Tsez language
Encyclopedia
Tsez, also known as Dido (цезяс мец cezyas mec or цез мец cez mec in Tsez) is a Northeast Caucasian language
with about 15,354 speakers (2002
) spoken by the Tsez
, a Muslim
people in the mountainous Tsunta district of southern and western Dagestan
in Russia
. The name is said to derive from the Tsez word for "eagle
", which is most likely a folk etymology. The name Dido is derived from the Georgian word დიდი (didi), meaning "big".
Tsez lacks a literary tradition and is poorly represented in written form. Avar
and Russian
are used as literary languages locally, even in schools. However, attempts have been made to develop a stable orthography for the Tsez language as well as its relatives, mainly for the purpose of recording traditional folklore; thus, a Cyrillic
script based on that of Avar is often used. Fluency of Avar is usually higher among men than women, and the younger people tend to be more fluent in Russian than in Tsez, which is probably due to the lack of education in and about the language. Tsez is not taught in school and instead Avar is taught for the first five years, and Russian afterwards. The vocabulary shows many traces of influences of Avar, Georgian
, Arabic
and Russian, mainly through loanwords and, in the case of Russian, even in grammar and style. There are also loanwords of Turkic
origin. These factors may eventually lead to the decline of use of the Tsez language, as it is more and more replaced by Avar and Russian, partly due to loss of traditional culture among the people and the adoption of a Western clothing, technology and architecture.
Tsez grammar was first analyzed by the Georgian linguist Davit Imnaishvili in 1963. Currently, a collection of Tsez folklore texts (written in the Mokok dialect) is in production.
The examples in this article are based on the Tsebari subdialect of Asakh. The Sagada dialect is notable for its divergence from the others.
Hinukh
and Khwarshi
were also once regarded as dialects of the Tsez language, but are now commonly viewed as distinct languages of the same family.
[brackets], Latin
, and Cyrillic
representations.
with a complex morphology. Suffixes are either C, V, CV, VC or C+CV (where the first consonant belongs to the preceding syllable), depending on the structure of the stem. An example is the superessive
suffix -ƛʼ(o), which attached to the word besuro (fish) forms besuro-ƛʼ (on the fish) and together with is (bull) forms is-ƛʼo in order to maintain the syllable restriction.
s are inflected for number
and case
, and have noun classes
assigned to them.
: besuro (fish [sg.]) → besuro-bi (fish [pl.]). For all other cases, the suffix is -za; thus, "of the fish [pl.]" becomes besuro-za-s.
Tsez is an ergative–absolutive language, which means that it makes no distinction between the subject of an intransitive sentence and the object of a transitive one— both are in the unmarked absolutive case; the subject of the transitive sentence is in the ergative case.
According to Ramazan Rajabov, the oblique stem of only 42% of the nouns is different from the absolutive stem. Some nouns change their internal structure (e.g., a vowel), while others add one of about 20 so-called "thematic suffixes" to their end, to which the other case suffixes are attached. The word for "language" or "tongue", for instance, is mec but its oblique stem is mecr-, hence the plural is mecrebi, the ergative mecrā and so on. Rajabov says that the choice of the correct thematic suffix is sometimes difficult even for native speakers. It is likely that their origin lies in an application of two different plural forms, in a similar way as in English the word "children" actually has two archaic plural endings: -(e)r and -en. In Tsez it is sometimes even possible to use both the archaic and the regular and more productive -bi plural for a word.
Of the two genitive cases, the first is used as attribute to an absolutive head noun and the second to an oblique one. That means, that the Genitive 1 is used for phrases like žekʼu-s is (the man's bull), and the Genitive 2 is used for žekʼu-z is-er (for the man's bull).
The Equative 1 is used to make comparisons, like besuro-ce (like a fish) and can also be attached to other cases.
Rajabov suggests 3 more syntactical cases, namely possessive
1 (-łay), possessive 2 (-xu) and abessive
(-tay). However, their status is debatable, as they seem to show both inflectional as well as derivational tendencies.
Of the forms, the upper one shows the non-distal (i.e., close), the lower one the distal (i.e., far) form of the suffix. In the non-distal there are sometimes two equal forms for the allative case. The epenthetic vowel o in parentheses is used after noun stems ending in a consonant; thus, "next to the bull" is is-xo, while "next to the fish" is besuro-x.
es in the singular and 2 in the plural. They are prefixes that are attached to verbs, adjectives, adverbs, several postpositions like -oƛƛʼo ("between") or -iłe ("like") and the emphatic particle -uy to show agreement with the noun. Agreement is only possible on vowel-initial words or words that begin with a pharyngealized vowel, but there are also a few words beginning with a vowel that do not take these prefixes.
As inanimate objects cover the classes II, III and IV, it's not transparent into which class an inanimate object belongs. However, there are certain tendencies based on the semantic field of the nouns. Nouns that are able to move (like sun, moon, star, lightning, car, train) usually belong to class III, while products that traditionally have to do with the work of women (like clothes or berries and also milk) often belong to class II. Clothes made from leather are — as the word for leather itself — usually assigned to class III, due to their relation to animals. Class IV originally included abstract words, collective and mass nouns, such as water, salt, sky or wind. Materials also often seem to trigger noun classes: "chair" and "wood" are both class IV nouns. Also shape seems to have an influence (flat things are associated with class II, round things with class III and long things with class IV). In the same manner, proper names are assigned the classes of the nouns they denote. Thus, Patʼi ("Fatima") is assigned class II, because it's a female name, and Asaq (a Tsez village) belongs to class III, because "village" (ʕaƛʼ) is also in this group. Likewise, new loan words are assigned the noun class of a semantically similar existing Tsez word. It may be worth noting that experiments have shown that Tsez speakers do not assign any noun classes to new words for objects they do not know or where they do not know what they look like.
Certain derivational endings also require a specific noun class, see the section about derivation below.
Verbs and adverbs always agree with the absolutive argument of the phrase, regardless of the clause's transitivity.
If more than one absolutive argument is linked by the conjunction -n(o) ("and") and one of them is of the first noun class, then class I plural triggers the agreement for the clause; otherwise, it is class II/III/IV plural. Compare:
and
are suffixes that are attached to the corresponding noun. They inflect for noun classes, number and case and make a two-way distinction into proximal (close, English: "this/these") and distal (far, English: "that/those"), the latter of which are also used as third person pronouns.
The oblique forms are used attributively and also as a base to which other (oblique) case suffixes can be attached.
make a distinction between human ("who?") and non-human ("what?") only in the oblique forms, but not in the absolutive. The non-human interrogative pronouns require the class IV affix when triggering agreement.
Interrogative pronouns that are replacing an adjunct (as, for instance, "when?" or "why?") usually occur at the beginning of the sentence, while those replacing arguments ("who?", "what?", etc.) often stay in the position of the replaced word. However, they can be fronted as well for the purpose of discourse-specific linking. Thus, a fronted šebi might be translated as "Which...?" instead of "What...?".
Other interrogative pronouns include:
, the only truly irregular verb is "to be" with some forms being yoł (present), ānu (present negative), zow- (past), etc. There are 4 morphological groups, according to the final phoneme of the stem: The first group ends in a consonant, the second in i, the third in -u and the fourth group contains the verbs with the variable ending -d (before a vowel) / -y (elsewhere).
forms in the indicative mood, shown in the following table with examples for verbs with vocalic and consonantal stem endings. The past forms make an evidentiality
distinction.
s behave like adjectives and only vary according to the class agreement, which gets attached to them as prefixes. There are several different kinds of participles in the Tsez language:
Converbs, like gerund
s and verbal adverbs, are very numerous in Tsez. The following list gives only an incomplete account. The table illustrates the relationship between the temporal converb (C) and the main verb (V):
suffix is -(e)r. Again, the epenthetic vowel is dropped when the stem ends in a vowel or if another suffix starting with a vowel is attached. Together with the definite future suffixes -an, for instance, the epenthetic vowel has to be dropped: iš-er ("let him eat"), but iš-r-an ("will let him eat").
, most of them occurring as clitic
s. The particle -tow shows general emphasis while -kin shows general emphasis and focusing. A contrastively topicalized constituent is marked by the particle -gon. Being clitics, they can be attached to any part of speech. There is also a quotation particle that is used in direct reported speech and appears as the suffix -ƛin that always appears at the end of the quoted phrase or sentence. Example: Di žekʼu yołƛin eƛix kʼetʼā ("'I am a man', says the cat"). There are also other free particles like hudu ("yes, so") or āy ("no").
The following list is a selection of suffixes used to form nouns from other parts of speech as well as other nouns.
The following suffixes can be used to derive adjectives from other words:
Some verb-forming suffixes, like the causative and potential derivatives, have already been mentioned in the section about the verbal morphology. Other examples include:
Another common way to derive new words is reduplication
, which can derive nouns, as well as adjectives and verbs. In reduplicating nouns, the initial syllable can often undergo a change, as in xisi-basi "changes" or bix-mix (herbs). It is used to intensify adjectives (e.g. r-očʼi-r-očʼiy "very cold") and verbs (e.g. -okʼ-okʼ- "to stab repeatedly") but is also used for onomatopoeia (e.g. ħi-ħi "neigh").
