Hunzib

Brief Information

The Hunzib people are primarily located in Tsuntinsky District, in several mountainous villages Gunzib, Garbutli, Nakhada, Rodor, Todor and on the plains in Stal’skoe, Komsomol’skoe and Šušanovka (Kizilyurtovsky raion) of the Republic of Dagestan, as well as in the Saruso village of the Kvareli District in Georgia.

According to the 2010 census, 1012 speakers of Hunzib are in Russia. The actual number of speakers is about 2000 in Russia, and about 400 in Georgia.

Hunzib does not have dialects, but there are some small differences in grammar and lexicon in the speech of Gunzib, Garbutli and Nakhada speakers.

Hunzib was known under several names, which were Enzebi, Nakhada, Bezhta-Hunzib, Kapucha-Hunzib and Khvan. Enzebi is the Georgian name for Hunzib. Hunzib is the Avar name. Gunzibskiy yazyk is the Russian name for the language.  

Traditional occupations are cattle breeding, agriculture, hunting, fishing and beekeeping.

Traditionally the Hunzib people compactly reside in the mountainous area. Due to the resettlement in the Soviet times, the Hunzib people are also found in the lowland area: in the villages of the Kizilyurt, Kizlyar and Tarumovsky Districts (Stalskoe, Shushanovka, Komsomolskoe, Alexandriiskaya, Malaya Areshevka and Aleksandro-Nevskaya), where they live in mixed communities.

All Hunzib people are Sunni Muslims.

Genealogy

The Hunzib language does not have dialectal variations. There can be distinguished local varieties in the villages of Gunzib, Garbutli and Nakhada.

The Hunzib people live in the mountainous and on the lowland areas of the Dagestan Republic.

Dialects and their distribution

Language contacts and multilingualism

The Hunzib people are fluent in Avar and Russian. Some Hunzibs know or have passive knowledge of Bezhta. Georgian is only spoken by immigrants from Georgia and by the Hunzibs living in Georgia. Only children of early preschool age are monolinguals.

Language functioning

The Hunzib language has no official status. In the Constitution of Dagestan, it’s defined as one of the languages of the peoples of Dagestan that has no writing system.

Hunzib does not have an officially established writing system. Avar and Russian are generally used as written languages.

Hunzib does not have a standardized language variant. The Hunzib speakers use their own language varieties when communicating with each other.

Dynamics of language usage

Hunzib remains the main means of communication in the community. Many Hunzibs consider themselves Avars, an ethnic group with a more prestigious status in the Dagestan Republic. At the same time, the knowledge of Avar among the Hunzib people is decreasing year by year due to the spread of the mass media in Russian. Nowadays, more Hunzib people can speak Russian than Avar.

The level of Hunzib language proficiency in rural areas is quite high. The language transmission to children in rural areas still continues. The language proficiency among the younger generation in urban areas is declining.

Language structure

Phonetics

There are 24 vowels and 35 consonants in Hunzib.

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Morphology

Hunzib morphology is agglutinative, with some elements of fusion.

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Syntax

Hunzib is an ergative language. The basic word order is subject-predicate-object (SOV).

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Vocabulary

The Hunzib vocabulary consists of inherent and borrowed verbs.

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Исследование языка

‘Analiz Kapučinsko-gunzibskogo jazyka’ by Lomtadze (1956) is the first description of Hunzib. Bokarev’s monograph of the Tsezic languages (1959) is another important publication. ‘A grammar of Hunzib (with texts and lexicon)’ by van den Berg (1995) is a grammatical description with dictionary and a collection of texts in English.  

Other important publications are ‘Hunzib-Russian dictionary’ by Isakov & Khalilov (2001), and a comprehensive description of the phonology and morphology of Hunzib by Isakov & Khalilov (2012).

Language experts

Madzhid Khalilov

Author of a number of works on phonetics, morphology, word formation and lexicology of the Tsezic languages. Co-author of the first Hunzib dictionary (2001), as well as of the Hunzib grammar (2012).

Research centres

Institute of Language, Literature and Arts of the Dagestan Federal Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Madzhid Khalilov, an employee at the Institute of Language, Literature and Arts of the Dagestan Federal Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, specializes in the Tsezic languages.

Core references

Grammatical descriptions: grammars, sketches

Bokarev E.A. Gunzibskiy yazyk. [The Hunzib Language]. //Yazyki narodov SSSR. Vol. 4. Moscow, 1967.

Bokarev E.A. Tsezskie (didoyskie) yazyki Dagestana. [The Tsez (Didoic) Languages of Dagestan]. Moscow: Izd-vo AN SSSR, 1959.

Isakov I.A. Gunzibskiy yazyk. [The Hunzib Language]. //Yazyki mira: Kavkazskie yazyki. Moscow, 1998. Pp. 53-62.

Isakov I.A. Gunzibskiy yazyk. [The Hunzib Language]. //Yazyki narodov Rossii: Yazyki Dagestana. Makhachkala; Moscow, 2000.

Isakov I.A., Khalilov M.Sh.  Gunzibskiy yazyk (Fonetika. Morfologiya. Slovoobrazovanie. Leksika. Teksty). [The Hunzib Language (Phonetics. Morphology. Word formation. Vocabulary. Texts)]. Makhachkala, 2012.

