Brief Information
Chirag is spoken in the village of Chirag in the east of Agulsky District of the Republic of Dagestan. The village is located 20 km northwest of the village of Tpig, on the Chiragchay River, at an altitude of 2320 m. According to the estimate of the permanent population of the Republic of Dagestan as of January 1, 2019, 511 people live in the village. However, in fact, this figure is much smaller (less than 150 people). At the same time, speakers of Chirag are found in many large cities, such as Makhachkala, Kaspiysk, etc. The largest number of native speakers lives in Kaspiysk (about 800 families of vault dwellers from the village), but many families have representatives of the younger generation (< 35 years old) they almost don't know the language.
The size of the ethnic group is about 2300 people and all of them speak their native language to some extent.
Genealogy
The Chirag language belongs to the Dargin group of the Nakh-Dagestan language family. It is so different from the literary Dargin language that they are not mutually intelligible. Apparently, Chirag represents the earliest idiom, which has separated from the Pradargin language.
Distribution
Language contacts and multilingualism
No data.
Language functioning
- Legal status
- Writing system
- Language standardization
- Domains of language usage
The Chirag language has no special legal status.
The Chirag language has no officially accepted written norm.
There is no official literary norm of the Chirag language.
Family / everyday communication
Family / everyday communication
Chirag acts as a language of family and everyday communication.
Education
Education
All teaching is conducted in Russian, some schools teach "standard" Dargin, which is actually a different language.
Mass media
Mass media
No data.
Culture
Culture
No data.
Science
Science
No scientific works were published in Chirag.
Folklore
Folklore
No data.
Literature
Literature
No literary works are produced in Chirag.
Religion
Religion
No data.
Legislation
Legislation
No official documents are published in the Chirag language, the Russian language is used there.
Administrative activities
Administrative activities
Chirag does not serve as a language of office work and business correspondence.
Legal proceedings
Legal proceedings
Russian serves as the language of legal proceedings in the Republic of Dagestan.
Industry
Industry
No data.
Agriculture
Agriculture
No data.
Trade and service
Trade and service
No data.
Transport
Transport
No data.
Internet
Internet
No data.
Dynamics of language usage
The language transmission to children still remains, but not in all families. In many families, representatives of the younger generation (< 35 years old) almost do not know the language.
Language structure
Phonetics
There are about 10 vowels and 43 consonant phonemes in Chirag.
Phonetics
Vocalism. The vowel system is rather simple: there are 4 basic vowels (i, e, u, a), as well as the epiglottalized vowels iˁ and aˁ. Almost all vowels have long pairs.
Consonantism. There are four-membered oppositions of the form "sonorous-deaf (aspirated) - geminated (non-aspirated) - abrupt" in Chirag. Fricative consonants are not abruptive and form triples of the form z-s-s:. It is common for Dagestani languages to have laryngals. In Chirag, there are four of them: two stops (simple and emphatic) and two fricatives (simple and emphatic). The system of sonorants is standard: m, n, l, r, j, w. The contrast in labialization mainly covers the series of sibilant, velar and uvular.
Syllable types: CV, CVC, CVRT.
The stress in nouns is mixed, mobile. There are minimal pairs that differ in stress. In verbs, the stress falls on the first syllable.
Morphology
Morphological type of language: mostly agglutinative.
Morphology
Like other languages of the Nakh-Dagestan family, Chirag Dargin is a language of complex verbal morphology and a developed system of spatial cases. There are five grammatical cases: absolute, ergative, genitive, dative, and comitative. Personal pronouns of the 1st person in the Chirag language distinguish between inclusive and exclusive forms.
Verbs are divided into simple and complex verbs (consisting of an immutable noun or verb part and a conjugated verb). In the verb, the bases of the perfect and imperfect types are distinguished. From the first, the infinitive, aorist, and imperative are formed; from the second, the present and the prohibitive. The relationship between the species bases is partly determined by the dictionary information, and partly described by the rules.
Syntax
The basic word order is SOV. Ergative alignment.
Syntax
The basic word order is SOV. Ergative alignment.
Vocabulary
No data.
Vocabulary
No data.
Language experts
Dmitry Sergeevich Ganenkov
(Moscow, Russia)Dmitry Sergeevich Ganenkov was one of the participants of the project of the University of Bamberg on documenting Chirag, along with Geoffrey Haig and N. K. Bogomolova (the project has a duration from 2014 to 2017). He led the collection of audio and video materials on the Chirag language.
Core references
Grammatical descriptions: grammars, sketches
None.
Dictionaries
None.
Selected papers on grammatical issues
Evstigneeva A. P. Soglasovanie v chiragskom darginskom. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana [Approval in Chirag Darginsky district. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana] 2017. T. 13, ch. 1. S. 605–626.
Kibrik A. E., Kodzasov S. V. Sopostavitel'noe izuchenie dagestanskikh yazykov. Imya. Fonetika. Darginskiy yazyk (chiragskiy dialekt) [Comparative study of Dagestani languages. Name. Phonetics. Dargin language (Chirag dialect)]M.: MGU, 1990.
Kibrik A. E., Kodzasov S. V. Sopostavitel'noe izuchenie dagestanskikh yazykov. Glagol. Darginskiy yazyk (chiragskiy dialekt). [Comparative study of Dagestani languages. Verb. Dargin language (Chirag dialect)] M.: MGU, 1988.
Kibrik A. E. Materialy k tipologii ergativnosti. Darginskiy yazyk (chiragskiy dialekt). Predvaritel'nye publikatsii Instituta russkogo yazyka AN SSSR. Vyp. 127. M.: MGU, 1977. (Pereizdanie: Kibrik A.E. Konstanty i peremennye yazyka.[ . Materials for the typology of ergativity. Dargin language (Chirag dialect). Preliminary publications of the Russian Language Institute] SPb: Aleteyya, 2003. S. 482–504)
Musaev M.-S. M. Chiragskiy dialekt darginskogo yazyka // Voprosy russkogo i dagestanskogo yazykoznaniya.[ Chirag dialect of the Dargin language // Questions of Russian and Dagestan linguistics.] Makhachkala, 1975.
Resources
Corpora and text collections
The Chirag language corpus was prepared by D. S. Ganenkov in 2016 as part of the project on documenting the Chirag language at the University of Bamberg. The volume of the corpus is about 10.000 words.
Other electronic resources
Website of the Chirag Language Documentation project of the University of Bamberg.
The website of the project "Series of Intercontinental Dictionaries (IDS)" presents a dictionary of the Chirag language with a volume of 1350 words.
Data for this page kindly provided by
Based on the project on documentation of the Chirag language of the University of Bamberg (participants: Jeffrey Haig, D. S. Ganenkov, N. K. Bogomolova) and also materials from the publications of A. E. Kibrik and his colleagues.
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