Ubykh phonology

Ubykh, a recently extinct Northwest Caucasian language, has the largest consonant inventory of all documented languages that do not use clicks, and also has the most disproportional ratio of phonemic consonants to vowels. It has consonants in at least eight, perhaps nine, basic places of articulation and 29 distinct fricatives, 27 sibilants, and 20 uvulars, more than any other documented language. Some Khoisan languages, such as Taa, may have larger consonant inventories due to their extensive use of click consonants, although some analyses (see for instance Traill (1985)) view a large proportion of the clicks in these languages as clusters, which would bring them closer into line with the Caucasian languages.

Consonants
Below is an International Phonetic Alphabet representation of the Ubykh consonant inventory.

The Karacalar "dialect"
A divergent form of Ubykh spoken by Osman Güngör, an inhabitant of Karacalar, was investigated by Georges Dumézil in the 1960s (Dumézil 1965:266–269). His speech differed phonologically from "standard" Ubykh in a number of ways:


 * the labialised alveolar stops have merged into the corresponding bilabial stops.
 * The labialised alveolopalatal fricatives have merged with their postalveolar counterparts.
 * seems to have disappeared.
 * Pharyngealisation is no longer distinctive, surviving only on the lexemes ('to be ill') and  ('to bark'), and being replaced in many instances by gemination (standard  ('dog') → Karacalar ), and in at least one instance by ejectivisation (standard  ('roasted maize') → Karacalar ).
 * Palatalisation of the uvular consonants is no longer phonemic, also being replaced in many instances by gemination (standard ('to cough') → Karacalar ).
 * The voiced retroflex affricate has, at least in some cases, merged with.

Vowels
Ubykh has very few basic phonemic vowels. Hans Vogt's (1963) analysis retains as a separate vowel, but most other linguists (Dumézil 1965) do not accept this analysis, preferring one with simpler vertical distinction:  and. Other vowels, notably, appear in some loanwords. The question of whether an additional vowel should be retained is of some debate, since it differs from  not in length but in quality. However, phonologically and diachronically, it is often derived from two instances of.

Even with so few vowels, there are many vowel allophones, affected by the secondary articulation of the consonants that surround them. Eleven basic phonetic vowels appear, mostly derived from the two phonemic vowels adjacent to labialised or palatalised consonants. The phonetic vowels are and. In general, the following rules apply (Vogt 1963):


 * and
 * and
 * and
 * and

Other, more complex vowels have been noted as allophones: ('you did it') can become, for instance. On occasion, nasal sonorants (particularly ) may even decay into vowel nasality. For instance, ('young man') has been noted as  as well as.

The vowel appears initially very frequently, particularly in the function of the definite article. is extremely restricted initially, appearing only in ditransitive verb forms where all three arguments are third person, e.g. ('he gave it to him') (normally ). Even then, itself may be dropped to provide an even shorter form.

Both vowels appear without restriction finally, although when is unstressed finally, it tends to be dropped:  ('father') becomes the definite form  ('the father'). In fact, the alternation between and zero is often not phonemic, and may be dropped root-internally as well:  ~  ('hoe'). This kind of allomorphy is called a zero allomorph.