| Khwarshi | |
| Also Known As: | Khwarshi–Inkhoqwari |
| Nativename: | анкьизас мыц |
| States: | North Caucasus |
| Region: | Southwestern Dagestan[1] |
| Date: | 2020 census |
| Ref: | [2] |
| Familycolor: | Caucasian |
| Fam1: | Northeast Caucasian |
| Fam2: | Tsezic |
| Fam3: | Bezhta–Hunzib–Khwarshi |
| Iso3: | khv |
| Glotto: | khva1239 |
| Glottorefname: | Khwarshi-Inkhoqwari |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Ethnicity: | Khwarshi people |
| Speakers2: | 8,500 (2005-2009) |
Khwarshi (also spelled Xvarshi, Khvarshi) is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken in the Tsumadinsky-, Kizilyurtovsky- and Khasavyurtovsky districts of Dagestan by the Khwarshi people. The exact number of speakers is not known, but the linguist Zaira Khalilova, who has carried out fieldwork in the period from 2005 to 2009, gives the figure 8,500. Other sources give much lower figures, such as Ethnologue with the figure 1,870[3] and the latest population census of Russia with the figure 1,872. The low figures are because many Khwarshi have registered themselves as being Avar speakers, because Avar is their literary language.
There are six dialects of the Khwarshi language based on their geographical distribution. The dialects are: Upper and Lower Inkhokwari, Kwantlada, Santlada, Khwayni and Khwarshi Proper, originating in their respective villages in the Tsumadinsky district. Due to emigration, Kwantlada-, Upper and Lower Inkhokwari–speaking communities also exist in Oktyabrskoe, Santlada-speaking communities exist in Pervomayskoe and Khwarshi Proper–speaking communities exist in Mutsalaul.
The phoneme inventory of Khwarshi is large, with about 87 distinct phonemes. Notable phonological processes include assimilation, vowel harmony, and nasalization occurring.[4] The syllabic structure of Khwarshi is also quite simple, with (C)V(C) being the most common structure, of which V(C) is only permitted word-initially.[5]
Khwarshi has a total number of 21 vowel phonemes, including vowel length and nasalization.[6]
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /i/ | pronounced as /ɨ/ | pronounced as /u/ | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /e/ | pronounced as /o/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /a/ |
All the vowels above also have a long counterpart, which are always in stressed syllables. All vowels can occur in closed syllables (i.e. (C)VC), and all except pronounced as //ɨ// occur in open syllables (i.e. (C)V). pronounced as //ɨ// does not occur in the Khwarshi Proper and Inkhokwari dialects.[7]
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /ĩ/ | pronounced as /ũ/ | |
| Close-mid | pronounced as /ẽ/ | pronounced as /õ/ | |
| Open | pronounced as /ã/ |
Khwarshi has 66 consonants:
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | ||||||||||||||||||||
| plain | phar. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | pal. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | phar. | plain | lab. | phar. | phar.+lab. | plain | phar. | ||||
| Nasal | m | mˤ | n | ||||||||||||||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | pˤ | t | (tʷ) | k | kʷ | kˤ | q | qʷ | qˤ | ||||||||||
| voiced | b | bˤ | d | dʷ | g | gʷ | gˤ | ||||||||||||||
| ejective | pʼ | pˤʼ | tʼ | tʷʼ | kʼ | kʷʼ | kˤʼ | qʼ | qʷʼ | qˤʼ | qˤʷʼ | ||||||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ɬ | t͡ʃ | |||||||||||||||||
| ejective | t͡sʼ | t͡sʷʼ | t͡ɬʼ | t͡ɬʷʼ | t͡ʃʼ | t͡ʃʷʼ | |||||||||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | sʷ | ɬ | ʃ | ʃʷ | x | χ | χʷ | χˤ | χˤʷ | ħ | h | hˤ | |||||||
| voiced | z | zʷ | ʒ | ʒʷ | ʁ | ʁʷ | ʁˤ | ʁˤʷ | ʕ | ||||||||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Approximant | l | lʲ | j | w | |||||||||||||||||
It is not clear whether pronounced as //tʷ// is present in Khwarshi or not, as Zaira Khalilova does not include it in her chart of consonants, but nevertheless provides a minimal pair indicating there is a distinction between pronounced as //t// and pronounced as //tʷ//: pronounced as //eta// "touch" and pronounced as //etʷa// "fly".[8] Therefore, it is shown in parentheses in the chart above.