Another highly productive way of forming verbs is the combination of a word (often a loan from Arabic or Avar) and the Tsez verbs -oq- ("to stay, to become") or -od- ("to do"), although some combinations can also be formed with other verbs. Note that only the second word is inflected, while the first one remains uninflected. Some examples are:
s (NP) per definition have a nominal head, which can be a noun, a pronoun or a substantivized expression such as a participle with the nominalizer -łi, verbal noun
s (masdars) or substantivized restrictive adjectives (as in English: "the older one") — the latter one bears the suffix -ni directly after the adjective stem. They all inflect for case.
As Tsez is a head-last
language, all modifiers precede the head noun and agree with it in class. The neutral order of modifiers is usually:
Note that the order of element number 4, 5 and 6 may vary:
Modifiers can also include oblique noun phrases, which then take one of the two genitive suffixes depending on the case of the head noun: -si for absolutive, -zo for oblique head nouns. Compare:
and
s (VP) are phrases whose head is a verb or a copula. Verbs can have different transitivities that directly affect the case distribution for their nominal arguments.
and
An example phrase would be: is b-exu-s ("the bull died").
Both arguments, the agent as well as the patient, can be omitted if they are clear from the context.
nature of the transfer of possession or information: if it's a permanent transfer (e.g. "to give (as a present)"), the recipient takes the dative/lative case (ending in -(e)r), if it's a non-permanent transfer (e.g. "to lend") or if it's incomplete, the recipient takes any of the locative cases. Two examples illustrate the difference:
Permanent transfer:
Temporary transfer:
constructions ("to make/let someone do something") are formed by the causative suffix -r. It increases the valency
of any verb by 1. If a ditransitive verb is formed from a transitive one, the causee (i.e. the argument that is subject and object at the same time) appears in the possessive case (-q(o)); see the example below (the e before the causative suffix is an epenthetic vowel):
Agent/Experiencer — Recipient — Patient — Locative — Instrument
The order can be changed to emphasize single noun phrases.
Although in general, the underlying word order is SOV (subject–object–verb), the predicate tends to be in the middle of the sentence rather than at the end of it. This word order seems to become increasingly common in daily speech. For narrative use, a VSO word order is sometimes used as well.
For the imperative, prohibitive and optative form, see the same section on verb morphology above.
"and") is rare in the Tsez language. Noun phrases are coordinated by adding the suffix -n (after vowels) or -no (after consonants) to all items of the enumeration, thus "the hen and the rooster" is onuču-n mamalay-no. In conditional sentences the conjunction "then" may be expressed by the word yołi:
The following examples show how different arguments (examples 2, 3 and 4) and an adverbial adjunct (example 5) are relativized from the underlying sentence in example 1:
Example 1 (standard):
Example 2 (relativized agent):
Example 3 (relativized patient):
Example 4 (relativized recipient):
Example 5 (relativized adjunct):
Temporal adverbial clauses describe a chronological sequence of two actions, as in English "Before it started to rain, we were home." or "We talked, while we were going.". In Tsez this relation is marked by verbal suffixes that turn one verb into a converb. See the table for converb suffixes in the "Non-finite forms" part of the verb morphology section.
Local adverbial clauses use locative converbs, which are also formed by adding a suffix to the verb. This suffix is -z-ā- and the vowel before the last consonant of the verb itself is lengthened to ā. This converb forms the head of the local phrase and can thus receive a locative suffix that is normally used on nouns.
Causal adverbial clauses, which in English are usually expressed using "because", "as", "when", "since" or "that", receive the converb suffix -xoy, -za-ƛʼ or -za-q.
There are more kinds of adverbial clauses, see the part "Non-finite forms" in the verb morphology section for more example suffixes.
Cardinal numbers (as in English "one, two, three") precede the nouns, which then do not stand in their plural forms but in the singular instead; e.g.: uyno is ("four oxen").
Ordinal numbers (as in English "first, second, third") are constructed by combining the cardinal numbers with the word āƛiru. Hence, qʼˤano āƛiru ɣudi means "the second day".
Adverbial numbers (as in English "once, twice, thrice") are constructed by replacing the suffix -no by -x, thus "twice" becomes the adverb qʼˤa-x in Tsez. Expressions like "(for) the second time" are formed using the adverbial number suffix -x and ordinal forming marker āƛiru, thus resulting in the form qʼˤax āƛiru.
Zewnoƛax zewčʼeyƛax bˤeƛon bocʼin zirun qayno. Sidaquł šigoħno sadaqorno boyno ħukmu: yaqułtow begira bocʼi ħonƛʼār miƛʼeł xizāz xizyo rišʷa yoł. Bˤeƛā begirno qay łˤāł xizāz, bocʼin zirun regirno ħonƛʼār miƛʼeł xizāz. Ɣudod, žedi raynosi beƛʼez reqenyoxor, ziru boqno uhi-ehƛada buq boƛāxzāzarno boqno. Zirus uhi-ehi teqxoy, ɣʷaybi kʼoƛin elār, bocʼi buq bātuzāzarno boqno bikʼin reqenyoƛer, besurno ƛʼarayaw miƛʼi. Miƛʼin bisno bocʼin zirun xizor rutin qʼayƛʼār. Rizirno cʼidoƛʼor ƛoħon begirno łāƛʼor qay. Kikxogon zewno bočʼikʼxo kʼetʼu. Qayir zewāčʼey rikʷayxo; nešuruxay nełor rikʷayxo zewčʼey. Kʼetʼu, ełor baynosi qay, boqno kʼekʼbikʼa. Kʼekʼbikʼni teqnosi, qay łikin rixerčʼeytow boxin xizor. Bˤeƛā esirno: "Šidā boxā rayirčʼey łin?" Elo didiyƛa žekʼu yoł-ƛin eƛin qayā. Aħugon rikʼin łāxor zirun qayno. Žedi raynosi kikxor žedā esirno kʼetuq: "Mi šebi?" Di žekʼu yoł-ƛin eƛin kʼetʼā. Šebi že debez ħiroƛʼ esirxo zirā. Tupi ƛin eƛix kʼetʼā. Dicce rˤuƛʼno zirun qayno, amma biyxoy kʼetʼu yāłru, xizyo łˤonon zenzi rikʼin raħira reƛ. Bˤeƛo buqełno bičin ažoz kʼodrexāzay, rołikʼno aħyabin kecno, kʼetʼu tataniłxo zewno cʼidox. Bˤeƛā kʼekʼrikʼerxo zewno aħyabi. Že rikʷayxoy, kʼetʼuz rokʼƛʼor rayno, že elo aw ƛin, hudu betʼtʼun kʼoƛin elor. Dicce bˤuƛʼzāq bˤeƛqo regin ixiytʼatow qˤaƛubin, boxin ciqxār. Bocʼezno qayizno, ziruzno rokʼƛʼor rayno baysi bāsu ixiytow ħaywan šebin, nełoq že riqičʼey kʼiriłno roxin. Cʼikʼiy reƛ miƛes ƛexun kʼetʼur. ʕoƛiran ɣˤudeł kʼetʼu bišno, racʼno baɣʷace dawla bocʼesno zirusno.
Once upon a time there were a pig, a wolf, a fox and a hare. One day they gathered together and decided that today they would send the wolf into the mountains for a sheep and they would eat. The pig sent the hare for water and sent the wolf and the fox into the mountain for a ram. At night, when they came to the flock of sheep, the fox began to moan from the eastern side. Since they heard the fox's moaning, the dogs ran in that direction and the wolf went towards the flock from the west and found a fat ram. Having taken the ram, the wolf and the fox returned to the camp. They put the pan on the fire and sent the hare for water. At the spring the cat was freezing. The hare couldn't see; at night the hare couldn't see. When the hare arrived there, the cat began to move. When he heard the movement, the hare ran back without taking any water. The pig asked: "Why did you run away without bringing water?" The hare said that there was some man there. Again the fox and the hare went to the water. When they came to the spring, they asked the cat: "What are you?" — "I am a man", said the cat. "What is that on your shoulder?", asks the fox. "A rifle", says the cat. The fox and the hare were very frightened, but since they knew it was a cat, afterwards the three of them went together to cook meat. The pig hid behind a bunch of trees and, pushing out its ears, slept, and the cat was warming itself by the fire. The pig was moving its ears. Since the cat saw it, it thought it was a mouse and in a rush jumped there. The pig was very frightened and, emitting loud shouts, ran away to the forest. The wolf, the hare and the fox thought that a great animal or something was coming and, one running faster than the other, they ran away. All the ram's meat was left to the cat. For seven days the cat ate, ate until it was full the spoils of the wolf and the fox.
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages constitute a language family spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, northern Azerbaijan, and in northeastern Georgia, as well as in diaspora populations in Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East...
with about 15,354 speakers (2002
Russian Census (2002)
Russian Census of 2002 was the first census of the Russian Federation carried out on October 9 through October 16, 2002. It was carried out by the Russian Federal Service of State Statistics .-Resident population:...