Isakov I.V., Khalilov M.Sh. Hinukh. // The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus. – Michigan, U.S.A., 2004. – Vol. 3.

Helma van den Berg. A Grammar of Hunzib (with Texts and Lexicon) – Munich/Newcastle: Lincom Europa, 1995.

 

 

Dictionaries

Isakov I.A., Khalilov M.Sh. Gunzibsko-russkiy slovar'. [Hunzib-Russian dictionary]. Moscow: Nauka, 2001.

Selected papers on grammatical issues

Gamzatov R.E. Struktura sloga i slogodelenie v gunzibskom yazyke. [Structure and Division of Syllables in the Hunzib Language] // Slovo i slovosochetanie v yazykakh razlichnykh tipov. Moscow, 1973.

Isakov I.A. O gunzibskom kauzativnom glagole. [On the Hunzib Causative Verbs]. // Nauchnaya sessiya, posvyashchennaya itogam ekspeditsionnykh issledovaniy Instituta IYaL v 1982–1983 gg.: tezisy dokladov.. Makhachkala, 1984.

Isakov I.A. Glagol'noe slovoobrazovanie v gunzibskom yazyke. [Verb formation in the Hunzib language] // Voprosy slovoobrazovaniya dagestanskikh yazykov. - Makhachkala, 1986.

Isakov I.A. Vopros o masdarakh v gunzibskom yazy­ke. [The Question of Masdars in the Hunzib Language]. // Otglagol'nye obrazovaniya v iberiysko-kavkazskikh yazy­kakh: tezisy  dokladov XII regional'noy nauchnoy sessii po izucheniyu iberiysko-kavkazskikh yazykov.  - Cherkessk; Karachay-Cherkessia, 1988.

Kibrik A.E. Materialy k tipologii ergativnosti (Bezhtinskiy yazyk. Gunzibskiy yazyk. Tsezskiy yazyk. Ginukhskiy yazyk). [Materials for the ergative typology (Bezhta language. Gunzib language. Tsez language. Ginukh language). Moscow, 1981.

Kodzasov S.V., Kibrik A.E. Sopostavitel'noe izuchenie dagestanskikh yazykov. Imya. Fonetika. [Comparative Study of Dagestani Languages. Name. Phonetics]. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta. 1990 – 366 p.

Comrie, B., Forker, D., & Khalilova, Z. 2012. Adverbial clauses in the Tsezic languages. In V. Gast, & H. Diessel (Eds.), Clause Linkage in Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 157-190.

Comrie, B., Diana F. & Khalilova, Z. 2018. Affective constructions in Tsezic languages. In Barðdal, Jóhanna, Na'ama Pat-El and Stephen Mark Carey (eds.) Non-Canonically Case-Marked Subjects. The Reykjavík-Eyjafjallajökull papers. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Comrie, B., Forker, D., Khalilova Z., and †Helma van den Berg, 2020. Antipassives in Nakh-Daghestanian Languages: Exploring the Margins of a Construction. In Katarzyna Janic and Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds), The Multifaceted Nature of Antipassive (Typological Studies in Language). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Работы по этнологии

Shilling E.M. Narody ando-tsezskoy gruppy. [Peoples of the Ando-Tsez Group] // Panek L.B., Shilling E.M. Sbornik ocherkov po etnografii Dagestana. Makhachkala, 1996. Pp. 21-38.

Rizakhanova M.Sh. Gunzibtsy. XIX – nach. XX veka: Istoriko-etnograficheskoe issledovanie. [The Hunzibs. XIX - early XX century: Historical and Ethnographic Research]. Makhachkala, 2001.

Resources

Corpora and text collections

There is no public electronic corpus of Hunzib.

Other electronic resources

The Intercontinental Dictionary Series 

There are 1529 lexical entries  of Hunzib on the webpage of the project. 

Data for this page kindly provided by

Zaira M. Khalilova (Institute of Linguistics. RAS, Moscow).

Sources:

Helma van den Berg. A Grammar of Hunzib (with Texts and Lexicon). – Munich/Newcastle: Lincom Europa, 1995.

Bokarev E.A. Gunzibskiy yazyk. [The Hunzib Language]. // Yazyki narodov SSSR. Vol. 4. Moscow, 1967.

Isakov I.A., Khalilov M.Sh. Gunzibskiy yazyk (Fonetika. Morfologiya. Slovoobrazovanie. Leksika. Teksty). [The Hunzib Language (Phonetics. Morphology. Word formation. Vocabulary. Texts)]. Makhachkala, 2012.

Kodzasov S.V., Kibrik A.E. Sopostavitel'noe izuchenie dagestanskikh yazykov. Imya. Fonetika. [Comparative Study of Dagestani Languages. Name. Phonetics]. Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Moskovskogo universiteta. 1990 – 366 p.

Rizakhanova M.Sh. Gunzibtsy. XIX – nach. XX veka: Istoriko-etnograficheskoe issledovanie. [The Hunzibs. XIX - early XX century: Historical and Ethnographic Research]. Makhachkala, 2001.

Testelets J.G. Gunzibskiy yazyk. [The Hunzib Language]. // Bol'shaya rossiyskaya entsiklopediya. Electronic version (2018); https://bigenc.ru/linguistics/text/5200073

The Gunzib village

The history of the Gunzib village