All the consonants can be found in native vocabulary, but some of them are however more rare than others, and some are mostly found in loanwords, such as pronounced as //ʕ// which almost only occur in loanwords of Arabic origin. Another example is pronounced as //x//, found only in loanwords of Avar origin.[9]
The palatalized consonant and all the pharyngealized consonants are not found in Khwarshi Proper, but can be found in all the other dialects. Consider for instance the Khwarshi Proper word pronounced as //χililːu// "drunk", which in the other dialects is pronounced as //χˤilʲilʲːu//.[10]
Gemination is quite a common phonological process in Khwarshi, caused by grammatical processes. Gemination only occurs intervocally and not all consonants geminate. Which consonants that geminate is different according to which processes they are a part of, and it depends on the dialect as well.[11]
Below is a list of some of the processes causing gemination:
In loanwords, geminated consonants are normally non-geminated, when adopted into the Khwarshi language. For example, the Avar word pronounced as //kːʼara// "mosquito" is found as pronounced as //kʼara// in Khwarshi. The same goes for words of Tindi origin such as pronounced as //kːʼanu// "small", which is found as pronounced as //kʼanu// in Khwarshi. Another interesting aspect of loanwords of Tindi origin in the Khwarshi language is that the consonants are ejectivized when they enter the Khwarshi language, e.g. Tindi pronounced as //t͡sːikʷːa// "small intestine" > Khwarshi pronounced as //t͡sʼikʷʼa//.[12]
Khwarshi nouns inflect for case, of which there are 50, and number, singular or plural, and belong to one of five genders, or rather noun classes. That a noun belongs to a specific class cannot be seen on the noun itself, but only through agreement.
There are five noun classes in the singular, but only a distinction between human and non-human in the plural, the male human and female human having merged into human, and the remaining classes into non-human.[13]
| Class | Description | Singular | Plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prefix | Infix | Suffix | Prefix | Infix | Suffix | ||
| I | Male human | ∅-2 | (w) | -w | b-, m-1 | (b) | -b |
| II | Female human | j- | (j) | -j | |||
| III | Inanimate objects, and animals | b-, m-1 | (b) | -b | l-, n-1 | (r) | -l |
| IV | Inanimate objects, and animate objects | l-, n-1 | (r) | -l | |||
| V | Inanimate objects, and names of young | j- | (j) | -j | |||
The noun classes are visible through agreement in adjectives, adverbs, postpositions and demonstrative pronouns, and also verbs if the verb begins with a vowel. There are, however, some exceptions, like with irregular verbs in other languages. Below are some examples of such agreement in postpositions, demonstrative pronouns, verbs and adjectives, respectively. Notice however, that a verb is present in all of the examples but the first, while the third example has a special focus on verbs.
