| Ossetian | |
| Nativename: | Ossetian; Ossetic: ирон ӕвзаг (iron ævzag) Ossetian; Ossetic: дигорон ӕвзаг (digoron ævzag) |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /os/ pronounced as /os/ |
| States: | Ossetia |
| Region: | Caucasus |
| Ethnicity: | Ossetians |
| Date: | 2020 census |
| Ref: | e26 |
| Familycolor: | Indo-European |
| Fam2: | Indo-Iranian |
| Fam3: | Iranian |
| Fam4: | Eastern |
| Fam5: | Scythian |
| Stand1: | Ossetian |
| Stand2: | Standard Ossetian |
| Dia1: | Digor |
| Dia2: | Iron |
| Script: | |
| Nation: | Russia |
| Iso1: | os |
| Iso2: | oss |
| Iso3: | oss |
| Lingua: | 58-ABB-a |
| Map: | Oseta latina skribo.jpg |
| Mapcaption: | Latin-script Ossetian text from a book published in 1935; part of an alphabetic list of proverbs. |
| Map2: | Lang Status 80-VU.svg |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Glotto: | osse1243 |
| Glottorefname: | Modern Ossetic |
Ossetian,[1] commonly referred to as Ossetic and rarely as Ossete (Ossetian; Ossetic: ирон ӕвзаг|iron ӕvzag pronounced as /os/ southern; [iˈron ɐvˈʒäɡ] northern), is an Eastern Iranian language that is spoken predominantly in Ossetia, a region situated on both sides of the Greater Caucasus. It is the native language of the Ossetian people, and a relative and possibly a descendant of the extinct Scythian, Sarmatian, and Alanic languages.[2]
The northern half of the Ossetia region is part of Russia and is known as North Ossetia–Alania, while the southern half is part of the de facto country of South Ossetia (recognized by the United Nations as Russian-occupied territory that is de jure part of Georgia). Ossetian-speakers number about 614,350, with 451,000 recorded in Russia per the 2010 Russian census.[3]
Despite Ossetian being the official languages of both North and South Ossetia, since 2009 UNESCO has listed Ossetian as "vulnerable". In the 2010 Russian census only 36% of North Ossetians claimed to be fluent in Ossetian, with the number decreasing year by year.[4]
Ossetian is the spoken and literary language of the Ossetians, an Iranian ethnic group living in the central part of the Caucasus and constituting the basic population of North Ossetia–Alania, which is part of the Russian Federation, and of the de facto country of South Ossetia (recognized by the United Nations as de jure part of the Republic of Georgia). The Ossetian language belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages (as hinted by its endonym:). Within Iranian, it is placed in the Eastern subgroup and further to a Northeastern sub-subgroup, but these are areal rather than genetic groups. The other Eastern Iranian languages such as Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan) and Yaghnobi (spoken in Tajikistan) show certain commonalities, but also deep-reaching divergences from Ossetian.
From the 7th–8th centuries BCE, the languages of the Iranian group were distributed across a vast territory spanning present-day Iran (Persia), Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. Ossetian is the sole survivor of the branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes, known in ancient sources as the Scythians, the Massagetae, the Saka, the Sarmatians, the Alans, and the Roxolani. The more easterly Khwarazm and Sogdians were also closely affiliated in linguistic terms.
Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tat, and Talysh, is one of the main Iranian languages with a sizable community of speakers in the Caucasus. As it is descended from Alanic, spoken by the Alan medieval tribes emerging from the earlier Sarmatians, it is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language may be the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the only other living Northeastern Iranian language.[5] [6] Ossetian has a plural formed by the suffix -ta, a feature it shares with Yaghnobi, Sarmatian and the now-extinct Sogdian; this is taken as evidence of a formerly wide-ranging Iranian-language dialect continuum on the Central Asian steppe. The names of ancient Iranian tribes (as transmitted through Ancient Greek) in fact reflect this pluralization, e.g. Saromatae and Masagetae .[7]
The earliest known written sample of Ossetian is an inscription (the) which dates back to the 10th–12th centuries and named after the river near which it was found: the Bolshoy Zelenchuk River in Arkhyz, Russia. The text is written in the Greek alphabet, with special digraphs.