) spoken by the Tsez
Tsez people
The Tsez are an indigenous people of the North Caucasus, also known as the Dido or the Didoi. Their unwritten language, also called Tsez or Dido, belongs to the Northeast Caucasian group with some 15,354 speakers. For demographic purposes, today they are classified with the Avars with whom the...
, a Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
people in the mountainous Tsunta district of southern and western Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. The name is said to derive from the Tsez word for "eagle
Eagle
Eagles are members of the bird family Accipitridae, and belong to several genera which are not necessarily closely related to each other. Most of the more than 60 species occur in Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just two species can be found in the United States and Canada, nine more in...
", which is most likely a folk etymology. The name Dido is derived from the Georgian word დიდი (didi), meaning "big".
Tsez lacks a literary tradition and is poorly represented in written form. Avar
Avar language
The modern Avar language belongs to the Avar–Andic group of the Northeast Caucasian language family....
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
are used as literary languages locally, even in schools. However, attempts have been made to develop a stable orthography for the Tsez language as well as its relatives, mainly for the purpose of recording traditional folklore; thus, a Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
script based on that of Avar is often used. Fluency of Avar is usually higher among men than women, and the younger people tend to be more fluent in Russian than in Tsez, which is probably due to the lack of education in and about the language. Tsez is not taught in school and instead Avar is taught for the first five years, and Russian afterwards. The vocabulary shows many traces of influences of Avar, Georgian
Georgian language
Georgian is the native language of the Georgians and the official language of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.Georgian is the primary language of about 4 million people in Georgia itself, and of another 500,000 abroad...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and Russian, mainly through loanwords and, in the case of Russian, even in grammar and style. There are also loanwords of Turkic
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
origin. These factors may eventually lead to the decline of use of the Tsez language, as it is more and more replaced by Avar and Russian, partly due to loss of traditional culture among the people and the adoption of a Western clothing, technology and architecture.
Tsez grammar was first analyzed by the Georgian linguist Davit Imnaishvili in 1963. Currently, a collection of Tsez folklore texts (written in the Mokok dialect) is in production.
Dialects
Tsez can be divided into the following dialects, with their Tsez names given in parentheses:- Asakh (Asaq)
- Tsebari (Ceboru)
- Mokok (Newo)
- Kidero (Kidiro)
- Shaytl (Ešiƛʼ)
- Shapikh (Šopix)
- Sagada (Soƛʼo)
The examples in this article are based on the Tsebari subdialect of Asakh. The Sagada dialect is notable for its divergence from the others.
Hinukh
Hinukh language
The Hinukh language is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Tsezic subgroup. It is spoken by about 200 to 500 people, the Hinukhs, in the Tsunta district of southwestern Dagestan, mainly in the village of Genukh...
and Khwarshi
Khwarshi language
Khwarshi, also spelled 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...
were also once regarded as dialects of the Tsez language, but are now commonly viewed as distinct languages of the same family.
Phonology
Each phoneme is listed with its IPAInternational Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
[brackets], Latin
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, and Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
representations.
Consonants
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Dental | Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Uvular Uvular consonant Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives, fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and... |
Pharyngeal Pharyngeal consonant A pharyngeal consonant is a type of consonant which is articulated with the root of the tongue against the pharynx.-Pharyngeal consonants in the IPA:Pharyngeal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet :... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &... |
[p] [b] [pʼ] p b pʼ п б пІ |
[t] [d] [tʼ] t d tʼ т д тІ |
[k] [ɡ] [kʼ] k g kʼ к г кІ |
[qʼ] qʼ къ |
||||
| Affricates Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
[t͡s] [t͡sʼ] c cʼ ц цІ |
[t͡ɬ] [t͡ɬʼ] ƛ ƛʼ лІ кь |
[t͡ʃ] [t͡ʃʼ] č čʼ ч чІ |
[q͡χ] q хъ |
||||
| Fricatives Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
[s] [z] s z с з |
[ɬ] ł лъ |
[ʃ] [ʒ] š ž ш ж |
[χ] [ʁ] x ɣ х гъ |
[ħ] [ʕ] ħ ʕ хІ гІ |
[h] h гь |
||
| Nasals Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
[m] m м |
[n] n н |
||||||
| Liquids Liquid consonant In phonetics, liquids or liquid consonants are a class of consonants consisting of lateral consonants together with rhotics.-Description:... |
[r] r р |
[l] l л |
||||||
| Semivowel Semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:... s |
[w] w в |
[j] y й |
- Tsez shows an inventory of 33 consonants.
- The glottal stopGlottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
([ʔ]) is not phonemic but occurs automatically before non-pharyngealized vowels in word-initial position. - Consonant clusters are often broken up by inserting the epentheticEpenthesisIn phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....
vowel [e]. After [j], the inserted vowel is [i]. - Word-initial consonants can be pharyngealized and are marked as such in the proposed orthography by a small [ˤ] following the consonant; in the Cyrillic spelling a palochkaPalochkaPalochka is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. This letter usually has only a capital form, which is also used in lowercase text. The capital form of Palochka often looks like the capital form of the Cyrillic letter Dotted I , the capital form of the Latin letter I , and the lowercase form of the...
("" or "I") is used after the vowel that follows the consonant.- A syllable-final pharyngealization of the consonant is transcribed in Cyrillic with Cʼ (where C stands for a consonant) and with VCˤ in the Latin transcription (the V stands for a vowel). Some dictionaries write this as VIC though, which makes the sequence CVIC ambiguous (see below).
- A syllable-initial pharyngealization of the consonant is transcribed in Cyrillic with CVI (the palochkaPalochkaPalochka is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. This letter usually has only a capital form, which is also used in lowercase text. The capital form of Palochka often looks like the capital form of the Cyrillic letter Dotted I , the capital form of the Latin letter I , and the lowercase form of the...
follows the vowel, since the pharyngealization actually affects it more than the preceding consonant) and with CˤV in the Latin transcription. - The pharyngealization itself is reported to be epiglottalEpiglotto-pharyngeal consonantAn epiglotto-pharyngeal consonant is a newly reported type of consonant, articulated with the epiglottis against the back wall of the pharynx. This contrasts with the pharyngeal consonants, where the root of the tongue contacts the back wall of the pharynx, and prototypical epiglottal consonants,...
.
- Labialized consonants are written as Cв in the Cyrillic and as Cʷ in the Latin transcription, respectively. Any consonant besides /n, l, j, ʕ/ and the bilabials can be labialized.
Vowels
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| High | [i] i и |
[u] u у |
|
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
[e̞] e е/э |
[o̞] o о |
|
| Low | [a] ([aː]) a (ā) а (а̄) |
- The Tsebari dialect has only one long vowel ā.
- A vowel is dropped before another vowel, so there are never two consecutive vowels. However, a final -u labializes the preceding consonant, if followed by a vowel.
- Word-initial e is spelled э in Cyrillic.
- In the proposed Cyrillic orthography, ya, yo, yu can also be written as я, ё, ю.
- In the Asakh dialect, lengthened vowels are automatically neutralized to ā. Other dialects (e.g. Mokok) also have a low front vowel ([æ]), usually transcribed as ä in Latin and аь in Cyrillic, some also have a long mid back rounded vowel ([o]), transcribed as ō.
Phonotactics
The syllable structure is generally CV(C). There are no vowel clusters. It is an agglutinative languageAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
with a complex morphology. Suffixes are either C, V, CV, VC or C+CV (where the first consonant belongs to the preceding syllable), depending on the structure of the stem. An example is the superessive
Superessive case
The Superessive case is a grammatical declension indicating location on top of, or on the surface of something. Its name comes from Latin supersum, superesse: to be over and above....
suffix -ƛʼ(o), which attached to the word besuro (fish) forms besuro-ƛʼ (on the fish) and together with is (bull) forms is-ƛʼo in order to maintain the syllable restriction.
Nouns
NounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s are inflected for number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
and case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
, and have noun classes
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
assigned to them.
Number
Nouns can either be singular or plural. The plural is formed by adding -bi to the stem in the absolutive caseAbsolutive case
The absolutive case is the unmarked grammatical case of a core argument of a verb which is used as the citation form of a noun.-In ergative languages:...
: besuro (fish [sg.]) → besuro-bi (fish [pl.]). For all other cases, the suffix is -za; thus, "of the fish [pl.]" becomes besuro-za-s.
Case
There are eight syntactical and a much larger number of locative cases, which distinguish three categories: location, orientation, and direction. Thus, counting the locative and non-locative cases together, there are a total of 64 cases.Tsez is an ergative–absolutive language, which means that it makes no distinction between the subject of an intransitive sentence and the object of a transitive one— both are in the unmarked absolutive case; the subject of the transitive sentence is in the ergative case.
According to Ramazan Rajabov, the oblique stem of only 42% of the nouns is different from the absolutive stem. Some nouns change their internal structure (e.g., a vowel), while others add one of about 20 so-called "thematic suffixes" to their end, to which the other case suffixes are attached. The word for "language" or "tongue", for instance, is mec but its oblique stem is mecr-, hence the plural is mecrebi, the ergative mecrā and so on. Rajabov says that the choice of the correct thematic suffix is sometimes difficult even for native speakers. It is likely that their origin lies in an application of two different plural forms, in a similar way as in English the word "children" actually has two archaic plural endings: -(e)r and -en. In Tsez it is sometimes even possible to use both the archaic and the regular and more productive -bi plural for a word.
