The Akhvakh language is a Northeast Caucasian language

Northeast Caucasian languages

The Northeast Caucasian languages constitute a language family spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, northern Azerbaijan, and in northeastern Georgia, as well as in diaspora populations in Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East...

 from the Avar–Andic branch. Ethnologue lists 6500 speakers, but Magomedova and Abulaeva (2007) list 20,000 speakers of the language. Akhvakh has several dialects, though sources do not agree on the number. Ethnologue lists Kaxib, Northern Akhvakh and Southern Akhvakh (which can be further subdivided into the Tlyanub and Tsegob subdialects). Creissels (2010) lists Northern Akhvakh and three dialects of Southern Akhvakh (Cegob, Tljanub, and Ratlub).

A few publications have been made in the Akhvakh language, but for the most part speakers of Akhvakh have adopted Avar

Avar language

The modern Avar language belongs to the Avar–Andic group of the Northeast Caucasian language family....

 as their literary language.

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Akhvakh

		Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	Dental		Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...				Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....		Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and...		Radical Radical consonant Radical consonants are those consonants articulated with the root of the tongue in the throat. This includes the pharyngeal, epiglottal, and epiglotto-pharyngeal places of articulation, though technically epiglottal consonants take place in the larynx....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
					central		lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
			lenis	fortis Fortis and lenis In linguistics, fortis and lenis are terms generally used to refer to groups of consonants that are produced with greater and lesser energy, respectively, such as in energy applied, articulation, etc....	lenis	fortis	lenis	fortis		lenis	fortis	lenis	fortis
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...		m	n
Plosive	voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...	b	d							ɡ
	voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...	p	t							k	kː				ʔ
	ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...	pʼ	tʼ							kʼ	kːʼ
Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...	voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...				d͡ʒ
	voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...		t͡s	t͡sː	t͡ʃ	t͡ʃː	t͡ɬ	t͡ɬː				q͡χ	q͡χː
	ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...		t͡sʼ	t͡sːʼ	t͡ʃʼ	t͡ʃːʼ	t͡ɬʼ	t͡ɬːʼ				q͡χʼ	q͡χːʼ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...	voiceless Voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...		s	sː	ʃ	ʃː	ɬ	ɬː	ç	x	xː			ħ/ʜ [1]	h
	voiced Voice (phonetics) Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...	v	z		ʒ					ɣ				ʕ/ʢ [1]
Trill Trill consonant In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular....					r
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...							l		j

1. Note that the source uses the term "pharyngeal
   Pharyngeal consonant
   A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :...
   
   " in the older sense: indiscriminately for all radical consonants, as can be seen from the inclusion "pharyngeal plosives".

Agreement classes

Akhvakh has three agreement classes. In the singular, these are human masculine, human feminine, and non-human. In the plural, there are only two—human plural and non-human plural. Akhvakh verbs agree with the absolutive argument (subject of an intransitive or object of a transitive.)

Consider the following examples, which show the general principles. In the first example, the intransitive verb 'run' shows feminine agreement because its subject, 'girl', is feminine. In the second example, the transitive verb 'cook' shows neuter agreement because its object, 'meat', is neuter. (Creissels 2010:114)

Jaše	q:'eɬ:-a	j-et-e	j-i:ni
girl	home-lative	fem-run-converb:fem	fem-go:imperfective
'The girl ran home.'

Ak:'o-de	riɬ:'i	b-iž-e	q:'-e:ni.
wife-ergative	meat	neut-eat-converb:neut	eat-imperfective
'The wife cooked the meat and ate it.'

Note that in the second example, 'wife' is in the ergative case and appears to be the subject of both the verbs 'cook' and 'eat', but neither verb shows feminine agreement.

Cases

Akhvakh has an ergative-absolutive case-marking system. As the following examples (repeated from above) show, the transitive subject has the ergative case, while an intransitive subject has absolutive case. Absolutive case is not overtly marked by a suffix, but the noun phrase with absolutive case controls agreement on the verb:

Jaše	q:'eɬ:-a	j-et-e	j-i:ni
girl	home-lative	fem-run-converb:fem	fem-go:imperfective
'The girl ran home.'

Ak:'o-de	riɬ:'i	b-iž-e	q:'-e:ni.
wife-ergative	meat	neut-eat-converb:neut	eat-imperfective
'The wife cooked the meat and ate it.'

In addition to the ergative and absolutive cases, Akhvakh has eighteen other cases, for a total of twenty cases (Creissels 2010:108-9). The additional cases are

• dative
• genitive
• comitative
• purposive
• fifteen spatial cases, arrayed in five series of three.

Further reading

• Wixman, Ronald. The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook. (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc, 1984) p. 8
• Olson, James S., An Ethnohistorical Dictionary of the Russian and Soviet Empires. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994) p. 25-26
• Магомедбекова З. М. Ахвахский язык: Грамматический анализ, тексты, словарь. Тб., 1967
• Богуславская О. Ю. Ахвахский язык // Языки Российской федерации и соседних государств. Т. 1. М., 1997