Chirag | |
---|---|
хьаргънилла
xarʁnilla kub | |
Native to | North Caucasus |
Region | Agulsky District, Dagestan |
Native speakers | 2000 (2021) [1] |
Northeast Caucasian
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | – |
Glottolog |
chir1284 |
Chirag |
Chirag (Chirag: хьаргънилла, xarʁnilla kub [2]) is a language in the Dargin dialect continuum spoken in Dagestan, Russia. It is spoken around the village of Chirag, but some speakers have moved to Kaspiysk. Chirag is often considered a divergent dialect of Dargwa, [3] despite not being mutually intelligible with literary Dargwa. [4] Ethnologue lists it under the dialects of Dargwa but recognizes that it may be a separate language. [5]
Based on lexical similarity, Chirag is usually classified as a separate language from other varieties of Dargwa. [6] It has 67% lexical similarity with the North-Central group, 77.6% with the South group, and 69% with Kaitag; within the South group, it has 84% lexical similarity with Qunqi Amuq. [6]
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Chirag has four vowels: / i/, / e/, / u/, and / a/, [7] along with two "epiglottalized" vowels, / iˁ/ and / aˁ/. [4]
In Chirag, stressed syllables are specified for tone. [8]
Chirag has some phonological processes that pertain to specific morphological elements. The plural suffix -e attracts stress and induces vowel deletion on the final syllable of disyllabic nouns (e.g., qisqan 'spider', qisqne 'spiders'). [9] Verbal prefixes have optional front/back vowel harmony. [9]
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Chirag is head-final, has fairly flexible word order and is rich with inflectional morphology. [10] It has ergative–absolutive alignment in its case marking; the subject of a transitive verb is overtly marked with ergative case, and the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb are unmarked: [1] [10]
ʡale
Ali( ABS)
šːa
home. LOC
w-ačʼ-ib.
M. SG-come: PFV- AOR. 3
Ali came home.
ʡali-le
Ali- ERG
qa̰r-be
apple- PL( ABS)
d-iʡ-un.
N. PL-steal: PFV- AOR. 3
Ali stole apples.
There are efforts to enable automated translation of text from English to Chirag. [11]