Syntactic case suffixes
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Absolutive Absolutive case The absolutive case is the unmarked grammatical case of a core argument of a verb which is used as the citation form of a noun.-In ergative languages:... |
-∅ | -bi |
| Ergative Ergative case The ergative case is the grammatical case that identifies the subject of a transitive verb in ergative-absolutive languages.-Characteristics:... |
-ā | -z-ā |
| Genitive 1 Genitive case In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun... |
-(e)s | -za-s |
| Genitive 2 Genitive case In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun... |
-(e)z | -za-z |
| Dative Dative case The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink".... |
-(e)r | -za-r |
| Instrumental Instrumental case The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action... |
-(e)d | -za-d |
| Equative 1 Equative case Equative is a case with the meaning of comparison, or likening. The equative case has been used in very few languages in history. It was used in the Sumerian language.... |
-ce | -za-ce |
| Equative 2 Equative case Equative is a case with the meaning of comparison, or likening. The equative case has been used in very few languages in history. It was used in the Sumerian language.... |
-qʼāy | -za-qʼāy |
Of the two genitive cases, the first is used as attribute to an absolutive head noun and the second to an oblique one. That means, that the Genitive 1 is used for phrases like žekʼu-s is (the man's bull), and the Genitive 2 is used for žekʼu-z is-er (for the man's bull).
The Equative 1 is used to make comparisons, like besuro-ce (like a fish) and can also be attached to other cases.
Rajabov suggests 3 more syntactical cases, namely possessive
Possessive case
The possessive case of a language is a grammatical case used to indicate a relationship of possession. It is not the same as the genitive case, which can express a wider range of relationships, though the two have similar meanings in many languages.See Possession for a survey of the different...
1 (-łay), possessive 2 (-xu) and abessive
Abessive case
In linguistics, abessive , caritive and privative are names for a grammatical case expressing the lack or absence of the marked noun...
(-tay). However, their status is debatable, as they seem to show both inflectional as well as derivational tendencies.
Locative case suffixes
| Essive Essive case The essive or similaris case carries the meaning of a temporary location or state of being, often equivalent to the English "as a ".In the Finnish language, this case is marked by adding "-na/-nä" to the stem of the noun.... |
Lative Lative case Lative is a case which indicates motion to a location. It corresponds to the English prepositions "to" and "into". The lative case belongs to the group of the general local cases together with the locative and separative case... |
Ablative Ablative case In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ... |
Allative Allative case Allative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.-Finnish language:In the Finnish language, the allative is the fifth of the locative cases, with the... 1 |
meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In— | -ā -āz |
-ā-r -āz-a-r |
-āy -āz-ay |
-āɣor -āz-a |
= in (a hollow object) |
| Cont— | -ł -ł-āz |
-ł-er -ł-āz-a-r |
-ł-āy -ł-āz-ay |
-ł-xor -ł-āz-a |
= in (a mass), among |
| Super— | -ƛʼ(o) -ƛʼ-āz |
-ƛʼo-r -ƛʼ-āz-a-r |
-ƛʼ-āy -ƛʼ-āz-ay |
-ƛʼ-āɣor, -ƛʼ-ār -ƛʼ-āz-a |
= on (horizontal) |
| Sub— | -ƛ -ƛ-āz |
-ƛ-er -ƛ-āz-a-r |
-ƛ-āy -ƛ-āz-ay |
-ƛ-xor -ƛ-āz-a |
= under |
| Ad— | -x(o) -x-āz |
-xo-r -x-āz-a-r |
-x-āy -x-āz-ay |
-x-āɣor, -x-ā-r -x-āz-a |
= at |
| Apud— | -de -d-āz |
-de-r -d-āz-a-r |
-d-āy -d-āz-ay |
-d-āɣor, -d-ā-r -d-āz-a |
= near |
| Poss— | -q(o) -q-āz |
-qo-r -q-āz-a-r |
-q-āy -q-āz-ay |
-q-āɣor, -q-ā-r -q-āz-a |
= on (vertical) |
| meaning | = at (position) | = to (destination) | = from (origin) | = towards (direction) |
- The allative case is also called 'versative'. In the distal paradigm, it is used in the sense of "behind" or "beyond" and is then called 'posterior'.
Of the forms, the upper one shows the non-distal (i.e., close), the lower one the distal (i.e., far) form of the suffix. In the non-distal there are sometimes two equal forms for the allative case. The epenthetic vowel o in parentheses is used after noun stems ending in a consonant; thus, "next to the bull" is is-xo, while "next to the fish" is besuro-x.
Noun classes
Tsez distinguishes 4 noun classNoun class
In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...
es in the singular and 2 in the plural. They are prefixes that are attached to verbs, adjectives, adverbs, several postpositions like -oƛƛʼo ("between") or -iłe ("like") and the emphatic particle -uy to show agreement with the noun. Agreement is only possible on vowel-initial words or words that begin with a pharyngealized vowel, but there are also a few words beginning with a vowel that do not take these prefixes.
| Class | Singular | Plural | Attribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | ∅- | b- | for male persons only |
| II | y- | r- | for female persons and inanimate objects (e.g. "book") |
| III | b- | for animals and inanimate objects (e.g. "sun") | |
| IV | r- | for inanimate objects only (e.g. "water") |
As inanimate objects cover the classes II, III and IV, it's not transparent into which class an inanimate object belongs. However, there are certain tendencies based on the semantic field of the nouns. Nouns that are able to move (like sun, moon, star, lightning, car, train) usually belong to class III, while products that traditionally have to do with the work of women (like clothes or berries and also milk) often belong to class II. Clothes made from leather are — as the word for leather itself — usually assigned to class III, due to their relation to animals. Class IV originally included abstract words, collective and mass nouns, such as water, salt, sky or wind. Materials also often seem to trigger noun classes: "chair" and "wood" are both class IV nouns. Also shape seems to have an influence (flat things are associated with class II, round things with class III and long things with class IV). In the same manner, proper names are assigned the classes of the nouns they denote. Thus, Patʼi ("Fatima") is assigned class II, because it's a female name, and Asaq (a Tsez village) belongs to class III, because "village" (ʕaƛʼ) is also in this group. Likewise, new loan words are assigned the noun class of a semantically similar existing Tsez word. It may be worth noting that experiments have shown that Tsez speakers do not assign any noun classes to new words for objects they do not know or where they do not know what they look like.
Certain derivational endings also require a specific noun class, see the section about derivation below.
Verbs and adverbs always agree with the absolutive argument of the phrase, regardless of the clause's transitivity.
If more than one absolutive argument is linked by the conjunction -n(o) ("and") and one of them is of the first noun class, then class I plural triggers the agreement for the clause; otherwise, it is class II/III/IV plural. Compare:
| kid-no | uži-n | b-ay-si | ||||
| girl[II]:ABS-and | boy[I]:ABS-and | IPL-come-PSTWIT | ||||
| "A girl and a boy arrived." | ||||||
and
| kid-no | meši-n | r-ay-si | ||||
| girl[II]:ABS-and | calf[III]:ABS-and | IIPL-come-PSTWIT | ||||
| "A girl and a calf arrived." | ||||||
Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns exist in Tsez only for the first and second person; for the third person the demonstratives že (singular) and žedi (plural) are used. As the singular personal pronouns have the same form in absolutive and ergative, a sentence like Di mi okʼsi is ambiguous, because it can both mean "I hit you" and "You hit me", due to the rather free word order. However, they have a different form for the oblique cases and an irregular form in the genitive 1 case, the same as the plural pronouns. The singular pronouns also have the same forms for all four noun classes, while the plurals make this distinction, as shown in the chart below.| class I | class II-IV | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st person singular | abs. & erg. | di | |
| oblique | dā- | ||
| genitive 1 | dey | ||
| 2nd person singular | abs. & erg | mi | |
| oblique | debe-1 dow-2 |
||
| genitive 1 | debi | ||
| 1st person plural | absolutive | eli | ela |
| oblique | elu- | ela- | |
| special gen. 13 | eli | ||
| special gen. 23 | eliz | ||
| 2nd person plural | absolutive | meži | meža |
| oblique | mežu- | meža- | |
| special gen. 13 | meži | ||
| special gen. 23 | mežiz |
- This form is used before a syllable-final consonant, such as the suffix -r.
- This form is used before a syllable-initial consonant, such as the suffix -de.
- The special forms of the two genitives is used when the possessor is a close group, typically a family, thus eli eniy is used for "our mother" instead of elus eniy. The plural demonstrative žedi ("they") also shows this feature, being žedi in the close group genitive 1 and žediz in the close group genitive 2. For ordinary possessors these forms would be žedus and žeduz, respectively.
- There is also a reflexive personal pronoun, meaning "self" or "oneself", which is žo and ne- in its oblique form, respectively.
