Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Historical Linguistics
Vol. 9:2 (2019) ► pp.239–281

Isoglosses and subdivisions of Iranian

| CNRS FRE Mondes iranien et indien

The aim of this paper is to look at some of the problems with the traditional subdivisions of Iranian and at possible new approaches. It builds on an argument made in Korn (2016a), adding discussion and further illustrating problems in the data and methods involved in the traditional model of relations among the Iranian languages. It specifically points out that the traditional family tree is based on a set of isoglosses that is an artefact of the data that happened to be available at the time. In addition, the question arises whether the wave model or the concept of linguistic areas would be more adequate to account for the data. The discovery of a corpus of Bactrian manuscripts encourages a new approach. I argue that a sub-branch including Bactrian, Parthian and some other languages is a hypothesis that deserves to be tested; at the same time, the comparison with other Iranian languages as well as typological considerations permit to assess the role of language contact.

Keywords: Iranian, family tree, wave model, linkage, isoglosses, Bactrian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Tree or wave model? The case of Western Iranian
    • 2.1The traditional isoglosses
    • 2.2The historical dimension
  • 3.Tree or linguistic area? The case of Eastern Iranian
    • 3.1The traditional isoglosses
    • 3.2Linguistic areas
  • 4.On diagnosticity and groupiness
    • 4.1Degrees and types of diagnosticity
    • 4.2Groupiness
  • 5.New isoglosses
    • 5.1The position of Bactrian
    • 5.2Morphological innovations
    • 5.3Discussion
  • 6.Experimenting with Central Iranian
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 29 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.17010.kor
References
Bartholomae, Christian
1920 Zur Kenntnis der mitteliranischen Mundarten III. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse. Heidelberg: Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar
Campbell, Lyle
2006 Areal Linguistics: A Closer Scrutiny. In Matras et al., eds., 1–31.Google Scholar
Cheung, Johnny
2007 Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Clackson, James
2007 Indo-European Linguistics. An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cowgill, Warren
1970 Italic and Celtic superlatives and the dialects of Indo-European. Indo-European and Indo-Europeans: papers presented at the 3rd Indo-European conference at the University of Pennsylvania ed. by George Cardona, Henry M. Hoenigswald & Alfred Senn, 113–153. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durkin-Meisterernst, Desmond
2007 The use of Parthian ʾhʾz and related forms in Sogdian and Bactrian. Darъ slovesьny. Festschrift für Christoph Koch zum 65. Geburtstag ed. by Wolfgang Hock & Michael Meier-Brügger, 31–44. Munich: Otto Sagner.Google Scholar
2014 Grammatik des Westmitteliranischen (Parthisch und Mittelpersisch). Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik 73. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
François, Alexandre
2014 Trees, waves and linkages. Models of language diversification. The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans, 161–184. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Friedman, Victor
2000 After 170 years of Balkan Linguistics: Whither the Millenium? Mediterranean Language Review 121.1–15.Google Scholar
Garrett, Andrew
2006 Convergence in the formation of Indo-European subgroups: Phylogeny and chronology. Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages ed. by Peter Forster & Colin Renfrew, 139–151. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Geiger, Wilhelm
1901 Kleinere Dialekte und Dialektgruppen: IV. Allgemeine Übersicht über die Dialekte und ihre Gruppirung. Grundriss der iranischen Philologie ed. by Wilhelm Geiger & Ernst Kuhn, I/2:412–423. Strassburg: Trübner.Google Scholar
Gholami, Saloumeh
2014 Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Gippert, Jost
2009 Zur dialektalen Stellung des Zazaki. Die Sprache 471 [2007/08].77–107.Google Scholar
Glück, Helmut
2005 Metzler Lexikon Sprache. 31. Aufl. Stuttgart: Metzler. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Ives
1994 The West-to-East Cline in Algonquian Dialectology. Actes Du Vingt-Cinquieme Congres Des Algonquinistes ed. by William Cowan, 187–211. Ottawa: Carleton University. [URL]
Hamp, Eric
1977 On some questions of areal linguistics. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 31:279–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Henning, Walter B.
1960 The Bactrian Inscription. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 231.47–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hock, Hans Henrich & Elena Bashir
(eds.) 2016 The Languages and Linguistics of South Asia. A Comprehensive Guide. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Humbach, Helmut
1989 Choresmian. In Schmitt, ed., 193–203.Google Scholar
Jahani, Carina & Agnes Korn
eds. 2003 The Baloch and Their Neighbours. Ethnic and Linguistic Contact in Balochistan in Historical and Modern Times. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
Jügel, Thomas
2013 The Verbal Particle BE in Middle Persian. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 671.29–56.Google Scholar
2014 On the Linguistic History of Kurdish. Kurdish Studies 21.123–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Die Entwicklung der Ergativkonstruktion im Alt- und Mitteliranischen. Eine korpusbasierte Untersuchung zu Kasus, Kongruenz und Satzbau. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kalyan, Siva & Alexandre François
2018 Freeing the Comparative Method from the tree model: A framework for Historical Glottometry. Let’s Talk about Trees: Genetic Relationships of Languages and Their Phylogenic Representation ed. by Ritsuko Kikusawa & Lawrence Reid, 59–89. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.Google Scholar
Kellens, Jean
1989 Avestique. In Schmitt, ed., 32–55.Google Scholar
Kopitar, Jernej
1829 Albanische, walachische und bulgarische Sprache. Jahrbücher der Literatur 461.59–106.Google Scholar
Korn, Agnes
