Archi language

Classification

The classification of the Archi language has not been definitively established. Peter von Uslar felt it should be considered a variant of Avar, but Roderich von Erckert saw it as closer to Lak. The language has also been considered as a separate entity that could be placed somewhere between Avar and Lak. The Italian linguist Alfredo Trombetti placed Archi within an Avar–Ando–Dido group, but today the most widely recognized opinion follows that of the Soviet scholar Bokarev, who regards Archi as one of the Lezgian–Samur group of the Dagestan languages. Schulze places it in the Lezgian branch with all other Lezgian languages belonging to the Samur group.

Phonology

Archi has, like its Northeast Caucasian relatives, a very complicated phonological system, with Archi being an extreme example. It has 26 vowel phonemes and, depending on analysis, between 74 and 82 consonant phonemes.

Vowels

Archi has a symmetric six-vowel system (/i e ə a o u/). All except /ə/ can occur in five varieties: short, pharyngealized, high tone, long (with high tone), and pharyngealized with high tone (e.g. /a/, /aˤ/, /á/, /áː/, and /áˤ/). Of all these, only /ə/ and /íˤ/ do not occur word-initially. Examples of non-initial /íˤ/ are /díˤt͡ʃa/ ('to be fat') and /iˤntíˤmmaj/ ('brain').

Consonants

Of the languages without click consonants, Archi has one of the largest consonant inventories, with the recently extinct Ubykh of the Northwest Caucasian languages having a few more. The table below shows all consonants that can be found in the Archi Language Tutorial and the Archi Dictionary.

Of the consonants listed above, the ones in orange have no word-initial dictionary entries (even though /pː/, /tː/, and /kː/ are relatively common), the one in green does not appear in the Tutorial but does have a word-internal dictionary entry (in /mot͡sːór/, 'alpine pasture used in summer'), and the ones in blue appear in the Tutorial but have no dictionary entries.

Some of these sounds are very rare. For example, /ʁˤʷ/ has only one dictionary entry word-internally (in /íʁˤʷdut/, 'heavy') and two entries word-initially. Likewise, /ʟ̝/ has only two dictionary entries: /náʟ̝dut/ ('blue; unripe') and /k͡ʟ̝̊ʼéʟ̝dut/ ('crooked, curved').

The fortis consonants are not simply two instances of the same consonant, though they do appear largely complementary, with the double instances /mm/, /ll/, and /nn/ being the most common and /zz/ less so. That said, /pp/ can still be found in /ʟ̝̊íppu/ ('three'). This is also noted by Kodzasov (1977), who describes the fortis consonants as follows:

"Strong phonemes are characterized by the intensiveness (tension) of the articulation. The intensity of the pronunciation leads to a natural lengthening of the duration of the sound, and that is why strong [consonants] differ from weak ones by greater length. [However,] the adjoining of two single weak sounds does not produce a strong one […] Thus, the gemination of a sound does not by itself create its tension."

The voiceless velar lateral fricative /ʟ̝̊/, the voiced velar lateral fricative /ʟ̝/, and the corresponding voiceless and ejective affricates /k͡ʟ̝̊/, /k͡ʟ̝̊ʼ/ are extremely unusual speech sounds among the languages of the world, because velar fricatives are usually central rather than lateral. The velar laterals are further forward than velars in most languages and could better be called prevelar, like the Tutorial does.

Orthography

Until recently Archi did not have a written form, except in studies by specialists who used the Latin script. In 2006, the Surrey Morphology Group developed a Cyrillic alphabet for Archi based on the Avar alphabet, which is used in the Archi–Russian–English Dictionary alongside an IPA transcription.

Nouns

Archi nouns inflect for number (singular or plural) and for one of 10 regular cases and 5 locative cases that can all take one of 6 directional suffixes. There are four noun classes, which are only evident from verbal agreement.

Case

Depending on the specifics of the analysis, neither the ergative nor absolutive cases are necessarily marked by a specific suffix. Rather, they are marked by the use of the basic (for the absolutive) and oblique (for the ergative) stems in the absence of other markers. There is also a locative-case series, where 6 directional-case suffixes are combined with 5 spatial cases to produce a total of 30 case-localization combinations. However, these do not constitute 30 distinct case forms, because they are easily derivable from a pair of morphemes.

Noun classes

The four noun classes of Archi are only evident from verbal inflection. The table below summarizes these noun classes and their associated verbal morphology.

Example phrases

The following phrases were phonetically transcribed from Archi:

Diminutive

The inclusions of "little" and "young" in the phrases above refer to a diminutive form of the verb, which in Archi language commonly refers either to a smaller or younger version of the subject. While nouns pertaining to smaller objects such as items stay the same regardless of whether it is a diminutive or not (e.g. x́it for both "ladle" and "spoon", k̂ut̄ali for both "bag" and "little bag" etc.), nouns pertaining to younger animals change into entirely different words (e.g. dogi "donkey" but ḳêrt "young donkey", nôiš "horse" but uri "young horse" etc.). The verb changes to fit the diminutive regardless of whether the noun changes or not. In the past tense this is done by removing the -b- in front of the -x̄u/-č̣u/-ku inflection. In the present tense this is done by removing the b- as the first letter of the verb.