to record some Ubykh, and would eventually become the most celebrated Ubykh linguist of all time. He published a collection of Ubykh folktales in the late 1950s, and the language soon attracted the attention of linguists for its small number (two) 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. One of the many landscapes of France: Cantal département, in the mountainous Massif Central. ... Georges Dumézil (March 4, 1898 - October 11, 1986) was a French comparative philologist best known for his analysis of sovereignty and power in Indo-European religion and society. ... Jump to: navigation, search // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the... ...

Later in the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Dumézil published a series of papers on Ubykh etymology 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. Jump to: navigation, search The 1960s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... Jump to: navigation, search The 1970s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1970 and 1979. ... Jump to: navigation, search Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1975 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ...

Since the 1980s, Ubykh linguistics has slowed drastically. No other major treatises have been published; however, the Dutch linguist Rieks Smeets is currently trying to compile a new Ubykh dictionary based on Vogt's 1963 book, and a similar project is also underway in Australia. The Ubykh themselves have shown interest in relearning their difficult language. Jump to: navigation, search 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... Jump to: navigation, search Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1963 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

People who have published literature on Ubykh include

• Brian George Hewitt
• Catherine Paris
• Christine Leroy
• Georg Bossong
• Georges Dumézil
• Hans Vogt
• John Colarusso
• Julius von Mészáros
• Rieks Smeets
• Tevfik Esenç
• Wim Lucassen

Sample of Ubykh

(Michaud 2005)

faaχʲa tʼqʷʼakʷabʒa kʲʼaʁən azaχʲaʃənan amʁʲan gʲəkʲaqʼan.

Once, two men set out together on the road.

afawtənə mʁʲawəf aχʷadawtən akʲanan. azan fatɕʼaala ɕʷəbˁaala χʷadaqʼa,

They bought some provisions for the journey. The one bought cheese and bread;

ajdəχəngʲə ɕʷəbˁaala psaala χʷadan ajnəwqʼa.

the other bought bread and fish.

amʁʲan gʲəkʲanagʲə,

While they were on the road,

wa fatɕʼ dəχʷadaqʼajtʼə ʁakʲʼaʁʁaafa "ɕʷəʁʷaɬa psa jada ɕʷfaan;"

the one who had bought the cheese asked the other, "You people eat a lot of fish;"

"saaba wanangʲaafə psa ɕʷfaanəj?" qʼan ʁaadzʁaqʼa.

"why do you eat fish as much as that?"

"psa wəfəba wətɕʼa jada ʃawt,"

"If you eat fish, you get smarter,"

"wanaʁaafa ʃəʁʷaɬa psa jada ʃfən," qʼaqʼa.

"so we eat a lot of fish," he answered.

See also

• Caucasian languages

The term Caucasian languages is loosely used to refer to a large and extremely varied array of languages spoken by more than 7 million people in the Caucasus region of Eastern Europe, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. ...

References

• Colarusso, J. 1994 Proto-Northwest Caucasian, or, How to Crack a Very Hard Nut. Journal of Indo-European Studies 22: 1-17.
• Dumézil, G. 1965 Documents anatoliens sur les langues et les traditions du Caucase, III: Nouvelles études oubykhs. Librairie A. Maisonneuve: Paris.
• Dumézil, G. 1975 Le verbe oubykh: études descriptives et comparatives. Imprimerie Nationale: Paris.
• Hewitt, B. G. 2005 North-West Caucasian. Lingua 115: 91-145.
• Mészáros, J. von. 1930 Die Päkhy-Sprache. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.
• Michaud, A. 2005 Eating fish makes you clever. Available via [1].
• Vogt, H. 1963 Dictionnaire de la langue oubykh. Universitetsforlaget: Oslo.