(The original, following Zgusta, translates only initials; presumably this is because although the uninflected forms may be inferred, no written records of them have been found to date.)
The only other extant record of Proto-Ossetic are the two lines of "Alanic" phrases appearing in the Theogony of John Tzetzes, a 12th century Byzantine poet and grammarian:The portions in bold face above are Ossetian. Going beyond a direct transliteration of the Greek text, scholars have attempted a phonological reconstruction using the Greek as clues, thus, while τ (tau) would usually be given the value "t", it instead is "d", which is thought to be the way the early Ossetes would have pronounced it. The scholarly transliteration of the Alanic phrases is: "dӕ ban xʷӕrz, mӕ sfili, (ӕ)xsinjӕ kurθi kӕndӕ" and "du farnitz, kintzӕ mӕ sfili, kajci fӕ wa sawgin?"; equivalents in modern Ossetian would be "Dӕ bon xwarz, me’fšini ‘xšinӕ, kurdigӕj dӕ?" and "(De’) f(s)arm neč(ij), kinźi ӕfšini xӕcc(ӕ) (ku) fӕwwa sawgin".[8] The passage translates as:
Marginalia of Greek religious books, with some parts (such as headlines) of the book translated into Old Ossetic, have recently been found.
It is theorized that during the Proto-Ossetic phase, Ossetian underwent a process of phonological change conditioned by a Rhythmusgesetz or "Rhythm-law" whereby nouns were divided into two classes, those heavily or lightly stressed. "Heavy-stem" nouns possessed a "heavy" long vowel or diphthong, and were stressed on the first-occurring syllable of this type; "light-stem" nouns were stressed on their final syllable. This is precisely the situation observed in the earliest (though admittedly scanty) records of Ossetian presented above.[7] This situation also obtains in Modern Ossetian, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the "openness" of the vowel. The trend is also found in a glossary of the Jassic dialect dating from 1422.
There are two important dialects: Digoron (distributed in the west of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania and Kabardino-Balkaria) which is considered more archaic and Iron (in the rest of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania and in South Ossetia and Karachay-Cherkessia),[2] spoken by one-sixth and five-sixths of the population, respectively. A third dialect of Ossetian, Jassic, was formerly spoken in Hungary.
The Iron dialect of Ossetic has 7 vowels:
| Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Ossetian; Ossetic: и pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: у pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Close-mid | Ossetian; Ossetic: ы pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Mid | Ossetian; Ossetic: е pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: о pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Near-open | Ossetian; Ossetic: ӕ pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Open | Ossetian; Ossetic: а pronounced as /link/ |
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | Ossetian; Ossetic: и pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: у pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Mid | Ossetian; Ossetic: е pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: о pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Near-open | Ossetian; Ossetic: ӕ pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Open | Ossetian; Ossetic: а pronounced as /link/ |
| ɐ, a | ||
| a, ɐ, o | ||
| ɘ | i | |
| |||
| u | ||
| |||
| i | e | |
| u | o | |
| ɐr, ar | ||
The Ossetian researcher V. I. Abayev postulates 26 plain consonants for Ossetian, to which five labialized consonants and two semivowels may be added. Unusually for an Indo-European language, there is a series of glottalized (ejective) stops and affricates. This may constitute an areal feature of languages of the Caucasus.