| milʲːo | b-ot͡ɬot͡ɬʼo | heⁿʃe | gul-o | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -in.middle | book | put- | |||
| "Put the book between you | " | ||||
| o(w)enu | ʒikʼo | ∅-otʼqʼ-i | ilʲ-ːo | at͡ɬ-a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| that | man | -come- | - | village- | |
| "That man came to our village" | |||||
| ∅-ot͡ɬot͡ɬʼo-so-ho | j-ot͡ɬot͡ɬʼo-so | j-ez-un | |
|---|---|---|---|
| -in.middle-- | -in.middle- | -take- | |
| "The middle (brother) married the (other) middle (sister)." | |||
| b-et͡ʃ-un-t͡ɬo | b-et͡ʃ-un-aj-t͡ɬo | bert͡sina-b | kandaba | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| -be-- | -be--- | beautiful- | girl. | |
| "Once upon a time there were beautiful girls" | ||||
As the noun class of a noun cannot be seen on the noun itself, it should not be represented in a literal translation. In the examples above, however, the noun class of certain nouns is shown, albeit in superscript to indicate that it is not represented in the original Khwarshi sentence. The only nouns that have their noun classes indicated here are those with which the other words agree with.
There are 8 grammatical cases in Khwarshi, and 42 locative cases. The grammatical cases are: absolutive, ergative, two genitive, instrumental, durative, vocative and causal. The remaining cases, the locative cases, are a bit more complex, as they each consist of both a part that has something to do with orientation and a part that has something to do with direction. So while the ergative case has a single suffix /-(j)i/, the superversative case consists of two suffixes, the superessive /-t͡ɬʼo/ plus the versative /-ʁul/, becoming /-t͡ɬʼoʁul/.[14]
Below are the case endings of the grammatical cases.
Below are the case endings of the locative cases.
| Essive | Lative | Versative | Ablative | Translative | Terminative | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Superessive | -t͡ɬʼo | -t͡ɬʼo-l | -t͡ɬʼo-ʁul | -t͡ɬʼo-zi | -t͡ɬʼo-ʁuʒaz | -t͡ɬʼo-qʼa | |
| Subessive | -t͡ɬ | -t͡ɬ-ul | -t͡ɬ-ʁul | -t͡ɬ-zi | -t͡ɬ-ʁuʒaz | -t͡ɬ-qʼa | |
| Inessive | -ma | -ma-l | -ma-ʁul | -ma-zi | -ma-ʁuʒaz | -ma-qʼa | |
| Interessive | -ɬ | -ɬ-ul | -ɬ-ʁul | -ɬ-zi | -ɬ-ʁuʒaz | -ɬ-qʼa | |
| Adessive | -ho | -ho-l | -ho-ʁul | -ho-zi | -ho-ʁuʒaz | -ho-qʼa | |
| Apudessive | -ʁo | -ʁo-l | -ʁo-ʁul | -ʁo-zi | -ʁo-ʁuʒaz | -ʁo-qʼa | |
| Contessive | -qo | -qo-l | -qo-ʁul | -qo-zi | -qo-ʁuʒaz | -qo-qʼa |
Khwarshi verbs normally consist of a stem, an agreement prefix indicating noun class and number of the relevant nouns, and a suffix showing tense, aspect, mood, or the like. Only about one fourth of the Khwarshi verbs show agreement, all of them beginning with a vowel. There is a small number of verbs beginning with a vowel that do not show agreement. Verbs beginning with a consonant do not show agreement.[15]
The verbs are very regular in Khwarshi, the only irregular verb being the auxiliary verb /goli/ "to be", which takes neither a prefix nor a suffix and has only several non-finite forms. In the past- and future tense, however, the verb /-et͡ʃ-/ "to be situated" is used instead of /goli/, which may take both a prefix and a suffix.[16]
| А а | Б б | В в | Г г | Гъ гъ | Гь гь | ГӀ гӀ | Д д | |
| Е е | Ж ж | З з | И и | Й й | К к | Къ къ | Кь кь | |
| КӀ кӀ | Л л | Лъ лъ | ЛӀ лӀ | М м | Н н | О о | П п | |
| ПӀ пӀ | Р р | С с | Т т | ТӀ тӀ | У у | Х х | Хъ хъ | |
| Хь хь | ХӀ хӀ | Ц ц | ЦӀ цӀ | Ч ч | ЧӀ чӀ | Ш ш | Ъ ъ | |
| Ы ы | Ь ь | Э э |