See data and maps.

Plain text

Moroz, G. (2021). “Velar fricatives”. In: Typological Atlas of the Languages of Daghestan (TALD). Ed. by M. Daniel, K. Filatov, T. Maisak, G. Moroz, T. Mukhin, C. Naccarato and S. Verhees. Moscow: Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, NRU HSE. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6807070. http://lingconlab.ru/dagatlas.

BibTeX

@incollection{moroz2021,
  title = {Velar fricatives},
  author = {George Moroz},
  year = {2021},
  editor = {Michael Daniel and Konstantin Filatov and Timur Maisak and George Moroz and Timofey Mukhin and Chiara Naccarato and Samira Verhees},
  publisher = {Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, NRU HSE},
  address = {Moscow},
  booktitle = {Typological Atlas of the Languages of Daghestan (TALD)},
  url = {http://lingconlab.ru/dagatlas},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.6807070},
}

General chapter: Phonology

The presence of velar fricatives is a complicated feature, since many Russian scholars tend to merge the voiced velar fricative ɣ and voiced velar stop ɡ. Sometimes the voiced velar fricative is mixed (or positionally distributed) with the voiced uvular fricative ʁ, and, as a result, scholars provide a merged velar-uvular place of articulation or choose one of them.

Table 1 below shows the inventories of velar fricatives. As we can see from the table as well as the map, the most common inventory is just x. There are 11 languages that lack velar fricatives, including all non-East Caucasian languages (except Azerbaijani). Eight languages have both voiced and voiceless fricatives. Other systems are rare.

Table 1. Inventories of velar fricatives

fricative inventory languages
none Archi, Armenian, Bezhta, Georgian, Hinuq, Khwarshi, Kumyk, Nogai, Tat, Tsez, Udi
x Agul, Akhvakh, Andi, Avar, Bagvalal, Botlikh, Budukh, Chamalal, Dargwa, Godoberi, Hunzib, Ingush, Khwarshi, Lak, Lezgian
xʲ Andi, Azerbaijani
x, xʲ Agul, Karata, Tindi, Tsakhur
ɣ, x Budukh, Chechen, Dargwa, Kryz, Rutul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur, Tsova-Tush
ɣ, x, xʲ Karata, Khinalug
ɣ, ɣʲ, x, xʲ Khinalug