| Labial | Dental/ alveolar | Postalveolar /palatal | Velar[10] | Uvular | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialized | plain | labialized | |||||||
| Stops/ Affricates | voiced | Ossetian; Ossetic: б pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: д pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: дз pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: дж pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: г pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: гу pronounced as /link/ | |||
| voiceless | Ossetian; Ossetic: п pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: т pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: ц pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: ч pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: к pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: ку pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: хъ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: хъу pronounced as /link/ | ||
| ejective | Ossetian; Ossetic: пъ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: тъ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: цъ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: чъ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: къ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: къу pronounced as /link/ | ||||
| Fricatives | voiced | Ossetian; Ossetic: в pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: з pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: гъ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: гъу pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| voiceless | Ossetian; Ossetic: ф pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: с pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: х pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: ху pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Nasals | Ossetian; Ossetic: м pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: н pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||
| Approximants | Ossetian; Ossetic: л pronounced as /link/ ~ pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: й pronounced as /link/ | Ossetian; Ossetic: у pronounced as /link/ | |||||||
| Rhotic | Ossetian; Ossetic: р pronounced as /link/ | |||||||||
Voiceless consonants become voiced word-medially (this is reflected in the orthography as well). pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, and pronounced as /link/ were originally allophones of pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, and pronounced as /link/ when followed by pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/; this alternation is still retained to a large extent.
Stress normally falls on the first syllable, unless it contains a central vowel (pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/), in which case stress falls on the second syllable. Thus, су́дзаг|súdzag /ˈsud͡zag/ 'burning', but cӕнӕ́фсир/sænǽfsir /sɐˈnɐfsir/ 'grapes'. In addition, proper names are usually stressed on the second syllable regardless of their vowels, and recent Russian loanwords retain the stress they have in the source language.[11]
In the Iron dialect, definiteness is expressed in words with stress on second syllable by shifting the stress to the initial syllable. This reflects the fact that historically they received a syllabic definite article (as they still do in the Digor dialect), and the addition of the syllable caused the stress to shift. The above patterns apply not just within the content word, rather to prosodic words, units that result from content words being joined into a single prosodic group with only one stress. Not only compound verbs, but also every noun phrase constitutes such a group containing only one stressed syllable, regardless of its length, for instance мӕ чи́ныг/mӕ čínyg /mɐˈt͡ʃinɘg/ 'my book', мӕгуы́р зӕронд лӕг/mægwýr zærond læg /mɐˈgwɘr zɐrond lɐg/ 'a poor old man'. Since an initial particle and a conjunction are also included in the prosodic group, the single stress of the group may fall on them, too: фӕлӕ́ уый/fælǽ wyj 'but he'.
According to V. I. Abaev,[5]
Ossetic has lost the grammatical category of gender which many Indo-European languages have preserved until today.[5] According to the Encyclopӕdia Britannica 2006[14] Ossetian preserves many archaic features of Old Iranian, such as eight cases and verbal prefixes. It is debated how many of these cases are actually inherited from Indo-Iranian case morphemes and how many have re-developed, after the loss of the original case forms, through cliticization of adverbs or re-interpretations of derivational suffixes: the number of "inherited" cases according to different scholars ranges from as few as three (nominative, genitive and inessive) to as many as six (nominative, dative, ablative, directive, inessive). Some (the comitative, equative, and adessive) are secondary beyond any doubt.[15]
Definiteness in the Iron dialect is, according to Abaev, only expressed by shift of word accent from the second to the first syllable (which is not possible in all nouns):
Erschler reported in 2021 that he has been unable to replicate Abaev's observations of a distinction between definite and indefinite nouns in Iron.
