Archi language

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Archi
аршаттен чӏат
Native to	Russia
Region	Archib, Dagestan
Ethnicity	Archi people
Native speakers	1,712 (2020 census)[1]
Language family	Northeast Caucasian Lezgic[2] Archi
Writing system	Cyrillic script (developed in 2006 based on the Avar alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	aqc
Glottolog	arch1244
ELP	Archi
Map of where Archi is spoken (red area)
Archi is classified as Definitely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010)
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Archi /ɑːˈtʃiː/^[3] is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by the Archis in the village of Archib, southern Dagestan, Russia, and the six surrounding smaller villages.

It is unusual for its many phonemes and for its contrast between several voiceless velar lateral fricatives, /𝼄, 𝼄ʷ, 𝼄ː, 𝼄ːʷ/, voiceless and ejective velar lateral affricates, /k͡𝼄, k͡𝼄ʷ, k͡𝼄ʼ, k͡𝼄ʷʼ/, and a voiced velar lateral fricative, /ʟ̝/. It is an ergative–absolutive language with four noun classes^[4] and has a remarkable morphological system with irregularities on all levels.^[5] Mathematically, there are 1,502,839 possible forms that can be derived from a single verb root.^[6]

The classification of the Archi language has not been definitively established. Peter von Uslar felt it should be considered a variant of Avar,^{[citation needed]} but Roderich von Erckert saw it as closer to Lak.^{[citation needed]} The language has also been considered as a separate entity that could be placed somewhere between Avar and Lak.^{[by whom?][citation needed]} The Italian linguist Alfredo Trombetti placed Archi within an Avar–Ando–Dido group,^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]} Schulze places it in the Lezgian branch with all other Lezgian languages belonging to the Samur group.^[2]

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.

Archi has a symmetric six-vowel system (/i e ə a o u/).^[4]

All vowels except for /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.^[7] Examples of non-initial /íˤ/ are /díˤt͡ʃa/ ('to be fat')^[8] and /iˤntíˤmmaj/ ('brain').^[9] /ə/ also never occurs wird-initially.

Of all living languages, Archi has the world's largest phonemic non-click consonant inventory, with only 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^[4] and the Archi Dictionary.^[7]

1. These have no word-initial dictionary entries (even though /pː/, /tː/, and /kː/ are relatively common).
2. These appear in the Tutorial but have no dictionary entries.
3. This does not appear in the Tutorial but does have a word-internal dictionary entry (in /mot͡sːór/, 'alpine pasture used in summer').^[10]

Some of these sounds are very rare. For example, /ʁˤʷ/ has only one dictionary entry word-internally (in /íʁˤʷdut/, 'heavy')^[11] and two entries word-initially. Likewise, /ʟ̝/ has only two dictionary entries: /náʟ̝dut/ ('blue; unripe')^[12] and /k͡𝼄ʼéʟ̝dut/ ('crooked, curved').^[13]

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 /𝼄íppu/ ('three').^[14] This is also noted by Kodzasov (1977),^[15] 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 /𝼄/, the voiced velar lateral fricative /ʟ̝/, and the corresponding voiceless and ejective affricates /k͡𝼄/, /k͡𝼄ʼ/ 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.^[4]

This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. In particular, the orthography table is too complex. Please help clarify the section. There might be a discussion about this on the talk page. (October 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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.^[6]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2023)

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.^[4] There are four noun classes, which are only evident from verbal agreement.^[4]

Depending on the specifics of the analysis, the ergative and the absolutive cases are not always 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 in which 6 directional-case suffixes are combined with 5 spatial cases to produce a total of 30 case-localization combinations. However, they do not constitute 30 distinct case forms because they are easily derivable from a pair of morphemes.

