| Ubykh | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| tʷaχəbza | ||||
| Spoken in | Turkey | |||
| Region | Manyas, Balıkesir | |||
| Extinct | October 1992 when Tevfik Esenç died | |||
| Language family |
Northwest Caucasian
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | uby | |||
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Ubykh or Ubyx is an extinct language of the Northwestern Caucasian group, spoken by the Ubykh people (who originally lived along the eastern coast of the Black Sea before migrating en masse to Turkey in the 1860s). The language's last native speaker, Tevfik Esenç, died in 1992.
The Ubykh language is ergative and agglutinative, with polypersonal verbal agreement and a very large number of distinct consonants, but only two distinct vowels. With around eighty consonants it may have been the language with the most consonants in the world.[1]
The name Ubykh 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 Germanised variant Päkhy.
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Ubykh is distinguished by the following features, some of which are shared with other Northwest Caucasian languages:
Ubykh has 84 phonemic consonants, a record high amongst languages without click consonants, but only 2 phonemic vowels. Four of these consonants are found only in loanwords and onomatopoeia. There are nine basic places of articulation for the consonants and extensive use of secondary articulation, such that Ubykh has 20 different uvular phonemes. Ubykh distinguishes three types of postalveolar consonants, apical, laminal, and laminal closed. Regarding the vowels, even though there are only two phonemic vowels, there is a great deal of allophony.
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.
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).[2][3]
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):
The instrumental (-/awn(ə)/ by means of, by using) was also treated as a case in Dumézil (1975). Another pair of postpositions, -/laaq/ to(wards) and -/ʁaafa/ for, have been noted as synthetic datives (/aχʲəlaaq astʷadaw/ I will send it to the prince), but their status as cases is also best discounted.
Nouns do not distinguish grammatical gender. The definite article is /a/- the: /atət/ the man. There is no indefinite article directly equivalent to the English a or an, but /za/-(root)-/ɡʷara/ (literally one-(root)-certain) translates French un and Turkish bir: /zanaynʃʷɡʷara/ a certain young man.
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:
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 give 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.
Postpositions are rare; most locative semantic functions, as well as some non-local ones, are provided with preverbal elements: /asχʲawtxqʼa/ you wrote it for me. However, there are a few postpositions: /səʁʷa səɡʲaatɕʼ/ like me; /aχʲəlaaq/ near the prince.
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 usually given with verb suffixes, but there is also a free particle for each:
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.
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: /wəsχʲantʷən/ he gives (it) to you (normal; gender-neutral) for me, but compare /χasχʲantʷən/ he gives (it) to you (feminine) for me.
A few meanings covered in English by adverbs or auxiliary verbs are given in Ubykh by verb suffixes:
Questions may be marked grammatically, using verb suffixes or prefixes:
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?
Many local, prepositional, and other functions are provided by preverbal elements providing a large series of applicatives, 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.
For simple locations, there are a number of possibilities that can be encoded with preverbs, including (but not limited to):
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.
Ubykh syllables have a strong tendency to be CV, although VC and CVC also exist. Consonant clusters are not as large as in Abzhywa 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.
Reduplication occurs in some roots, often those with onomatopoeic values (/χˤaχˤa/ to curry(comb) from /χˤa/ to scrape; /kʼərkʼər/, to cluck like a chicken (a loan from Adyghe); /warqwarq/, to croak like a frog).
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:
However, some words may be as long as seven syllables (although these are usually compounds): /ʂəqʷʼawəɕaɬaadətʃa/ staircase.
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).
The majority of loanwords in Ubykh are derived from either Adyghe or Turkish, with smaller numbers from Persian, Abkhaz and the South Caucasian languages. Towards the end of Ubykh's life, a large influx of Adyghe words was noted; Vogt (1963) notes a few hundred examples. The phonemes /ɡ/ /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:
Some words, usually much older ones, are borrowed from less influential stock: Colarusso (1994) sees /χˤʷa/ pig as a borrowing from a proto-Semitic *huka, and /aɡʲarə/ slave from an Iranian root; however, Chirikba (1986) regards the latter as being of Abkhaz origin (< Abkhaz agər-wa lower cast of peasants; slave (literally Megrelian)).
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, /ɡʲə/, corresponds to the reflex /ɡʷə/ 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.
While not many dialects of Ubykh existed, one divergent dialect of Ubykh has been noted (in Dumézil 1965:266-269). Grammatically, it is similar to standard Ubykh (i.e. Tevfik Esenç's dialect), but has a very different sound system, which had collapsed into just 62-odd phonemes:
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.
The Ubykh language died out on October 7, 1992, when its last fluent speaker (Tevfik Esenç) died in his sleep. Before his passing, thousands of pages of material and many audio recordings had been collected and collated by a number of linguists, including Georges Charachidzé, 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 by its speech community, but a few phrases were transcribed by Evliya Celebi in his Seyahatname, and a substantial portion of the oral literature, along with some cycles of the Nart saga, was transcribed. Tevfik Esenç also eventually learned to write Ubykh in the transcription that Dumézil devised.
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.
The Frenchman Georges Dumézil also visited Turkey in 1930 to record some Ubykh, and would eventually become the most celebrated Ubykh linguist. 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.
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.
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 language.
People who have published literature on Ubykh include
Ubykh has been cited in the Guinness Book of Records (1996 ed.) as the language with the most consonant phonemes, although it may have fewer than some of the Khoisan languages. It has 20 uvular and 29 pure fricative phonemes, more than any other known language. Ubykh may be related to Hattic, a language spoken in Anatolia before 2000 BC and written in a cuneiform script.
All examples from Dumézil 1968.[4]
| aajdə-χə-n-ɡʲə | ɕʷəbˤa-aala | psa-aala | χʷada-n | a-j-nə-w-qʼa |
| other-of-ERG-and | bread-and | fish-and | buy-ADV | it-hither-he-bring-past |
| a-mʁʲa-n | ɡʲə-kʲa-na-ɡʲə |
| the-road-OBL | on-enter(PL)-PL-GER |
| saaba | wana-n-ɡʲaafə | psa | ɕʷ-f-aa-nə-j | qʼa-n | ʁa-aa-dzʁa-qʼa |
| why | that-OBL-as.much.as | fish | you.all-eat-PL-PRES-QU | say-ADV | him-to-ask-past |
| psa | wə-fə-ba | wə-tɕʼa | jada | ʃ-awt |
| fish | you-eat-if | your-knowledge | much | become-FUT |
| wana-ʁaafa | ʃəʁʷaɬa | psa | jada | ʃ-fə-n | qʼa-qʼa |
| that-for | we | fish | much | we-eat-PRES | say-PAST |
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