Tabasaran language
Tabasaran is a Northeast Caucasian language of the Lezgic branch. It is spoken by the Tabasaran people in the southern part of the Russian Republic of Dagestan. There are two main dialects: North and South Tabasaran. It has a literary language based on the Southern dialect, one of the official languages of Dagestan.
Tabasaran is an ergative language. The verb system is relatively simple; verbs agree with the subject in number, person and class. North Tabasaran has two noun classes, whereas Southern Tabasaran lacks noun classes / gender.
Geographical distribution
It is spoken in the basin of Upper Rubas-nir and Upper Chirakh-nir.Phonology
Consonants
The post-alveolar sibilants may be whistled.Vowels
Vowel sounds of Tabasaran are .Writing system
Cyrillic (19th century)
Peter von Uslar devised Cyrillic-based orthographies for many Caucasian languages, including Tabasaran.Latin (1931–1938)
From 1931 to 1938, the Latin alphabet was used as a base for the Tabasaran writing system. The first book was published in 1932.Initially, the alphabet took the following form:
a, b, c, cc, cь, ç, çь, d, e, ә, f, g, ƣ, h, i, j, k, kk, ⱪ, l, m, n, u, p, pp, ᶈ, q, ꝗ, r, s, , , ş, şь, t, tt, t̨, y, v, x, ҳ, ӿ, z, ⱬ, zz, ƶ, ƶƶ, ƶь, '
Soon after, capital letters and the letters O o and were introduced. The alphabet then took the following form:
Cyrillic (1938–present)
Tabasaran has been written using Cyrillic since 1938.Note: The letters indicated in orange are encountered only in loanwords from Russian.
Grammar
It is highly probable that Tabasaran is an active language of the fluid-S type.Cases
Tabasaran was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest case system in the world, with 48. Hjelmslev claimed that Tabasaran had the 'empirical maximum' number of cases, with 52. However, such claims are contested, and other languages such as Tsez would have even larger counts under such definitions. Comrie & Polinskyanalyze the system as having 14 case morphemes in southern dialects and 15 in northern dialects.
These include 4 core/argument cases. The absolutive is the citation form. The ergative, which may be irregular but typically ends in -i, functions as the stem for all other cases.
There are also 7 or 8 locative case suffixes: -ʔ 'in', -xy 'at', -h 'near / in front', -ʔin 'on', -k 'on', -kk 'under', -q 'behind' and 'among'. The locative cases may take an additional suffix, allative -na or ablative -an, for 21 or 24 combinations. All of these, as well as the dative, can take a further suffix -di to mark the location as less specific, for 47 to 53 combinations of case suffixes.
Samples
Uwu aldakurawu. "Уву алдакураву." — "You are falling."Uzuz uwu kkunduzuz. "Узуз уву ккундузуз." — "I love you."
Uwu fudžuwa? "Уву фужува?" — "Who are you?"
Fici wuna? "Фици вуна?" — "How are you?"
Zakur ʕürza. "Закур гъюрза." — "I'll come tomorrow."
Uzu kana qheza. "Узу кана хъэза." — "I'll be back."