Aghul language
Encyclopedia
Aghul, also spelled Agul, is a language spoken by the Aguls
who live in southern Dagestan
, Russia
and in Azerbaijan
. It is spoken by about 28,300 people (2002 census).
branch of the Northeast Caucasian
language family.
, and Lezgian is used as the literary language.
, Rutul
, Lezgian, Tsakhur
, Budukh
, Kryts
, Udi
and Archi
.
s.
Aghul makes, like many Northeast Caucasian languages, a distinction between tense consonants with concomitant length and weak consonants. The tense consonants are characterized by the intensiveness (tension) of articulation, which naturally leads to a lengthening of the consonant, which is the reason why they are traditionally transcribed with the length diacritic. The gemination of the consonant does not by itself create its tension, though morphologically tense consonants do often derive from adjoining two single weak consonants. Some Aghul dialects have an especially large number of permitted initial tense consonants.
).
Aguls
Aguls are a people in Dagestan, Russia. According to the 2002 census, there were 28,297 Aguls in Russia . The Aghul language belongs to the Lezgian language family, a group of the Northeast Caucasian family. Ethnically, the Aguls are close to the Lezgins...
who live in southern Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and in Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
. It is spoken by about 28,300 people (2002 census).
Classification
Aghul belongs to the Eastern Samur group of the LezgicLezgic languages
The Lezgic languages are one the seven branches of the Northeast Caucasian language family. Lezgian and Tabasaran are literary languages.-Classification:* Peripheral: Archi – 1200 speakers* Samur ** Eastern Samur*** Udi – 5000 speakers...
branch of the Northeast Caucasian
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...
language family.
Geographic distribution
In 2002, Aghul was spoken by 28,300 people in Russia, mainly in Southern Dagestan, as well as 32 people in Azerbaijan.Official status
Aghul is not an official languageOfficial language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
, and Lezgian is used as the literary language.
Related languages
There are nine languages in the Lezgian language family, namely: Aghul, TabasaranTabasaran language
Tabasaran is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Lezgic branch. It is spoken by the Tabasaran people in southern part of the Russian Republic of Dagestan. There are two main dialects: North and South Tabasaran. It has a literary language based on the Southern dialect, one of six in the Dagestan...
, Rutul
Rutul language
Rutul is a language spoken by the Rutuls, an ethnic group living in Dagestan and some parts of Azerbaijan. It is spoken by 29,400 people in Dagestan and the remaining 110 in Azerbaijan...
, Lezgian, Tsakhur
Tsakhur language
Tsakhur is a language spoken by the Tsakhurs, an ethnic group, which populates northern Azerbaijan and southwestern Dagestan . It is spoken by about 13,000 people in Azerbaijan and by about 9,770 people in Dagestan...
, Budukh
Budukh language
Budukh or Budugh is a Samur language of the Northeast Caucasian language family spoken in parts of the Quba Rayon of Azerbaijan. It was reportedly spoken by approximately 1,000 Budukhs in 1990, but Authier reports at most 200 speakers....
, Kryts
Kryts language
Kryts , or Jek , is a Samur language of the Northeast Caucasian language family spoken in parts of the Quba Rayon of Azerbaijan by 6,000 people in 1975....
, Udi
Udi language
The Udi language, spoken by the Udi people, is a member of the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. It is believed an earlier form of it was the main language of Caucasian Albania, which stretched from south Dagestan to current day Azerbaijan.The language is spoken by about...
and Archi
Archi language
Archi is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by the 1,200 Archis in the village of Archib, southern Dagestan, Russia and the six surrounding smaller villages...
.
Phonology
Aghul has contrastive epiglottal consonantEpiglottal consonant
An epiglottal consonant is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis. They are occasionally called aryepiglottal consonants.-Epiglottal consonants in the IPA:...
s.
Aghul makes, like many Northeast Caucasian languages, a distinction between tense consonants with concomitant length and weak consonants. The tense consonants are characterized by the intensiveness (tension) of articulation, which naturally leads to a lengthening of the consonant, which is the reason why they are traditionally transcribed with the length diacritic. The gemination of the consonant does not by itself create its tension, though morphologically tense consonants do often derive from adjoining two single weak consonants. Some Aghul dialects have an especially large number of permitted initial tense consonants.
Consonants
| 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... |
Epi- glottal Epiglottal consonant An epiglottal consonant is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis. They are occasionally called aryepiglottal consonants.-Epiglottal consonants in the IPA:... |
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... |
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| plain | lab. Labialisation Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded.The most common... |
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| 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 | 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 | pː | t | tː | k | kː | q | qː | 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 | qʼ | ||||||||||||
| 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 | d͡ʒʷ | |||||||||||||
| 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 | t͡ʃʷ | t͡ʃːʷ | ||||||||||
| 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 | t͡ʃʼ | t͡ʃʷʼ | |||||||||||||
| 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... |
f | fː | s | sː | ʃ | ʃː | ʃʷ | ʃːʷ | x | xː | χ | χː | ʜ | ||
| 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 | ʒʷ | ʁ | ʢ | ɦ | |||||||||
| 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 | ||||||||||||||
- The glottal stopGlottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
transcribed here is named rather ambiguously a "glottalic laryngealLaryngeal consonantA laryngeal consonant is generally synonymous with a glottal consonant; that is, with , , and .Besides the glottis , the larynx includes the epiglottis and aryepiglottic folds, though epiglottal and aryepiglottal consonants are usually counted as radical rather than as laryngeal...
" by the source. - Also note that the source names the epiglottalEpiglottal consonantAn epiglottal consonant is a consonant that is articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis. They are occasionally called aryepiglottal consonants.-Epiglottal consonants in the IPA:...
series ″pharyngealPharyngeal consonantA 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 :...
″ indiscriminately in all the tables, also when it includes a plosive and thus clearly isn't a true pharyngeal.
Alphabet
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Гъ гъ | Гь гь | ГьI гьI | ГI гI | |
| Д д | Дж дж | Е е | Ё ё | Ж ж | З з | И и | Й й | |
| К к | Кк кк | Къ къ | Кь кь | КI кI | Л л | М м | Н н | |
| О о | П п | Пп пп | ПI пI | Р р | С с | Т т | Тт тт | |
| ТI тI | У у | Уь уь | Ф ф | Х х | Хъ хъ | Хь хь | ХI хI | |
| Ц ц | ЦI цI | Ч ч | Чч чч | ЧI чI | Ш ш | Щ щ | ъ | |
| I | ы | ь | Э э | Ю ю | Я я |
Case
There are four core cases: absolutive, ergative, genitive, and dative, as well as a large series of location cases. All cases other than the absolutive (which is unmarked) and ergative take the ergative suffix before the their own suffix.Adjectives
Independent and predicative adjectives take number marker and class marker; also case if used as nominal. As attribute they are invariable. Thus idžed "good", ergative, idžedi, etc. -n, -s; pl. idžedar; but Idže insandi hhuč qini "The good man killed the wolf" (subject in ergative caseErgative case
The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:...
).
Personal Pronouns
| Singular (Aghul) | Plural (Aghul) | Singular (Tokip) | Plural (Tokip) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | zun | čin (ex), xin (in) | či (ex), xi (in) | či, xi |
| 2 | wun | čun | čun | ču |