Demonstrative pronouns
Demonstrative pronounsDemonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
are suffixes that are attached to the corresponding noun. They inflect for noun classes, number and case and make a two-way distinction into proximal (close, English: "this/these") and distal (far, English: "that/those"), the latter of which are also used as third person pronouns.
The oblique forms are used attributively and also as a base to which other (oblique) case suffixes can be attached.
| Singular | Plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Class I | Class II-IV | Class I | Class II-IV | ||
| Proximal | Absolutive | -da | -du | -ziri | |
| Oblique | -si | -ła-, -ł1 | -zi | -za | |
| Distal | Absolutive | že | žedi | ||
| Oblique | nesi | neło, neł1 | žedu | žeda | |
- The -ł forms are used optionally after vowels at the end of words.
Interrogative pronouns
Interrogative pronounsInterrogative word
In linguistics, an interrogative word is a function word used for the item interrupted in an information statement. Interrogative words are sometimes called wh-words because most of English interrogative words start with wh-...
make a distinction between human ("who?") and non-human ("what?") only in the oblique forms, but not in the absolutive. The non-human interrogative pronouns require the class IV affix when triggering agreement.
Interrogative pronouns that are replacing an adjunct (as, for instance, "when?" or "why?") usually occur at the beginning of the sentence, while those replacing arguments ("who?", "what?", etc.) often stay in the position of the replaced word. However, they can be fronted as well for the purpose of discourse-specific linking. Thus, a fronted šebi might be translated as "Which...?" instead of "What...?".
| Human | Non-human | |
|---|---|---|
| Absolutive | šebi | |
| Oblique | łā | łina |
| Ergative | łu | łinā |
Other interrogative pronouns include:
- dice ("how much?")
- didiyu ("which?")
- didur ("how?")
- łina-s ("why?"), this seems to be the genitive 1 form of the non-human oblique interrogative pronoun
- nā ("where?"), stem na-
- neti ("when?")
- šidā ("why?")
- šomo ("how many?")
Verbs
Tsez has a rich verbal morphology with many categories. Despite the great variety in conjugationGrammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
, the only truly irregular verb is "to be" with some forms being yoł (present), ānu (present negative), zow- (past), etc. There are 4 morphological groups, according to the final phoneme of the stem: The first group ends in a consonant, the second in i, the third in -u and the fourth group contains the verbs with the variable ending -d (before a vowel) / -y (elsewhere).
Tense-aspect-mood
There are five tenseGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
forms in the indicative mood, shown in the following table with examples for verbs with vocalic and consonantal stem endings. The past forms make an evidentiality
Evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists. An evidential is the particular grammatical element that indicates evidentiality...
distinction.
| Form | Suffix | With -iš- ("to eat") | With -esu- ("to find") |
|---|---|---|---|
| past unwitnessed | -n(o) | -iš-no "ate" | -esu-n "found" |
| past witnessed | -s(i) | -iš-si "ate" | -esu-s "found" |
| present | -x(o) | -iš-xo "eat" | -esu-x "find" |
| future definite | -an | -iš-an "will eat" | -esʷ-an "will find" |
| future indefinite | shift of the vowel in the stem before the last consonant to ā |
-āš "will eat" | -āsu "will find" |
- In interrogative sentences (English "wh-questions"), the past witnessed suffix is -ā instead of -s(i). In yes-no questions, the finite verb receives the additional ending -ā, except for the past witnessed form, which receives the ending -iyā (after consonants) or -yā (after vowels).
- Of the two different future tenses, the definite one bears the connotation of being wanted by the speaker ("I want and I will...") and is only used with the first person, while the indefinite one (simply "will") tends to be used with second and third.
- Other moods are formed as follows:
- The imperativeImperative moodThe imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
has no suffix for intransitive verbs (e.g. -ikʼi! "go!") and the suffix -o for transitive verbs (e.g. -tʼetʼr-o! "read!"); the verb is usually put in the first position in the phrase then. - The optativeOptative moodThe optative mood is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and closely related to the subjunctive mood....
adds a -ƛ to the imperative form, e.g. tʼetʼr-o-ƛ! ("let him read!").
- The imperative
- There is also a great variety of analytical forms for verbs often exhibiting aspectualGrammatical aspectIn linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
meaning:- emphatic future = infinitive + "to be" (present tense); e.g. -ikʼ-a yoł ("shall go")
- continuous aspect = imperfect gerund + "to be" (in its appropriate tense-aspect form); e.g. -ikʼi-x zow-si ("was going")
- perfective aspectPerfective aspectThe perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
= perfect gerund + "to be"; e.g. -ikʼi-n zow-si ("had gone") - perfect = resultative participle + "to be"; e.g. -ikʼ-āsi zow-si ("had gone")
- intentive = present participle + "to be"; e.g. -ikʼi-xo-si zow-si ("intended to go")
- resultative = imperfective/perfective gerund + resultative participle of -iči- ("be located") + "to be"; e.g. ikʼi-n -ič-ā-si zow-si ("was gone") or ikʼi-x -ič-ā-si zow-si ("was in the state of being on his way hence")
Negation
The basic negation suffix in the indicative is -čʼV with V being a vowel that can be different, depending on the tense/aspect/mood of the verb; it is inserted after the verb stem. With the example verb -ikʼi- ("to go"), the following forms are possible:| Form | Negation Suffix | With -ikʼi- ("to go") |
|---|---|---|
| past unwitnessed negative | -čʼey- | -ikʼi-čʼey "didn't go" |
| past witnessed negative | -čʼu- | -ikʼi-čʼu-s or -ikʼi-čʼu "didn't go" |
| present negative | -ānu- (present negative of "to be") | -ikʼi-x-ānu "doesn't go" |
| future definite negative | -čʼi- | -ikʼ-ā-čʼi-n "won't go" |
| future indefinite negative | -čʼi- | -ākʼi-čʼi "won't go" (vowel shift!) |
- The prohibitive (i.e., the negative imperative) is expressed by adding the suffix -no to the future indefinite form of the verb, e.g. -āš-no! ("don't eat!").
- The negative optative form simply adds a -ƛ to that: āš-no-ƛ ("let him not eat!").
Non-finite forms
ParticipleParticiple
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
s behave like adjectives and only vary according to the class agreement, which gets attached to them as prefixes. There are several different kinds of participles in the Tsez language:
| Form | Suffix | With -iš- ("to eat") |
|---|---|---|
| past participle | -ru (stem vowel → ā)1 | -āš-ru "having eaten" |
| past negative participle | -čʼi-ru (stem vowel → ā)1 | -āš-čʼi-ru "not having eaten" |
| resultative participle | -ā-si | -iš-ā-si "in the state of having eaten" |
| resultative negative participle | -ani | -iš-ani "in the state of not having eaten" |
| present participle | -xo-si | -iš-xo-si "eating" |
| present negative participle | -x-ānu-si | -iš-x-ānu-si "not eating" |
Converbs, like gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
s and verbal adverbs, are very numerous in Tsez. The following list gives only an incomplete account. The table illustrates the relationship between the temporal converb (C) and the main verb (V):
| Relationship between C and V | Suffix | With -ikʼi- ("to go") | |
|---|---|---|---|
| C and V are simultaneous | manner of action | -x | -ikʼi-x |
| punctual | -ƛʼ | -ikʼi-ƛʼ | |
| simple simultaneous | -ƛʼorey / -zey | -ikʼi-ƛʼorey / -ikʼi-zey "while he goes/went" | |
| C precedes V | manner of action | -n | -ikʼi-n |
| simple anterior | -nosi | -ikʼi-nosi "after he goes/went" | |
| immediate anterior | -run (stem vowel → ā)1 | -ākʼi-run "immediately after he goes/went" | |
| C follows V | simple posterior | -zaƛʼor | -ikʼi-zaƛʼor "before he goes/went" |
| terminative | -a-ce | -ikʼ-a-ce "until he goes/went" |
- The stem vowel here is the vowel before the last consonant. Note that stems, different from roots, include causatives; thus -ikʼi- ("to go") becomes -ākʼi-, but its causative form -ikʼir- ("to let go") becomes -ikʼār-! Sometimes also unarticulated epenthetic vowels can be lengthened to ā, as in: tʼetʼr- ("to learn"), which becomes tʼetʼār-.
- Other non-temporal converbs are:
- perfective (completive) and imperfective (durative) converbs are identical to the past unwitnessed and present forms respectively: -n(o) and -x(o)
- locative converb: -z-ā, stem vowel changes to ā
- causal converb: -xoy, -za-ƛʼ or -za-q; e.g. -iš-xoy ("because of going")
- conditional converb: -nāy or -łi; e.g. iš-nāy("if he eats")
- concessive converb: -łin
- infinitive: -a; e.g. -iš-a ("to eat")
- verbal noun: -(a)ni; e.g. -iš-ani ("the eating") and -rečʼ-ni ("the cutting")
Potential & causative
The potential mood receives the suffix -(e)ł, while the causative moodCausative
In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....
suffix is -(e)r. Again, the epenthetic vowel is dropped when the stem ends in a vowel or if another suffix starting with a vowel is attached. Together with the definite future suffixes -an, for instance, the epenthetic vowel has to be dropped: iš-er ("let him eat"), but iš-r-an ("will let him eat").
