Bats language

Bats
batsba motjiti
Spoken in	Georgia
Region	Zemo-Alvani in Kakheti
Native speakers	3,420  (2000)
Language family	Northeast Caucasian Nakh Bats
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bbl

Bats (also Batsi, Batsbi, Batsb, Batsaw, Tsova-Tush) is the language of the Bats people, a Caucasian minority group, and is part of the Nakh family of Caucasian languages. It had 2,500 to 3,000 speakers in 1975.

There is only one dialect. It exists only as a spoken language, as the Bats people use Georgian as their written language. The language is not mutually intelligible with either Chechen or Ingush, the other two members of the Nakh family.

History

Until the middle of the 19th century, the Tsovians lived in Tushetia, the mountain region of Northeast Georgia. They were expected to have come settled with Tush people in mid centuries later became assimilated with other Tush people and now are known as one of four tush subgroups. The Tsova Gorge in Tushetia was inhabited by four Bats communities: the Sagirta, Otelta, Mozarta and Indurta. Later they settled on the Kakhetia Plain, in the village of Zemo-Alvani, where they still live. Administratively they are part of the Akhmeta district of Georgia. There are some families of Bats in Tbilisi and other bigger towns in Georgia.

Classification

Bats belongs to the Nakh family of Caucasian languages.

Geographic distribution

Most speakers of Bats live in the village of Zemo-Alvani, on the Kakhetia Plain, in the Akhmeta district of Georgia. There are some families of Bats in Tbilisi and other bigger towns in Georgia.

Phonology

Vowels

Batsbi has a typical triangular five-vowel system with short-long contrast (except for u which has no long form). Batsbi, also has a number of diphthongs, ei, ui, oi, ai, ou, and au. All vowels and diphthongs also have nasalized allophones which are the result of phonetic and morphophonemic processes; this is represented by a supercript n, as in kʼnateⁿ boy-GEN.

	Front	Back
High	i, iː	u
Mid	e [ɛ], eː	o, oː
Low		a, aː

Consonants

Batsbi exhibits a relatively typical consonant inventory for a Nakh-Dagestanian languages. Unlike its closes relatives, Chechen and Ingush, Batsbi retains the lateral fricative /ɬ/.

Consonant phonemes of Bats

Manner		Labial	Dental1	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Stops	Nasal	m	n
	Voiceless	p [pʰ]	t [tʰ], tː	c [t͜sʰ]	č [t͡ʃʰ]	k [kʰ]	q [qʰ], qː		ʔ
	Voiced	b	d	ʒ [d͜z]	ǯ [d͡ʒ]	g
	Ejective	pʼ	tʼ tʼː	cʼ [t͜sʼ]	čʼ [t͡ʃʼ]	kʼ	qʼ qʼː
Fricatives	Voiceless			s sː ɬ	š [ʃ]	x xː		ħ	h
	Voiced	v		z	ž [ʒ]	ǧ [ɣ]		ʕ
Approximant			l lː	r [ɾ]	j

Grammar

The first grammar of Bats – Über die Thusch-Sprache – was compiled by the German orientalist Anton Schiefner (1817–1879) making it into the first grammar of any indigenous Caucasian languages based on sound scientific principles.

Bats has eight noun classes, the highest number among the Caucasian languages. Bats also has explicit inflections for agentivity of a verb; it makes a distinction between as woʒe I fell down (sc. through no fault of my own) and so woʒe I fell down (sc. and it was my own fault).

External links

• The Red Book of Peoples of the Russian Empire: The Bats
• Ethnologue report on Bats
• Languages of the World report