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THE POSITION OF SHIRI AND AMUZGI AMONG DARGWA VARIETIES // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2019. Issue 2 (24). P. 20-38

The Dargwa varieties spoken by inhabitants of the villages Shiri and Amuzgi (Dakhadaev district, Daghestan) have never before been the subject of a separate study. In general works on Dargwa dialectology these idioms are either never mentioned or described as subdialects (Rus. govor) of Kubachi or Sirhwa. However, the data I have collected during fieldwork in the villages of Shiri and Amuzgi in 2012–2018 гг. clearly show that these dialects should be considered to form a separate branch of the Dargwa group (either as a separate language or as a dialect group, depending on whether Dargwa is treated as a language or a subfamily), lexicostatistically positioned approximately in the middle between Kubachi and Sanzhi. Amuzgi, however, when treated separately, shows significantly more similarity to Kubachi than Shiri. In this paper, I describe, for the first time, the main linguistic features of Shiri and Amuzgi; based on lexical, phonetic and morphological features I demonstrate that the similarities of Shiri and, especially Amuzgi with Kubachi are the result of secondary contact influence. This is an interesting case for the typology of language contact, showing that a dialect continuum situation may arise even between languages that have diverged at a considerable time depth.

Keywords: Dargwa, East Caucasian languages, dialectology, phonology, morphology, language contact