Kabardian language

1. In some Kabardian dialects (e.g. Baslaney dialect, Uzunyayla dialect), there is a palatalized voiced velar stop [ɡʲ] and a palatalized velar ejective [kʲʼ] that were merged with [d͡ʒ] and [t͡ʃʼ] in most Kabardian dialects.[8] For example, the Baslaney words "гьанэ" [ɡʲaːna] "shirt" and "кӏьапсэ" [kʲʼaːpsa] "rope" are pronounced in other Kabardian dialects as "джанэ" [d͡ʒaːna] and кӏапсэ [t͡ʃʼaːpsa].
2. Consonants that exist only in borrowed words.

The glottalization of the ejective stops (but not fricatives) can be quite weak, and has been reported to often be creaky voice, that is, to have laryngealized voicing. Something similar seems to have happened historically in the Veinakh languages.

Kabardian has a vertical vowel system. Although many surface vowels appear, they can be analyzed as consisting of at most the following three phonemic vowels: /ə/, /a/ and /aː/.[9][10][11]

The following allophones of the short vowels /ə/, /a/ appear:[12][13]

According to Kuipers,[14]

These symbols must be understood as each covering a wide range of sub-variants. For example, i stands for a sound close to cardinal [i] in 'ji' "eight", for a sound close to English [ɪ] in "kit" in the word x'i "sea", etc. In fact, the short vowels, which are found only after consonants, have different variants after practically every series defined as to point of articulation and presence or absence of labialization or palatalization, and the number of variants is multiplied by the influence of the consonant (or zero) that follows.

Most of the long vowels appear as automatic variants of a sequence of short vowel and glide, when it occurs in a single syllable:[9][11]

• [uː] = /əw/
• [oː] = /aw/
• [iː] = /əj/
• [eː] = /aj/

This leaves only the vowel [aː]. Kuipers claims that this can be analyzed as underlying /ha/ when word-initial, and underlying /ah/ elsewhere, based on the following facts:[15]

• /h/ occurs only in the plural suffix [ha], which does not occur word-initially.
• [aː] is the only word-initial vowel; analyzing it as /ha/ makes the language underlyingly universally consonant-initial.
• Certain complications involving stress and morphophonemic alternations are dramatically simplified by these assumptions.

Halle finds Kuipers' analysis "exemplary".[16] Gordon and Applebaum note this analysis, but also note that some authors disagree, and as a result prefer to maintain a phoneme /aː/.[9]

In a later section of his monograph, Kuipers also attempts to analyze the two vowels phonemes /ə/ and /a/ out of existence. Halle, however,[10] shows that this analysis is flawed, as it requires the introduction of multiple new phonemes to carry the information formerly encoded by the two vowel phonemes.

The vowel /o/ appears in some loan words; it is often pronounced /aw/.

The diphthong /aw/ is pronounced /oː/ in some dialects. /jə/ may be realised as /iː/, /wə/ as /uː/ and /aj/ as /eː/. This monophthongisation does not occur in all dialects.

The vowels /a, aː/ can have the semi-vowel /j/ in front of it.

• Gordon, Matthew and Applebaum, Ayla. "Phonetic structures of Turkish Kabardian", 2006, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36(2), 159–186.
• Halle, Morris. "Is Kabardian a Vowel-Less Language?" Foundations of Language, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1970), pp. 95–103.
• Kuipers, Aert. "Phoneme and Morpheme in Kabardian", 1960, Janua Linguarum: Series Minor, Nos. 8–9. 's-Gravenhage: Mouton and Co.
• John Colarusso (1992). A Grammar of the Kabardian Language. University of Calgary Press.