See data and maps.
Moroz, George (2021). “Velar fricatives”. In: Typological Atlas of the Languages of Daghestan (TALD), v 2.0.1. Ed. by George Moroz, Michael Daniel, Konstantin Filatov, Timur Maisak, Timofey Mukhin, Irina Politova, Elena Shvedova, Samira Verhees and Chiara Naccarato. Moscow: Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, HSE University. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6807070. https://lingconlab.ru/tald.
@incollection{moroz2021,
title = {Velar fricatives},
author = {George Moroz},
year = {2021},
editor = {George Moroz and Michael Daniel and Konstantin Filatov and Timur Maisak and Timofey Mukhin and Irina Politova and Elena Shvedova and Samira Verhees and Chiara Naccarato},
publisher = {Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, HSE University},
address = {Moscow},
booktitle = {Typological Atlas of the Languages of Daghestan (TALD), v 2.0.1},
url = {https://lingconlab.ru/tald},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.6807070},
}General chapter: Phonology
The presence of velar fricatives is a complicated feature, since many Russian scholars tend to merge the voiced velar fricative ɣ and voiced velar stop ɡ. Sometimes the voiced velar fricative is mixed (or positionally distributed) with the voiced uvular fricative ʁ, and, as a result, scholars provide a merged velar-uvular place of articulation or choose one of them.
Table 1 below shows the inventories of velar fricatives. As we can see from the table as well as the map, the most common inventory is just x. There are 11 languages that lack velar fricatives, including all non-East Caucasian languages (except Azerbaijani). Eight languages have both voiced and voiceless fricatives. Other systems are rare.
| fricative inventory | languages |
|---|---|
| xʲ | Upper Andi, Azerbaijani |
| ɣ, x | Budukh, Chechen, Mehweb, Southwestern Dargwa, Kajtag, Kryz, Rutul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur, Tsova-Tush |
| ɣ, ɣʲ, x, xʲ | Khinalug |
| ɣ, x, xʲ | Karata, Khinalug |
| x | Qushan Agul, Northern Akhvakh, Upper Andi, Avar, Bagvalal, Botlikh, Budukh, Chamalal, Gigatli, Chirag, Godoberi, Hunzib, Ingush, Khwarshi, Lak, Lezgian |
| x, xʲ | Agul, Tukita, Tindi, Tsakhur |
| none | Archi, Eastern Armenian, Bezhta, Georgian, Hinuq, Khwarshi, Kumyk, Nogai, Tat, Tsez, Udi |