The four noun classes of Archi are only evident from verbal inflection. This table summarizes the noun classes and their associated verbal morphology:

The following phrases were phonetically transcribed from Archi:^[17]

The inclusions of "little" and "young" in the phrases translate a diminutive, which in Archi language commonly refers either to a smaller or younger version of the subject. The non-diminutive nouns in the above examples belong to noun class III, while their diminutives belong to noun class IV. This difference in noun class is reflected on the verb in all of these examples, by the contrast between class III agreement in b from class IV in ∅ (with no b). The -b- in the past tense appears in front of the -x̄u / -č̣u / -ku inflection, while in the present tense the b- is the first letter of the verb. For the nouns referring to inanimate objects, the class shift is the only sign of the diminutive: the noun itself does not change in form. E.g. x́it means both "ladle" (III) and "spoon" (IV), k̂ut̄ali both "bag" (III) and "little bag" (IV). Nouns pertaining to younger animals have different words, e.g. dogi "donkey" (III) but ḳêrt "young donkey" (IV), nôiš "horse" (III) but uri "young horse" (IV).

• Bond, Oliver; Corbett, Greville G.; Chumakina, Marina; Brown, Dunstan, eds. (2016). Archi: Complexities of agreement in cross-theoretical perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Chumakina, Marina; Dunstan Brown; Greville G. Corbett; Harely Quilliam (2007). A dictionary of Archi: Archi-Russian-English (Online ed.). University of Surrey. doi:10.15126/SMG.16/2.
• Kodzasov, Sandro (1977). "Fonetika Archinskogo Jazyka, part 2". In Kibrik, A. E.; Samedov, I. P.; Olovjannikova, D. S.; Kodzasov, S. V. (eds.). Opyt Strukturnogo Opisanija Archinskogo Jazyka. Vol. 1. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta.
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.

• Chumakina, Marina (2014). "Семантическое согласование в арчинском языке [Semantic agreement in Archi]". In Plungyan, V. A. (ed.). Язык. Константы. Переменные. Памяти Александра Евгеньевича Кибрика [Language. Constants. Variables. In memoriam of A.E. Kibrik] (in Russian). St Petersburg: Aleteya. pp. 454–470.
• Chumakina, Marina (2015). "Archi". In Müller, Peter O.; Ohnheiser, Ingeborg; Olsen, Susan; Rainer, Franz (eds.). Word formation: An international handbook of the languages of Europe. Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science. Vol. HSK40. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
• Dirr, A. M. (1908). "Arčinskij jazyk". Sbornik materialov dlja opisanija mestnostej i plemen Kavkaza (in Russian). Tbilisi.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Kaxadze, O. I. (1979). The Archi language and its relation to other Daghestan languages (in Georgian). Tbilisi: Mecniereba.
• Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (1972). "O formal'nom vydelenii soglasovatel'nyx klassov v arčinskom jazyke". Voprosy jazykoznanija (in Russian). 1: 124–131.
• Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (1977). Opyt strukturnogo opisanija arčinskogo jazyka (in Russian). Vol. 2: Taksonomičeskaja grammatika. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo moskovskogo universiteta.
• Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (1977). Opyt strukturnogo opisanija arčinskogo jazyka (in Russian). Vol. 3: Dinamičeskaja grammatika. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo moskovskogo universiteta.
• Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (1993). "Archi". In R. Smeets (ed.). Indigenous languages of the Caucasus. Vol. 3. New York: Caravan Books. pp. 297–365.
• Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (1998). "Archi". In Spencer, Andrew; Zwicky, Arnold M. (eds.). The Handbook of Morphology. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 455–476.
• Kibrik, Aleksandr E.; Kodzasov, S. V.; Olovjannikova, I. P. & Samedov, D. S. (1977). Arčinskij jazyk. Teksiy i slovari (in Russian). Moscow: Izdatel'stvo moskovskogo universiteta.
• Kibrik, Aleksandr E.; Kodzasov, S. V.; Olovjannikova, I. P.; Samedov, D. S. (1977). Opyt strukturnogo opisanija arčinskogo jazyka (in Russian). Vol. 1: Leksika. Fonetika. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo moskovskogo universiteta.
• Mikailov, K. Š. (1967). Arčinskij jazyk (in Russian). Maxachkala.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Xajdakov, S. M. (1967). "Arčinskij jazyk". Jazyki narodov SSSR (in Russian). Vol. 4. Moscow: Nauka.

Archi language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Appendix:Cyrillic script
• Archi–Russian–English dictionary
• Archi language tutorial
• Archi Vocabulary List (from the World Loanword Database)
• Archi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• A sample of the Archi language, 'the Bear Story':
  • as a sound file
  • in written form
• https://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/languages/archi/ Archi language overview