Tabasaran language


Tabasaran is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Lezgic branch. It is spoken by the Tabasaran people in the southern part of the Russian Republic of Dagestan. There are two main dialects: North and South Tabasaran. It has a literary language based on the Southern dialect, one of the official languages of Dagestan.
Tabasaran is an ergative language. The verb system is relatively simple; verbs agree with the subject in number, person and class. North Tabasaran has two noun classes, whereas Southern Tabasaran has none.

Geographical distribution

It is spoken in the basin of Upper Rubas-nir and Upper Chirakh-nir.

Phonology

Consonants

The post-alveolar sibilants may be whistled.

Vowels

Vowel sounds of Tabasaran are .

Writing system

Tabasaran is written using Cyrillic.
Note: The letters indicated in orange are encountered only in loanwords from Russian.

Grammar

Tabasaran is very probably an active language of the fluid-S type.
Tabasaran was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest case system in the world, with 48. Hjelmslev claimed that Tabasaran had the 'empirical maximum' number of cases, with 52. However, such claims are based on a sloppy analysis of 'case', and other languages such as Tsez would have even larger counts under such definitions. Comrie & Polinsky
analyze the system as having 14 case morphemes in southern dialects and 15 in northern dialects.
These include 4 core/argument cases. The absolutive is the citation form. The ergative, which may be irregular but typically ends in -i, functions as the stem for all other cases.
There are also 7 or 8 locative case suffixes: -ɂ 'in', -xy 'at', -h 'near / in front', -ɂin 'on', -k 'on', -kk 'under', -q 'behind' and -ghy 'among'. The locative cases may take an additional suffix, allative -na or ablative -an, for 21 or 24 combinations. All of these, as well as the dative, can take a further suffix -di to mark the location as less specific, for 47 to 53 combinations of case suffixes.

Samples

Uwu aldakurawu. "Уву алдакураву." — "You are falling."
Uzuz uwu kkunduzuz. "Узуз уву ккундузуз." — "I love you."
Uwu fudžuwa? "Уву фужува?" — "Who are you?"
Fici wuna? "Фици вуна?" — "How are you?"
Zakur ʕürza. "Закур гъюрза." — "I'll come tomorrow."
Uzu kana qheza. "Узу кана хъэза." — "I'll be back."