Laz grammar

Laz is a Kartvelian language. It is sometimes considered as a southern dialect of Zan languages, the northern dialect being the Mingrelian language.

Today, the area where Laz is spoken stretches from the village Sarpi of Khelvachauri district in Georgia to the village Kemer of Rize province in Turkey. Laz is spoken also in Western Turkey in the villages created by Laz muhajirs in 1877-1878. In Georgia, out of Sarpi, the Laz language islets were also in Abkhazia, but the fate of them is obscure at present.

Laz is divided into three dialects: Khopa-Chkhala, Vitze-Arkabe and Atina-Artasheni. Dialectical classification is mainly conditioned by phonetic characteristics. More specifically, the crucial point is the reflexes of the Kartvelian phoneme [qʼ], which is maintained only in the Khopa-Chkhala dialect but has different reflections in Vitze-Arkabe and Atina-Artasheni dialects (see below).

Laz vowel inventory consists of five sounds: a, e, i, o, u.

Consonant composition of Laz varies dialectically. Full set of sounds is present in Khopa-Chkhala dialect, while Vitze-Arkabe and Atina-Artasheni dialects lost glottalized uvular q.

Glottalized uvular q is preserved only in Khopa-Chkhala dialect before the vowels and the consonants v and l. This sound is also evidenced after glottalized stops and affricates in several words, such as p̌qorop (I love smb./sth.); ǩqorop (I love you); t̆qubi (twins), ǯqv-/ǯqvin- (to reconcile); ç̌qint̆i (fresh-soft and unripe). But in the most of cases *t̆q → t̆ǩ; *ǯq → ǯǩ; *ç̌q → ç̌ǩ.

In the Vitze-Arkabe dialect, in the neighborhood of consonants *q → ǩ (exception is the verb ovapu ← *oqvapu "to be"). In the word-initial prevocalic and in the intervocalic positions *q → ∅.

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