Particles
Tsez has a rich set of particlesGrammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
, most of them occurring as clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s. The particle -tow shows general emphasis while -kin shows general emphasis and focusing. A contrastively topicalized constituent is marked by the particle -gon. Being clitics, they can be attached to any part of speech. There is also a quotation particle that is used in direct reported speech and appears as the suffix -ƛin that always appears at the end of the quoted phrase or sentence. Example: Di žekʼu yołƛin eƛix kʼetʼā ("'I am a man', says the cat"). There are also other free particles like hudu ("yes, so") or āy ("no").
Noun-forming suffixes
The following list is a selection of suffixes used to form nouns from other parts of speech as well as other nouns.
- -bi / -zi (added to place names): residents
e.g. Newo-bi / Newo-zi ("resident of Mokok", from Newo "Mokok") - -łi (added to singular absolutive nouns denoting persons or to adjectives in the class IV form): abstract nouns and occupations
e.g. laɣ-łi ("slavery", from laɣ "slave"), učitel-łi ("teaching", from the Russian loan učitel "teacher"), r-igu-łi ("grace, kindness", from -igu "good") - -kʼu (added to verbs in the iterative stem forms): instruments or personal descriptions
e.g. ˤuƛʼno-kʼu ("coward", from ˤuƛʼ-, "to be afraid"), ˤiya-kʼu ("cryer", from ˤiyad-, "to cry") - -ni (added to verb stems and onomatopoeic nouns): abstract nouns
e.g. rečʼ-ni ("sharpness", from rečʼ- "to cut"), ˤoy-ni ("mooing", from ˤoy "moo") - -qu (added to nouns in their oblique stem) or the lesser used Awar suffix -qan: container or occupation
e.g. magala-qu ("baker"), bocʼ-a-qu ("wolf-trap"), qido-qan ("mason") - -qʼoy / -qoy / -ħoy (added to singular oblique noun stems): enveloping objects
e.g. reƛʼi-qoy ("glove", from reƛʼa "hand") - -yo (added to the lative singular of a noun): possessor
e.g. kotʼu-r-yo ("bearded man", from kotʼu "beard")
Adjective-forming suffixes
The following suffixes can be used to derive adjectives from other words:
- -mu (added to singular absolutive noun, adjectives or verbs): simple adjective
e.g. boryo-mu ("sickly", from boryo "sore, wound"), atʼi-mu ("unripe", from atʼiy "wet"), šakarya-mu ("jealous", from šakaryad- "to be jealous") - -šay (added to oblique noun stems): inseparable possessing
e.g. čakaryo-šay čay ("sweet tea", literally "sugar-containing tea") - -tay (added to oblique noun stems): absence, lacking
e.g. ciyo-tay ("unsalted") - -xu (added to oblique noun stems): separable possessing
e.g. ciyo-xu raƛʼ ("soil with salt crystals")
Verb-forming suffixes
Some verb-forming suffixes, like the causative and potential derivatives, have already been mentioned in the section about the verbal morphology. Other examples include:
- -kʼ- (added to qualitative adjectives, adverbs and some intransitive verbs ending in -x): transitive verbs
e.g. atʼi-kʼ- ("to dampen, to soak", from atʼiy "wet"), bito-kʼ- ("to move sth.", from bittay "over there"), łicʼo-kʼ- ("to unite", from łicʼox- "to mix") - -ł- (added to qualitative adjectives and adverbs): intransitive verbs
e.g. atʼi-ł- ("to become wet", from atʼiy "wet"), ade-x- ("to move forward", from adāy "in front")
Compounding & reduplication
In Tsez it is also possible to create new words from combining existing ones; usually nouns and verbs are derived, but there also exist compound adjectives and adverbs. Only the last component of the compound inflects, as it is the head of the phrase. However, it does not necessarily govern the noun class assignment for compound nouns — if one of the two components belongs to class I, then the whole compound is of this class, otherwise it is automatically assigned to noun class II. Sometimes, the last component is truncated (see fifth example). Suffixation may also occur (see first example). The following list is not exhaustive:- debi-dey-łi "quarrel, dividing up" (lit. "your-my" + nominalizer -łi)
- eni-obiy or eni-obu "parents" (lit. "mother-father")
- ħotʼo-čʼel "stirrup" (lit. "foot-place")
- -ikʼi-nex- "to go back and forth" (lit. "go-come")
- ƛʼiri-ku "shawl" (lit. ƛʼiri "above" - kur "throw")
- niga-cʼuda "bruised" (lit. "red-green")
- rigu-žuka "anything" (lit. "good-bad")
- taqqo-naqqo "back and forth" (lit. "on that side - on this side")
- tʼitʼi-ečʼ- "hash" (lit. "tear-cut up")
Another common way to derive new words is reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
, which can derive nouns, as well as adjectives and verbs. In reduplicating nouns, the initial syllable can often undergo a change, as in xisi-basi "changes" or bix-mix (herbs). It is used to intensify adjectives (e.g. r-očʼi-r-očʼiy "very cold") and verbs (e.g. -okʼ-okʼ- "to stab repeatedly") but is also used for onomatopoeia (e.g. ħi-ħi "neigh").
Another highly productive way of forming verbs is the combination of a word (often a loan from Arabic or Avar) and the Tsez verbs -oq- ("to stay, to become") or -od- ("to do"), although some combinations can also be formed with other verbs. Note that only the second word is inflected, while the first one remains uninflected. Some examples are:
- bercin -oq- "to be decorated" (from Avar берцинав (bercinaw) "beautiful")
- paradat -od- "to sell" (from Russian продать (prodat’) "to sell")
- razwod b-od- "to divorce" (from Russian развод (razvod) "divorce")
- riƛu riƛʼ- "to plough" (lit. "ploughing-field plough")
- rokʼ-ƛʼo-r r-ay- "to remember" (lit. "heart-SUPER-LAT III-arrive")
- rokʼu r-exu- "to feel pity (lit. "heart die")
- sapu y-od- "to destroy"
- tʼamizi -od- "to cause" (from Avar тIамизе (tʼamize) "to force")
- woržizi -oq- "to fly" (from Avar -оржизе (-oržize) "to fly")
- xabar b-od- "to talk" (from Arabic خبر (xabar) "news, message" via Avar хабар (xabar) "story")
Noun phrase
Noun phraseNoun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
s (NP) per definition have a nominal head, which can be a noun, a pronoun or a substantivized expression such as a participle with the nominalizer -łi, verbal noun
Verbal noun
In linguistics, the verbal noun turns a verb into a noun and corresponds to the infinitive in English language usage. In English the infinitive form of the verb is formed when preceded by to, e.g...
s (masdars) or substantivized restrictive adjectives (as in English: "the older one") — the latter one bears the suffix -ni directly after the adjective stem. They all inflect for case.
As Tsez is a head-last
Branching (linguistics)
In linguistics, branching is the general tendency towards a given order of words within sentences and smaller grammatical units within sentences...
language, all modifiers precede the head noun and agree with it in class. The neutral order of modifiers is usually:
- relative clause
- unemphatic possessive pronoun
- emphatic possessive pronoun
- restrictive adjective
- demonstrative
- numeral / quantifier
- non-restrictive adjective
Note that the order of element number 4, 5 and 6 may vary:
| sideni | ʕaƛ-ā | b-iči-xosi | nesi-s | b-aqʼˤu | žuka-tʼa-ni | ʕagarłi |
| another | village-IN:ESS | IPL-be-PRSPRT | he-GEN1 | IPL-many | bad-DISTR-RESTR | relative |
| "his many unpleasant relatives who live in the next village" | ||||||
Modifiers can also include oblique noun phrases, which then take one of the two genitive suffixes depending on the case of the head noun: -si for absolutive, -zo for oblique head nouns. Compare:
- ħon-ƛʼo-si ʕadala ("the fool on the hill", absolutive)
and
- ħon-ƛʼo-zo ʕadala-r ("to the fool on the hill", dative/lative)
Verb phrase
Verb phraseVerb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...
s (VP) are phrases whose head is a verb or a copula. Verbs can have different transitivities that directly affect the case distribution for their nominal arguments.
Copulas
Copulas are used in the Tsez language to combine the subject with a noun phrase or with predicative adjectives and can in these cases be translated with the English copula "to be". The subject as well as the predicative noun stands in the absolutive case and is thus unmarked. If an environmental condition is described in form of an adjective, the adjective requires class IV agreement. Compare the following examples:| ʕAli-s | obiy | aħo | yoł | |||
| Ali-GEN1 | father | shepherd | be:PRS | |||
| "Ali's father is a shepherd." | ||||||
and
| ciq-qo | r-očʼiy | zow-si | ||||
| forest-POSS:ESS | IV-cold | be-PSTWIT | ||||
| "It was cold in the forest." | ||||||
Intransitive verbs
The only argument of intransitive verbs stands in the unmarked absolutive case. The verb agrees with the noun in class.An example phrase would be: is b-exu-s ("the bull died").
