Abkhaz is a language of the Northwest Caucasian family which, like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, is very rich in consonants. Abkhaz has a large consonantal inventory that contrasts 58 consonants in the literary Abzhywa dialect, coupled with just two phonemic vowels ().

Abkhaz has three major dialects: Abzhywa, Bzyp and Sadz, which differ mainly in phonology, with the lexical differences being due to contact with neighbouring languages.Bert Vaux, 1997. The Phonetics and Phonology of Secondary Articulations in Abkhaz.

Consonants Below is the IPA phoneme chart of the consonant phonemes of Abkhaz:

Consonant phonemes Labial Alveolar Palato-alveolar Alveolo-palatal Retro-flex Velar Uvular Pharyngeal plain lab. plain lab. plain lab. pal. plain lab. pal. plain lab. phar. lab. + phar. plain lab. Nasal Stop voiceless voiced ejective Affricate voiceless voiced ejective Fricative voiceless voiced Approximant Trill

The total number of consonant phonemes in Abkhaz is 58 in the Abzhywa dialect, 60 in the Sadz dialect, and 67 in Bzyp.

The obstruents are characterised by a three-fold contrast between voiced, aspirated voiceless and glottalised forms; both the aspirated and glottalised forms are not strong, unless they are being emphasised by the speaker.Viacheslav A. Chirikba 2003, pag. 18-19 The glottal stop may be analysed as a separate phoneme by some, since it can be distinguish certain pairs as áaj 'yes', and ʔaj 'no',Viacheslav A. Chirikba 2003, pag. 19 and it can also be an allophonic variant of in intervocalic positions.George Hewitt 2010, pag. 11 Some speakers also pronounce the word with a , but it is not encountered anywhere else.George Hewitt 2010, pag. 11

The consonants in bold show the 4 kinds of labialisation found in Abkhaz. For this reason most Abkhaz linguists prefer using to represent them in general instead of the standard IPA symbol.Viacheslav A. Chirikba 2003 The -type is found with the velar stops and uvular stops and fricatives. The labial-palatal -type rounding involves the alveolar, pharyngeal and palatal fricatives. The one found in the dental-alveolar affricates and fricatives is described as an endo-labiodental articulation (-type). The -type is found in the dental stops, where there is full bilabial closure.

The non-pharyngealised dorsal fricatives of Abkhaz may be realised as either velar or uvular depending upon the context in which they are found; here, they have been ranged with the uvulars. Also, while the labialised palatal approximant is here placed with the approximants, it is actually the reflex of a labialised voiced pharyngeal fricative, preserved in Abaza, and a legacy of this phoneme's origin is a slight constriction of the pharynx for some speakers, resulting in the phonetic realisation .

Vowels Abkhaz is often described as having two basic vowels on the phonemic scale: an open vowel and a central vowel . Each has a wide range of allophones in different consonantal environments, with allophones and , respectively, next to palatals; and and , respectively, next to labials. also has a long variant , which is the reflex of old sequences of or , preserved in Abaza.

Dialects The Sadz dialect has distinctive consonant gemination; for example, Sadz Abkhaz contrasts ('ashes') vs. ('worm'), where Abzhywa and Bzyp Abkhaz have only the one form for both; it seems that many Sadz singletons reflect positions where a consonant has been dropped from the beginning of a cluster in the Proto-Northwest Caucasian form (compare Ubykh 'ashes'). Some scholars (for instance, ) prefer to count the Sadz consonant inventory at well over 100 (thus forming the largest consonant inventory in the Caucasus, outstripping Ubykh's 80–84) by treating the geminated consonants as a set in their own right. (Note, however, that this practice is not usual in counting the consonant inventory of a language.)

The Bzyp consonant inventory appears to have been the fundamental inventory of Proto-Abkhaz, with the inventories of Abzhywa and Sadz being reduced from this total, rather than the Bzyp series being innovative. Plain alveolopalatal affricates and fricatives have merged with their corresponding alveolars in Abzhywa and Sadz Abkhaz (compare Bzyp 'to know' vs. Abzhywa ), and in Abzhywa the labialised alveolopalatal fricatives have merged with the corresponding postalveolars (compare Bzyp 'to measure' vs. Abzhywa ).

References

Notes

Further reading Yuri B. Korakov, Atlas of Caucasian languages (PDF).