There is only one plural suffix for the nominal parts of speech, -т(ӕ) -t(ӕ), with the vowel ӕ ӕ occurring in the nominative case (see Cases below): e.g. сӕр sӕr 'head' – сӕртӕ sӕrtӕ 'heads'. Nevertheless, the complexity of the system is increased to some extent by the fact that this suffixation may be accompanied by a number of morphophonemic alternations. A svarabhakti vowel ы y is normally inserted after stems ending in a cluster (цӕст cӕst 'flower' – цӕстытӕ cӕstytӕ 'flowers'), but there are also numerous exceptions from this. This insertion of ы y regularly palatalises preceding velars to affricates in Iron: чызг čyzg 'girl' – чызджытӕ čyzdžytӕ 'girls'. In words ending in -ӕг ӕg, the vowel is usually elided in the plural, making the stem eligible for the above-mentioned svarabhakti insertion: барӕг barӕg 'rider' – барджытӕ bardžytӕ 'riders'. The same happens in words ending in -ыг -yg, but the consonant is also labialised there: мӕсыг mӕsyg – мӕсгуытӕ mӕsgwytӕ. The vowels а a and о o in closed syllables are weakened to ӕ ӕ before the suffix – фарс fars 'side' – фӕрстӕ fӕrstӕ 'sides'; this happens regularly in polysyllabic words, but with many exceptions in monosyllabic ones. Finally, the suffix consonant is geminated after sonorants: хӕдзар xӕdzar 'house' – хӕдзӕрттӕ xӕdzӕrttӕ 'houses'.[16]
Nouns and adjectives share the same morphology and distinguish two numbers (singular and plural) and nine cases: nominative, genitive, dative, directive, ablative, inessive, adessive, equative, and comitative. The nominal morphology is agglutinative: the case suffixes and the number suffix are separate, the case suffixes are the same for both numbers and the number suffix is the same for all cases (illustrated here for the Iron dialect with the noun сӕр sӕr "head"):[5]
| width=100 | width=100 | Singular | romanization | width=100 | Plural | romanization | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | align=center | сӕр | sӕr | сӕртӕ | sӕrtӕ | ||
| Genitive | align=center | сӕры | sӕry | сӕрты | sӕrty | ||
| Dative | align=center | сӕрӕн | sӕrӕn | сӕртӕн | sӕrtӕn | ||
| Allative | align=center | сӕрмӕ | sӕrmӕ | сӕртӕм | sӕrtӕm | ||
| Ablative | align=center | сӕрӕй | sӕrӕj | сӕртӕй | sӕrtӕj | ||
| Inessive | align=center | сӕры | sӕry | сӕрты | sӕrty | ||
| Adessive | align=center | сӕрыл | sӕryl | сӕртыл | sӕrtyl | ||
| Equative | align=center | сӕрау | sӕraw | сӕртау | sӕrtaw | ||
| Comitative | align=center | сӕримӕ | sӕrimӕ | сӕртимӕ | sӕrtimӕ |
Since inessive and genitive show the same forms in both numbers, it is sometimes debated whether Ossetian might possess eight case forms for each number instead of nine. If the addition of the case suffix would result in hiatus, the consonant й j is usually inserted between them: зӕрдӕ-й-ӕн zærdæ-j-æn 'heart (dative)'.
There is no morphological distinction between adjectives and nouns in Ossetian.[17] The suffix -дӕр -dær can express the meaning of a comparative degree: рӕсугъддӕр ræsuhddær 'more beautiful'. It, too, can be added to typical nouns: лӕг læg 'man' – лӕгдӕр lægdær 'more of a man, more manly'.[18]
The personal pronouns mostly take the same endings as the nouns. The 1st and 2nd person singular exhibit suppletion between the stem used in the nominative case and the stem used in the other (oblique) cases; the oblique stem without other endings is the genitive case form. The 1st and 2nd persons plural have only one stem each, functioning as both nominative and genitive. The third person pronoun coincides with the demonstrative 'that'. In addition, there are enclitic non-nominative forms of the pronouns of all three persons, which are somewhat deviant. Their genitive ends in -ӕ -ӕ; not only the inessive, but also the ablative coincides with the genitive; the allative ends in -м -m and the dative has the vowel -у- -y- before the ending (e.g. мын myn); and the comitative has the vowel -е- -e- (e.g. мемӕ memӕ). The 3rd singular stem has the doublet forms йV- jV- and ∅V- everywhere outside of the ablative and inessive, which appears as дзы dzy, and the comitative, which can only have йV- jV-.[19]
Reflexive forms are constructed from the enclitic forms of the personal pronouns and the reflexive pronoun хӕдӕг xӕdӕg 'self' (with the oblique forms хиц- xic- in the dative and ablative, хиу- xiw- in the adessive and хи xi in the other cases).
