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Adyghe phonology

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Adyghe is a language of the Northwest Caucasian family which, like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, is very rich in consonants, featuring many labialized and ejective consonants. Adyghe is phonologically more complex than Kabardian, having the retroflex consonants and their labialized forms.

Consonants

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Adyghe exhibits a large number of consonants: between 50 and 60 consonants in the various Adyghe dialects. Below is the IPA phoneme chart of the consonant phonemes of Adyghe.

Labial Bidental Alveolar Post-
alveolar
Alveolo-
palatal
Retroflex Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal
plain lab. plain lab. lat. plain lab. plain lab. plain lab. pal. plain lab. plain lab. pal.
Nasal m n
Plosive voiceless p t k [a] q ʔ ʔʷ ʔʲ[b]
voiced b d ɡ[c] ɡʷ ɡʲ[a]
ejective pʷʼ tʷʼ kʷʼ kʲʼ[a] [d] qʷʼ[d]
Affricate voiceless t͡s t͡sʷ t͡ʃ t͡ʃʷ[a] t͡ɕ[a] t͡ɕʷ t͡ʂ
voiced d͡z d͡zʷ d͡ʒ d͡ʑ[b] d͡ʑʷ d͡ʐ
ejective t͡sʼ t͡ʃʼ t͡ʂʼ
Fricative voiceless f h̪͆[a] s ɬ ʃ ʃʷ ɕ ɕʷ ʂ x χ χʷ ħ
voiced v[c] z ɮ ʒ ʒʷ ʑ ʑʷ ʐ ɣ ʁ ʁʷ
ejective [a] ɬʼ ʃʼ ʃʷʼ ɕʼ ɕʷʼ
Approximant j w
Trill r
  1. ^ a b c d e f g Found in the Shapsug and Natukhai dialects.
  2. ^ a b Unique to the Abzakh dialect.
  3. ^ a b Non-native consonant.
  4. ^ a b Unique to the Hakuchi dialect.
сщагъ "I carried him to" → счагъ [sət͡ʃaːʁ]
сшӏагъ "I knew": → счӏагъ [sət͡ʂʼaːʁ]
сшӏэрэп "I don't know": → счӏэрэп [sət͡ʂʼɐrɐp]
сшӏошӏыгъ "I thought" → счӏошӏыгъ [sət͡ʂʷʼɐʃʼəʁ]
шъушӏагъ "you (pl.) knew" → шъучӏагъ [ʃʷt͡ʂʼaːʁ].
  • The first and second person prefixes с [s], т [t], п [p] and шъу [ʃʷ] may become voiced з [z], д [d], б [b] and жъу [ʒʷ] before the consonant гъ [ʁ]. For example:
сгъэкӏуагъ "I made him go" → згъэкӏуагъ [zʁɐkʷʼaːʁ]
тгъэкӏуагъ "we made him go" → дгъэкӏуагъ [dʁɐkʷʼaːʁ]
пгъэкӏуагъ "you made him go" → бгъэкӏуагъ [bʁɐkʷʼaːʁ]
шъугъэкӏуагъ "you (pl.) made him go" → жъугъэкӏуагъ [ʒʷʁɐkʷʼaːʁ].
  • The phoneme [f] ⟨ф⟩ found in the Adyghe dialects correspond to [xʷ] ⟨ху⟩ in Kabardian. For example:
тфы [tfə] "five" ↔ тху [txʷə]
фыжьы [fəʑə] "white" ↔ хужь [xʷəʑ]
цӏыфы [t͡sʼəfə] "person" ↔ цӏыху [t͡sʼəxʷ].
  • In many Adyghe dialects (e.g. Bzhedug, Shapsug, Natukhia and Abzakh) there exist [t͡ɕʷ] ⟨чъу⟩ that corresponds to standard Temirgoy [t͡sʷ] ⟨цу⟩. For example, the Temirgoy word цуакъэ [t͡sʷaːqɐ] is чъуакъэ [t͡ɕʷaːqɐ] in the other Adyghe dialects.
  • All dialects possess a contrast between plain and labialized glottal stops. A very unusual minimal contrast, and possibly unique to the Abzakh dialect of Adyghe, is a three-way contrast between plain, labialized and palatalized glottal stops.
  • The Black Sea dialect of Adyghe contains a very uncommon sound: a bidental fricative [h̪͆], which corresponds to the voiceless velar fricative [x] found in other varieties of Adyghe.
  • The Hakuchi dialect of Adyghe contains uvular ejective [qʼ] and a labialized uvular ejective [qʷʼ], which corresponds to the [ʔ] and [ʔʷ] in other dialects.

Vowels

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In contrast to its large consonant inventory, Adyghe has only three phonemic vowels in a classic vertical vowel system. /ə/ and /ɐ/ have varying allophones, whereas /aː/ has a more limited set. Realization of vocalic allophones is based on the surrounding consonants.[6][7][8]

Central
Mid ə
Near-open ɐ
Open
  • Lax vowels /ə, ɐ/ are usually rounded to [ɵ, ɞ] between labialized consonants within the same syllable; fronted to [ɪ, ɛ] in the environment of coronal and palatalized consonants; and retracted to [ɤ, ʌ] in the environment of uvular, pharyngeal and glottal consonants.[7]:16
  • When /ə, ɐ/ are surrounded by a plain and a posterior consonant, they are backed only in the CVC environment.[7]:22

Stress

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Stress in Adyghe is phonemic, in that it is unpredictable.[6] The lexical stress tends to fall on one of two last syllables of the word stem. Longer words can also have multiple stress patterns, as in below:

Orthography / Transliteration: чэлэцъикор / čʼălăcikor
Stress 1:    чэлэцъикор / čʼălăcikor
Stress 2:    чэлэцъикор / čʼălăcikor
Stress 3:    чэлэцъикор / čʼălăcikor
Stress 4:    чэлэцъикор / čʼăcikor
Stress 5:    чэлэцъикор / čʼălăcikor
Blue: Primary stress
Green: Secondary stress

However, the functional load of stress is extremely low, but yet there are pairs that differ optionally.

References

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  1. ^ "Адыгейский язык: Палатализация (смягчение) и аффрикатизация согласных". adygeya-republic.info. 2015-07-13. Archived from the original on 2015-07-13. Retrieved 2023-01-14.
  2. ^ "Адыгейский язык: Переднеязычные мягкие шипящие аффрикаты дж, ч, к1". adygeya-republic.info. 2015-07-13. Archived from the original on 2015-07-13. Retrieved 2023-01-14.
  3. ^ Moroz, George. "Консонантная система уляпского говора в сопоставлении с аналогами других диалектов адыгских языков". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ Studia Caucasologica I page 11 (in English)
  5. ^ "Адыгейский язык: Спирантизация аффрикат". 2015-07-13. Archived from the original on 2015-07-13. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  6. ^ a b Studies in West Circassian Phonology and Morphology
  7. ^ a b c Vowel colouring patterns in Bzhedugh Adyghe
  8. ^ Applebaum, Ayla; Gordon, Matthew (2013). A comparative phonetic study of the Circassian languages. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on Languages of the Caucasus: University of California, Berkeley Linguistics. pp. 3–17.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)