Budukh language

Budukh or Budugh (Будад мез, Budad mez^[3]) is a Lezgic language of the Northeast Caucasian language family spoken in parts of the Quba Rayon of Azerbaijan. It is spoken by about 200 of approximately 1,000 ethnic Budukhs.^[1]

Budukh is a severely endangered language,^[4]^[5] and classified as such by UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.^[2]

Grammar

Gender and agreement

Authier (2010) reports that Budugh has six 'gender-number' classes:

human masculine,
human adult feminine,
animate (which includes animals, plants, and non-adult human females, as well as some abstract nouns),
inanimate,
nonhuman plural,
human plural.

Verbs normally agree with their absolutive argument (intransitive subject or transitive object) in gender. In the following examples, the verb 'beat' shows animate agreement with 'donkey' and non-human plural agreement with 'donkeys'.

Ma'lla'-cır

Mullah-ERG

lem

donkey

ğùvotu-ri

ANIM:beat:PRES

'Mullah beat the donkey'

Ma'lla'-cır

Mullah-ERG

lemér

donkey

ğùtu-ri

NHUM.PL:beat:PRES

'Mullah beat the donkeys'

Compare these examples with the following, where the verb agrees with the intransitive subject:

Ma'lla'

Mullah

vìxhici

M:go:NARR

'Mullah went.'

Lem

donkey

vüxhücü

ANIM:go:NARR

'The donkey went.'

Verb agreement

Budukh verbs typically agree with a single argument, the absolutive. In the agreement paradigms, the majority of verbs show no overt agreement for the masculine, neuter, and nonhuman plural. Consider the following paradigm for the verb 'keep' in the perfective (Authier 2009):

In this paradigm, /ˤa/ is a preverb which must appear with the verb root /q/ 'keep', and the agreement morphology appears between the preverb and the root. Due to historical changes, the relationships between the various members of an agreement paradigm are often more complex and show changes of vowel and/or consonant. The following perfective paradigm for 'go' shows this (with the reconstructed form shown after the *)

Word order

Budukh is an SOV language, as seen in the following example:

Ma'lla'-cır

Mullah-ERG

lemér

donkey

ğùtu-ri

NHUM.PL:beat:PRES

'Mullah beat the donkeys'

It has possessors before possessed nouns:

Mallá-co

Mullah-ADLOC

rij

daughter

'the mullah's daughter'

Adjectives appear before the nouns that they modify:

q'usú

old

Mallá'

mullah

'the old mullah'

Orthography

There are two orthographies for Budukh, and it is beginning to be introduced into schools. The orthography takes the following form:^[6]

The Buduq Picture Dictionary, published in 2017, uses a slightly different orthography:^[7]

References

Authier, Gilles (2009). Development of Introflexion (Root-and-pattern Morphology) in Budugh Verbs (doc) (Report).
Authier, Gilles (2010). "Finite and Non-Finite: Prosodic Distinctions on Budugh Verb Stems". In Brill, Isabelle (ed.). Clause Linking and Clause Hierarchy: Syntax and Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 143–164.

^ a b c Budukh at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ a b UNESCO Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger Archived 22 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine
^ "The Budukhs". The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire.
^ Published in: Encyclopedia of the world’s endangered languages. Edited by Christopher Moseley. London & New York: Routledge, 2007. 211–280.
^ The sociolinguistic situation of the Budukh in Azerbaijan
^ "Ufuq-S and Buduq Orthography Development".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^ Budad, Adıgözəl; Kenneth " Ken" Keyes, C. Buduq picture dictionary 2017 06 14.

External links

Budukh basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database