There are two demonstratives – ай aj (stem а- a-, pl. адон adon) 'this' and (stem уы- wy-, pl. уыдон) 'that'. The interrogative pronouns are чи či (oblique stem кӕ- kӕ-) 'who' and сы cy (oblique stem сӕ- cӕ-). Indefinite pronouns meaning any- and some- are formed from the interrogatives by means of the prefix ис- is- and the suffix -дӕр -dӕr, respectively. Negatives are formed similarly, but with the prefix ни- ni-; the totality prefix ('every-') is ал- al-, and ӕлы ӕly is used adjectivally. Other pronouns meaning 'all' are ӕгас ӕgas and ӕппӕт ӕppӕt. There are two pronouns meaning 'other': иннӕ innӕ for 'another of two, a definite other one' and ӕндӕр ӕndӕr for 'some other, an indefinite other one'.[20]
Verbs distinguish six persons (1st, 2nd and 3rd, singular and plural), three tenses (present, past and future, all expressed synthetically), three moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), and belong to one of two grammatical aspects (perfective and imperfective). The person, tense and mood morphemes are mostly fused. The following description is of Iron.
Each verb has a present stem and a past stem (similar in practice to Persian), the latter normally being identical to the past participle. The past stem commonly differs from the present stem by adding т t or д d (e.g. дар- dar- : дард- dard- 'to hold'; уарз- : уарзт 'to love'), or, more rarely, -ст -st (e.g. бар- bar : барст- barst 'weigh') or -ыд yd (зар- zar- : зарыд- 'sing'; nonetheless, the past participle of this type is still formed with -д/т t/d: зард- zard-). However, there are usually various other vowel and consonant changes as well. Some of the most common vowel alternations are ӕ ӕ : а a (e.g. кӕс- kӕs : каст- kast- 'look'), и i : ы y (e.g. риз- riz- : рызт- ryzt- 'tremble'), and у u : ы y (e.g. дзур- dzur- : дзырд- dzyrd- 'speak'); some other alternations are a a : ӕ ӕ (mostly in bisyllabic stems, e.g. араз- araz- : арӕз- arӕz- 'make'), ау aw : ы y, ӕу ӕw : ы y, and о o : ы y. Frequent consonant changes are -д d, -т t, -тт tt, -нд nd, -нт nt > -ст st (e.g. кӕрд- kӕrd- : карст karst 'cut'), -дз dz, -ц -c, -ндз -ndz, -нц -nc > -гъд hd (лидз- lidz- : лыгъд- 'run away'), elision of a final н n or м m (e.g. нӕм nӕm : над nad). Suppletion is found in the stem pair дӕттын dӕttyn : лӕвӕрд lӕvӕrd 'give'.[21] It is also seen in the copula, whose past stem is уыд- wyd-, whereas the present forms are highly irregular and begin in д- d-, ст- st- оr in a vowel (see below).
There are also many related transitive-intransitive verb pairs, which also differ by means of a vowel alternation (commonly а a : ӕ ӕ, e.g. сафын 'lose' : сӕфын sӕfyn 'be lost', and у u : уы wy, e.g. хъусын 'hear' : хъуысын 'be heard') and sometimes by the addition of the consonant -с s (тавын 'to warm' : тафсын 'to be warm').[22]
The present and future tense forms use the present stem.
The indicative present endings are as follows:
| 1st person | -ын -yn | -ӕм -ӕm | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2nd person | -ыс -ys | -ут -ut | ||||||||||||
| 3rd person | -ы -y|-ынц -ync|}Only the copula wyn 'be' is conjugated differently:
| сты sty |
The future tense forms consist of the present stem, the element -дзы(н)- ~ -дзӕн- (originally a separate root meaning 'wish' according to Fredrik Thordarson) and endings which appear to derive from encliticised copula уын uyn 'be' (see above table) used as an auxiliary. Thus, the resulting composite endings are:[23]
| singular | plural | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person | -дзын-ӕн -dzyn-ӕn|-дзы-стӕм -dzy-stӕm | |||||||||
| 2nd person | -дзын-ӕ -dzyn-ӕ | -дзы-стут -dzy-stut | ||||||||
| 3rd person | -дзӕн-(ис) -dzӕn-(is)|-дзы-сты -dzy-sty|}The past tense uses the past stem. The endings, however, are different for intransitive and transitive verbs. The intransitive endings are:
The transitive endings, on the other hand, are: |