Monotransitive verbs
Monotransitive verbs are verbs that take two arguments. As Tsez is an absolutive–ergative language, the subject, or — to be more precise — the agent, requires the ergative case, while the direct object (or patient) requires the absolutive case. The direct object of a transitive verb is thus marked in the same way as the subject of an intransitive verb. Again, the verb agrees in class with the absolutive (i.e., the direct object).| žekʼ-ā | gulu | b-okʼ-si | ||||
| man-ERG | horse:ABS | III-hit-PSTWIT | ||||
| "The man hit the horse." | ||||||
Both arguments, the agent as well as the patient, can be omitted if they are clear from the context.
Ditransitive verbs
Ditransitive verbs are verbs that require 3 arguments: a subject (or agent), a direct object (or patient, sometimes also called theme) and an indirect object (or recipient). In English "to give" and "to lend" are typical ditransitive verbs. In Tsez the agent takes the ergative and the patient takes the absolutive case. The recipient's case depends on the semanticSemantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
nature of the transfer of possession or information: if it's a permanent transfer (e.g. "to give (as a present)"), the recipient takes the dative/lative case (ending in -(e)r), if it's a non-permanent transfer (e.g. "to lend") or if it's incomplete, the recipient takes any of the locative cases. Two examples illustrate the difference:
Permanent transfer:
| ʕAl-ā | kidbe-r | surat | teƛ-si | |||
| Ali-ERG | girl-DAT | picture:ABS | give-PSTWIT | |||
| "Ali gave the girl a picture (for good, e.g. as a gift)." | ||||||
Temporary transfer:
| ʕAl-ā | kidbe-qo-r | surat | teƛ-si | |||
| Ali-ERG | girl-POSS-DAT | picture:ABS | give-PSTWIT | |||
| "Ali lent the girl a picture." | ||||||
Affective clauses
Affective clauses have either verbs of perception or psychological verbs as predicate. Those verbs are for example: "be bored/bother", "become known", "find", "forget", "hate", "hear", "know", "love/like", "miss", "see", etc. The experiencer (which would be the subject in the corresponding English sentence) is usually in the dative case, while the stimulus (the object in the English sentence) takes the absolutive case.| ʕAli-r | Patʼi | y-eti-x |
| Ali-DAT | Fatima:ABS | II-love-PRS |
| "Ali loves Fatima." | ||
Potential clauses
Potential clauses are the equivalent to English clauses involving the words "can" or "be able to". In Tsez this is expressed by the verbal suffix -ł; the subject of the clause then takes the possessive case (-q(o)) instead of the ergative, while the object of the verb is in the absolutive.| kʼetʼu-q | ɣˤay | ħaƛu-ł-xo |
| cat-POSS:ESS | milk:ABS | drink-POT-PRS |
| "The cat can drink milk." | ||
Causativization
CausativeCausative
In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....
constructions ("to make/let someone do something") are formed by the causative suffix -r. It increases the valency
Valency (linguistics)
In linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. It is related, though not identical, to verb transitivity, which counts only object arguments of the verbal predicate...
of any verb by 1. If a ditransitive verb is formed from a transitive one, the causee (i.e. the argument that is subject and object at the same time) appears in the possessive case (-q(o)); see the example below (the e before the causative suffix is an epenthetic vowel):
| aħ-ā | čanaqan-qo | zey | žekʼ-er-si |
| shepherd-ERG | hunter-POSS:ESS | bear:ABS | hit-CAUS-PSTWIT |
| "The shepherd made the hunter hit the bear." | |||
Word order
Tsez is a head-final language, which means that – apart from postpositions – modifiers like relative clauses, adjectives, genitives and numerals always precede the main clauses. The neutral order in clauses with more than one modifier is:Agent/Experiencer — Recipient — Patient — Locative — Instrument
The order can be changed to emphasize single noun phrases.
Although in general, the underlying word order is SOV (subject–object–verb), the predicate tends to be in the middle of the sentence rather than at the end of it. This word order seems to become increasingly common in daily speech. For narrative use, a VSO word order is sometimes used as well.
Interrogative sentences
The interrogative suffix -ā (-yā after vowels) is used to mark yes/no-questions. It is added to the word focused by the question:| kʼetʼu | ɣˤutk-ā | yoł-ā? |
| cat:ABS | house-IN:ESS | be:PRS-INT |
| "Is the cat in the house?" | ||
| kʼetʼu-yā | ɣˤutk-ā | yoł? |
| cat:ABS-INT | house-IN:ESS | be:PRS |
| "Is it the cat that is in the house?" | ||
| kʼetʼu | ɣˤutk-ā-yā | yoł? |
| cat:ABS | house-IN:ESS-INT | be:PRS |
| "Is it the house that the cat is in?" | ||
Negation
The negative particle ānu follows the negated constituent; if the entire sentence is to be negated, verb suffixes are used (see above in the section about the verb morphology).For the imperative, prohibitive and optative form, see the same section on verb morphology above.
Coordination
Coordination of clauses (as in English with the conjunctionGrammatical conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...
"and") is rare in the Tsez language. Noun phrases are coordinated by adding the suffix -n (after vowels) or -no (after consonants) to all items of the enumeration, thus "the hen and the rooster" is onuču-n mamalay-no. In conditional sentences the conjunction "then" may be expressed by the word yołi:
| tatanu | ɣudi | r-oq-si | yołi | eli | ker-āɣor | esanad-a | b-ikʼ-a | zow-si |
| warm | day:ABS | IV-become-PSTWIT | COND | 1PL:ABS | river-IN:ALL | bathe-INF | IPL-go-INF | be-PSTWIT |
| "If the day had become warm, (then) we would have gone to bathe in the river." | ||||||||
Relative clauses
Any argument or adjunct of a sentence can be made the head of a relative clause, even indirect objects and adverbials. The predicate of such a clause is always a participle and the relative construction precedes the head noun. Constituents can also be taken from embedded clauses. However, it is not possible to raise the possessor in a possessive phrase to the head position of a relative construction.The following examples show how different arguments (examples 2, 3 and 4) and an adverbial adjunct (example 5) are relativized from the underlying sentence in example 1:
Example 1 (standard):
| už-ā | kidb-er | gagali | teƛ-si/teƛ-xo |
| boy-ERG | girl-DAT | flower:ABS | give-PSTWIT/give-PRS |
| "The boy gave/gives a flower to the girl." | |||
Example 2 (relativized agent):
| kidb-er | gagali | tāƛ-ru/teƛ-xosi | uži |
| girl-DAT | flower:ABS | give-PSTPRT/give-PRSPRT | boy:ABS |
| "the boy who gave/gives a flower to the girl" | |||
Example 3 (relativized patient):
| už-ā | kidb-er | tāƛ-ru/teƛ-xosi | gagali |
| boy-ERG | girl-DAT | give-PSTPRT/give-PRSPRT | flower:ABS |
| "the flower that the boy gave/gives to the girl" | |||
Example 4 (relativized recipient):
| už-ā | gagali | tāƛ-ru/teƛ-xosi | kid |
| boy-ERG | flower:ABS | give-PSTPRT/give-PRSPRT | girl:ABS |
| "the girl to whom the boy gave/gives the flowers" | |||
Example 5 (relativized adjunct):
| už-ā | kidb-er | gagali | tāƛ-ru/teƛ-xosi | ɣudi |
| boy-ERG | girl-DAT | flower:ABS | give-PSTPRT/give-PRSPRT | day:ABS |
| "the day on which the boy gave/gives the flowers to the girl" | ||||
Adverbial clauses
There are several different kinds of adverbial clauses.Temporal adverbial clauses describe a chronological sequence of two actions, as in English "Before it started to rain, we were home." or "We talked, while we were going.". In Tsez this relation is marked by verbal suffixes that turn one verb into a converb. See the table for converb suffixes in the "Non-finite forms" part of the verb morphology section.
Local adverbial clauses use locative converbs, which are also formed by adding a suffix to the verb. This suffix is -z-ā- and the vowel before the last consonant of the verb itself is lengthened to ā. This converb forms the head of the local phrase and can thus receive a locative suffix that is normally used on nouns.
Causal adverbial clauses, which in English are usually expressed using "because", "as", "when", "since" or "that", receive the converb suffix -xoy, -za-ƛʼ or -za-q.
There are more kinds of adverbial clauses, see the part "Non-finite forms" in the verb morphology section for more example suffixes.
