Tsez, also known as Dido ( () or ()), is a Northeast Caucasian language with about 15,000 speakers (15,354 in 2002) spoken by the Tsez, a North Caucasian people in the mountainous Tsunta District of southwestern Dagestan in Russia. The name is said to derive from the Tsez word for 'eagle', but this is most likely a folk etymology. The name Dido is derived from the Georgian word (), meaning 'big'.
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, and is considered to be a separate language by some.
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.
Phonology
Each phoneme is listed with its IPA, Latin, and Cyrillic transcriptions.
Consonants BilabialDentalLateral AlveolarPalatalVelarUvularPharyngealGlottalStopsVoiceless p п () t т () k к ( )Voiced b б () d д () g г ( )Ejective pʼ пӀ () tʼ тӀ () kʼ кӀ ( ) qʼ къ ( )AffricatesVoiceless c ц () ƛ лӀ () č ч () q хъ ( )Ejective cʼ цӀ () ƛʼ кь () čʼ чӀ ()FricativesVoiceless s с () ł лъ () š ш () x х ( ) ħ хӀ () h гь ( )Voiced z з () ž ж () ɣ гъ ( ) ʕ гӀNasals m м () n нLiquids r р l лSemivowels w в y й Tsez shows an inventory of 33 consonants. The glottal stop () is not phonemic but occurs automatically before non-pharyngealized vowels in word-initial position. Consonant clusters are often broken up by inserting the epenthetic vowel . After , the inserted vowel is . Word-initial consonants can be pharyngealized and are marked as such in the proposed orthography by a small following the consonant; in the Cyrillic spelling a palochka ("Ӏ") 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 VӀC though, which makes the sequence CVӀC ambiguous (see below). A syllable-initial pharyngealization of the consonant is transcribed in Cyrillic with CVӀ (the palochka 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 epiglottal. Labialized consonants are written as Cв in the Cyrillic and as Cʷ in the Latin transcription, respectively. Any consonant besides and the bilabials can be labialized.
Vowels Front Central Back High i и u у Mid e е/э o о Low a а ( ā 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 (), usually transcribed as ä in Latin and аь in Cyrillic, some also have a long mid back rounded vowel (), transcribed as ō.
Phonotactics The syllable structure is generally CV(C). There are no vowel clusters. It is an agglutinative language 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 forms and together with forms in order to maintain the syllable restriction.
Orthography 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 in 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.
In 1993, linguist Mikhail Alekseev devised the following orthography for Tsez. In 2023, the letter ГӀ гӀ was added. А аĀ āБ бВ вГ гГъ гъГь гьД дЕ еЁ ёЖ жЗ зИ иЙ йК кКъ къКь кьКӀ кӀЛ лЛъ лъЛӀ лӀМ мН нО оП пПӀ пӀР рС сТ тТӀ тӀУ уФ фХ хХъ хъХӀ хӀЦ цЦӀ цӀЧ чЧӀ чӀШ шЭ эЮ юЯ я'
Morphology 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.
Nouns Nouns are inflected for number and case, and have noun classes assigned to them.
Number Nouns can either be singular or plural. The plural is formed by adding -bi to the stem in the absolutive case: → . For all other cases, the suffix is -za; thus, "of the fish [pl.]" becomes .
Case There are eight syntactical and a much larger number of locative cases, which distinguish three categories: location, orientation, and direction. Thus, counting the both locative and non-locative cases, there are 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 agent of the transitive sentence is in the ergative case.
According to Ramazan Rajabov, the oblique stem of 42% of the nouns is different from the absolutive stem. Some nouns change their internal structure (such as a vowel), but others add one of about 20 so-called "thematic suffixes" to their end, to which the other case suffixes are attached. For example, the word for "language" or "tongue" is , but its oblique stem is , hence its plural is , the ergative 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, similar to the way the English 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.Tsez morphonology by Ramazan Rajabov, retrieved June 22, 2006
Syntactic case suffixes Singular Plural Absolutive -∅ -bi Ergative -ā -z-ā Genitive 1 -(e)s -za-s Genitive 2 -(e)z -za-z Dative -(e)r -za-r Instrumental -(e)d -za-d Equative 1 -ce -za-ce Equative 2 -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 , and the Genitive 2 is used for .
The Equative 1 is used to make comparisons, like 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.
Locative case suffixes Essive Lative Ablative Allative1 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 Post— -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 , while "next to the fish" is .
Noun classes Tsez distinguishes four noun classes in the singular and two in the plural. They are prefixes that are attached to verbs, adjectives, adverbs, several postpositions like -oƛƛʼo or -iłe 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 people only II y- r- for female people 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, as it is a female name, and Asaq (a Tsez village) belongs to class III, because "village" () is also in this group. Likewise, new loan words are assigned the noun class of a semantically similar existing Tsez word.
Experiments have shown that Tsez speakers do not assign any noun classes to new words for objects or places with which they are unfamiliar.The class category in Tsez: underlying principles by Ramazan Rajabov, retrieved June 23, 2006
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 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
Pronouns
Personal pronouns Personal pronouns exist in Tsez only for the first and second person; for the third person the demonstratives (singular) and (plural) are used. As the singular personal pronouns have the same form in absolutive and ergative, a sentence like 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.