Hunzib is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by the Hunzib people in the Tsunta and Kizilyurt districts of Dagestan and in two villages across the Russia border in Georgia.
Classification
Hunzib belongs to the
Tsezic languages of the Northeast Caucasian languages. It is most closely related to
Bezhta language and Khwarshi, according to the latest research.
[ The Languages of the Caucasus, by Wolfgang Schulze (2009)] Other Tsezic languages include
Tsez language and
Hinukh language. Khwarshi was previously grouped together with Tsez and Hinukh instead of with Hunzib.
Phonology
Vowels
Vowels in Hunzib may be short, long, or nasalized.
Consonants
Hunzib has 35 consonants. Three consonants, , , and , are only found in
.
Grammar
Gender
Like a number of other Northeast Caucasian languages, Hunzib has a grammatical gender system with five classes. The first classes, I and II mark male and female rationals, respectively, while the remaining classes mark non-humans. Gender marking is covert on nouns, but appears in agreement on verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and adverbial constructions.
[
]
-
When preceding a nasalized vowel, class markers b- and r- surface as m- and n- respectively.
Nouns
Nouns in Hunzib come in five : male, female, and three classes for inanimate objects. There are a number of declension in Hunzib, including the absolutive case, ergative case, genitive case, instrumental. A number of other case-like markers indicate direction and include dative, adessive, superessive, contactive, comitative and allative declensions. The following are taken from Helma van den Berg's A Grammar of Hunzib.[Berg, Helma van den, A Grammar of Hunzib (with Texts and Lexicon) (Lincom Europa, München 1995) .]
Case
Hunzib has four basic grammatical cases, the Absolutive case, Ergative case, Genitive case, and instrumental. The absolutive case is formed from the base stem, and the other cases are formed from the oblique stem.
|
|
| -∅ |
|
1 / -lo2, -y>
| -s |
| -d1 / -do2 |
-
After vowels
-
After consonants
Hunzib also has a series of local cases, where localizations are combined with directional suffixes. The dative case and Adessive case cases have syntactic functions as well, but are morphologically local.
|
| -V1-ƛʼ(i) |
| *** |
| -ƛʼo-ƛʼ |
| *** |
| -λ-ƛʼi |
| -ǧur-ƛʼi |
| -dər-ƛʼi |
| -do-V |
-
The vowel in these forms will be a duplicate of the vowel in the syllable to which it attaches.
Oblique stem
Cases other than the absolutive are formed by attaching the relevant case marker to an oblique stem, which is often the base stem plus some lexically determined extension.
Some nouns (around 7%) do not use any extension and the oblique and base stems are identical. These words generally end in a vowel, like "father" ABS ɑbu, GEN ɑbu-s. A small number of Hunzib nouns exhibit stem alternation, like "moon" ABS boo, GEN bɨə.
Verbs
Most verbs agree in class and number with the noun in the phrase that is in the absolutive case. As Hunzib has ergative alignment, that equals the subject of intransitive sentences and the direct object of transitive sentences.
Word order
Hunzib usually follows a subject–object–verb word order.
External links