Infinitival clauses
Modal verbs, phrasal verbs, verbs of motion and psychological verbs can all be accompanied by an infinitive verb. Verbal nouns or "masdars" (formed by the suffix -(a)ni) can be used instead of infinitive verbs; they express purpose more strongly. Those verbal nouns also occur with psychological verbs like "be afraid of" and then usually take the possessive case (ending -q).Completement clauses
When a clause is used in place of a noun, as in "The father knew [that the boy wanted bread].", the optional nominalizing suffix -łi can be attached to the predicate of the embedded clause. The clause belongs to noun class IV, then:| obi-r | [uži-r | magalu | b-āti-ru-łi] | r-iy-si |
| father-DAT | [boy-DAT | bread:ABS | III-want-PSTPRT-NMLZ] | IV-know-PSTWIT |
| "The father knew [that the boy wanted bread]." | ||||
Reported speech
If a speech act verb like "say", "ask", "shout" introduces reported speech, the reported utterance is followed by the clitical quotation particle ƛin, which is suffixed to verbs and stands alone in all other cases. It is remarkable that the point of view and the tense of the original utterance is maintained, hence the only difference between direct and indirect speech is the particle ƛin. See this example:| ʕAl-ā | dā-q | quno | ocʼcʼino | qʼˤano | ƛeb | yoł-ƛin | eƛi-s |
| Ali-ERG | 1SG-POSS:ESS | twenty | ten | two | year:ABS | be:PRS-QUOT | say-PSTWIT |
| "Ali said that he was 32 years old." | |||||||
Numerals
Numerals come in two different forms: in the absolutive case and as an oblique stem (always ending in -a) to which other case endings are attached when the numerals are used nonattributively. The oblique form is also used when it refers to a non-absolutive noun, as in sida ˤaƛār ("to one/a village"). When counting objects, the counted objects always stay in the singular form.| Absolutive | Oblique | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | sis | sida |
| 2 | qʼˤano | qʼˤuna |
| 3 | łˤono | łˤora |
| 4 | uyno | uyra |
| 5 | łeno | łera |
| 6 | iłno | iłłira |
| 7 | ʕoƛno | ʕoƛƛora |
| 8 | biƛno | biƛƛira |
| 9 | očʼčʼino | očʼčʼira |
| 10 | ocʼcʼino | ocʼcʼira |
| 11 | ocʼcʼino sis / siyocʼi | ocʼcʼira sida |
| 12 | ocʼcʼino qʼˤano / qʼˤayocʼi | ocʼcʼira qʼˤuna |
| 13 | ocʼcʼino łˤono / łˤoyocʼi | ocʼcʼira łˤora |
| 14 | ocʼcʼino uyno / uwocʼi | ocʼcʼira uyra |
| 15 | ocʼcʼino łeno / łewocʼi | ocʼcʼira łera |
| 16 | ocʼcʼino iłno / iłocʼi | ocʼcʼira iłłira |
| 17 | ocʼcʼino ʕoƛno / ʕoƛocʼi | ocʼcʼira ʕoƛƛora |
| 18 | ocʼcʼino biƛno / biƛocʼi | ocʼcʼira biƛƛira |
| 19 | ocʼcʼino očʼčʼino / ečʼocʼi | ocʼcʼira očʼčʼira |
| 20 | quno | qura |
| 100 | bišon | bišonra |
| 1,000 | ʕazar | ʕazarra |
- There are two ways of forming the numbers 11 through 19, but only the first way also exists in oblique form. The second form with the suffix -ocʼi cannot be declined.
- Above 20, numbers are formed on the basis of multiples of 20: qʼˤanoqu (40), łˤonoqu (60) and uynoqu (80). For the oblique forms, the suffix -ra is added for all items.
- The numeral for 100 has an alternative form bišom used before the suffix -no in compound numerals.
- The numeral for 1000, ʕazar, seems to be a loan from PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
هزار (hezār, thousand), probably via Avar. - Higher hundreds and thousands are expressed simply by juxtaposition, the multiplier preceding the larger number.
- Compound numerals are formed by attaching the suffix -no (and) to the higher number and placing the lower one right after it. For example, 47 would be qʼˤanoquno ʕoƛno in Tsez. A number like 72 would be expressed as "sixty-twelve" (łˤonoquno qʼˤayocʼi or łˤonoquno ocʼcʼino qʼˤano).
Cardinal numbers (as in English "one, two, three") precede the nouns, which then do not stand in their plural forms but in the singular instead; e.g.: uyno is ("four oxen").
Ordinal numbers (as in English "first, second, third") are constructed by combining the cardinal numbers with the word āƛiru. Hence, qʼˤano āƛiru ɣudi means "the second day".
Adverbial numbers (as in English "once, twice, thrice") are constructed by replacing the suffix -no by -x, thus "twice" becomes the adverb qʼˤa-x in Tsez. Expressions like "(for) the second time" are formed using the adverbial number suffix -x and ordinal forming marker āƛiru, thus resulting in the form qʼˤax āƛiru.
Sample of the Tsez language
This is a Tsez tale written in the Asakh dialect using a Latin-based orthography.Latin orthography
Kʼetʼus HunarZewnoƛax zewčʼeyƛax bˤeƛon bocʼin zirun qayno. Sidaquł šigoħno sadaqorno boyno ħukmu: yaqułtow begira bocʼi ħonƛʼār miƛʼeł xizāz xizyo rišʷa yoł. Bˤeƛā begirno qay łˤāł xizāz, bocʼin zirun regirno ħonƛʼār miƛʼeł xizāz. Ɣudod, žedi raynosi beƛʼez reqenyoxor, ziru boqno uhi-ehƛada buq boƛāxzāzarno boqno. Zirus uhi-ehi teqxoy, ɣʷaybi kʼoƛin elār, bocʼi buq bātuzāzarno boqno bikʼin reqenyoƛer, besurno ƛʼarayaw miƛʼi. Miƛʼin bisno bocʼin zirun xizor rutin qʼayƛʼār. Rizirno cʼidoƛʼor ƛoħon begirno łāƛʼor qay. Kikxogon zewno bočʼikʼxo kʼetʼu. Qayir zewāčʼey rikʷayxo; nešuruxay nełor rikʷayxo zewčʼey. Kʼetʼu, ełor baynosi qay, boqno kʼekʼbikʼa. Kʼekʼbikʼni teqnosi, qay łikin rixerčʼeytow boxin xizor. Bˤeƛā esirno: "Šidā boxā rayirčʼey łin?" Elo didiyƛa žekʼu yoł-ƛin eƛin qayā. Aħugon rikʼin łāxor zirun qayno. Žedi raynosi kikxor žedā esirno kʼetuq: "Mi šebi?" Di žekʼu yoł-ƛin eƛin kʼetʼā. Šebi že debez ħiroƛʼ esirxo zirā. Tupi ƛin eƛix kʼetʼā. Dicce rˤuƛʼno zirun qayno, amma biyxoy kʼetʼu yāłru, xizyo łˤonon zenzi rikʼin raħira reƛ. Bˤeƛo buqełno bičin ažoz kʼodrexāzay, rołikʼno aħyabin kecno, kʼetʼu tataniłxo zewno cʼidox. Bˤeƛā kʼekʼrikʼerxo zewno aħyabi. Že rikʷayxoy, kʼetʼuz rokʼƛʼor rayno, že elo aw ƛin, hudu betʼtʼun kʼoƛin elor. Dicce bˤuƛʼzāq bˤeƛqo regin ixiytʼatow qˤaƛubin, boxin ciqxār. Bocʼezno qayizno, ziruzno rokʼƛʼor rayno baysi bāsu ixiytow ħaywan šebin, nełoq že riqičʼey kʼiriłno roxin. Cʼikʼiy reƛ miƛes ƛexun kʼetʼur. ʕoƛiran ɣˤudeł kʼetʼu bišno, racʼno baɣʷace dawla bocʼesno zirusno.
Translation
The Cat's FeatOnce upon a time there were a pig, a wolf, a fox and a hare. One day they gathered together and decided that today they would send the wolf into the mountains for a sheep and they would eat. The pig sent the hare for water and sent the wolf and the fox into the mountain for a ram. At night, when they came to the flock of sheep, the fox began to moan from the eastern side. Since they heard the fox's moaning, the dogs ran in that direction and the wolf went towards the flock from the west and found a fat ram. Having taken the ram, the wolf and the fox returned to the camp. They put the pan on the fire and sent the hare for water. At the spring the cat was freezing. The hare couldn't see; at night the hare couldn't see. When the hare arrived there, the cat began to move. When he heard the movement, the hare ran back without taking any water. The pig asked: "Why did you run away without bringing water?" The hare said that there was some man there. Again the fox and the hare went to the water. When they came to the spring, they asked the cat: "What are you?" — "I am a man", said the cat. "What is that on your shoulder?", asks the fox. "A rifle", says the cat. The fox and the hare were very frightened, but since they knew it was a cat, afterwards the three of them went together to cook meat. The pig hid behind a bunch of trees and, pushing out its ears, slept, and the cat was warming itself by the fire. The pig was moving its ears. Since the cat saw it, it thought it was a mouse and in a rush jumped there. The pig was very frightened and, emitting loud shouts, ran away to the forest. The wolf, the hare and the fox thought that a great animal or something was coming and, one running faster than the other, they ran away. All the ram's meat was left to the cat. For seven days the cat ate, ate until it was full the spoils of the wolf and the fox.
External links
- Ethnologue report on Tsez (Dido)
- A paper about the verb "to begin" in Tsez (by Maria Polinsky)
- Tsez morphophonology (by Ramazan Rajabov)
- The class category in Tsez (by Ramazan Rajabov)
- The double-absolutive construction in Tsez (by Ramazan Rajabov)