2003 Balochi and the Concept of North-West Iranian. In Jahani & Korn, eds., 49–60.Google Scholar
2005 Towards a Historical Grammar of Balochi. Studies in Balochi Historical Phonology and Vocabulary. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
2010 Parthian ž . Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 731.415–436. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013a Footnotes on a Parthian Sound-Change. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 761.99–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013b Final troubles: Armenian stem classes and the word-end in Late Old Persian. Commentationes Iranicae, Vladimiro f. Aaron Livschits nonagenario donum natalicium. Sbornik statej k 90-letiju Vladimira Aronoviča Livšica ed. by Pavel Lurje & Sergei Tokhtas’jev, 74–91. St Petersburg: Nestor-Istorija.Google Scholar
2013c Looking for the Middle Way: Voice and Transitivity in Complex Predicates in Iranian. Lingua 1351. Special Issue: Complex Predicates. 30–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016a A partial tree of Central Iranian: A new look at Iranian subphyla. Indogermanische Forschungen 1211.401–434. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016b The languages, their histories and genetic classification : Iranian. In Hock & Bashir, eds., 51–66.Google Scholar
2017 What to look out for: morphology of prospectives and futures in Iranian. Prospective and Proximative in Turkic, Iranian and beyond ed. by Agnes Korn & Irina Nevskaya, 35–48. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
Korn, Agnes & Thomas Jügel
2010 Grouping Iranian Languages Polydimensionally. Marburg. [URL]
Lecoq, Pierre
1989 Les dialectes caspiens et les dialectes du nord-ouest de l’Iran. In Schmitt, ed., 296–312Google Scholar
2002 Recherches sur les dialectes kermaniens (Iran central). Grammaire, textes, traductions et glossaires. Acta Iranica 391. Leuven: Peeters.Google Scholar
Leskien, August
1876 Die Declination im Slavisch-litauischen und Germanischen. Preisschriften gekrönt und herausgegeben von der Fürstlich Jablonowski’schen Gesellschaft zu Leipzig XIX. Leipzig: Hirzel. [URL]
MacKenzie, D. Neil
1954 Gender in Kurdish. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 161.528–541. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1961 The Origins of Kurdish. Transactions of the Philological Society 1960.68–86. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1969 Iranian Languages. Linguistics in South Asia ed. by Thomas Sebeok, 450–477. Current Trends in Linguistics V. The Hague, Paris: Mouton.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron, April McMahon & Nigel Vincent
eds. 2006 Linguistics Areas: Convergence in Historical and Typological Perspective. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mayrhofer, Manfred
1989 Vorgeschichte der iranischen Sprachen; Uriranisch. In Schmitt, ed., 4–24.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine
1925 La méthode comparative en linguistique historique. Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning 2. Oslo, Leipzig, Paris: Champion, Aschehoug, Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Morgenstierne, Georg
1938 Indo-Iranian Frontier Languages II. Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co.Google Scholar
Öpengin, Ergin
2016 The Mukri variety of Central Kurdish: grammar, texts, and lexicon. Wiesbaden: Reichert. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oranskij, Iosif Mihajlovič
1977 Les langues iraniennes. (Trans.) Joyce Blau. Paris: C. Klincksieck.Google Scholar
Paul, Ludwig
1998 The Position of Zazaki among West Iranian Languages. Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies held in Cambridge, 11th to 15th September 1995. Part I: Old and Middle Iranian Studies ed. by Nicholas Sims-Williams, 163–177. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
2003 The Position of Balochi among Western Iranian Languages: The Verbal System. In Jahani & Korn, eds., 61–71.Google Scholar
Peus
2013 Auktion 410. ed. Dr. Busso Peus Nachf. Vol. 41. Frankfurt a.M.: Peus.Google Scholar
Rastorgueva, Vera S. & Džoj Ėdel’man
2003 Ėtimologičeskij slovar’ iranskix jazykov. Vol. 21: b–d. Moscow: Vostočnaja literatura.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Rüdiger
ed. 1989 Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert.Google Scholar
1989a Die altiranischen Sprachen im Überblick. In Schmitt, ed., 25–31.Google Scholar
1989b Die mitteliranischen Sprachen im Überblick. In Schmitt, ed., 95–105.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Martin
1969 review of: Harold W. Bailey 1967: Indo-Scythian Studies, being Khotanese Texts Vol. VI: Prolexis to the Book of Zambasta. Journal of the American Oriental Society 891.444–447. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seifart, Frank
2015 Does Structural-Typological Similarity Affect Borrowability? Language Dynamics and Change 51.92–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sims-Williams, Nicholas
1989a Eastern Middle Iranian. In Schmitt, ed., 165–172.Google Scholar
1989b Bactrian. Encyclopædia Iranica III1.344–349.Google Scholar
1996 Eastern Iranian languages. Encyclopædia Iranica VII1.649–652.Google Scholar
2000–2012 Bactrian Documents from Northern Afghanistan. 31 vols. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum II, III, 5. London: Azimuth Editions.Google Scholar
2004a The Parthian Abstract Suffix -yft . Indo-European Perspectives. Studies in Honour of Anna Morpurgo Davies ed. by John H. W. Penney, 539–547. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2004b The Bactrian language. (handout of a lecture at Bonn university, June 2004).Google Scholar
2008 The Bactrian Inscription of Rabatak: A New Reading. Bulletin of the Asia Institute 81 [2004].53–68.Google Scholar
2011 Remarks on the phonology of the Manichaean Bactrian fragment (M 1224). Leksika, ėtimologija, jazykovye kontakty. K jubileju doktora filologičeskix nauk, professora Džoj Iosifovny Ėdel’man ed. by Elena Molčanova et al., 244–251. Moscow: Tezaurus.Google Scholar
Skjærvø, Prods O.
2009 Middle West Iranian. In Windfuhr, ed., 196–278.Google Scholar
Stilo, Donald
2016 On the non-Persian Iranian substratum of Azerbaijan. Turks and Iranians: interactions in language and history the Gunnar Jarring memorial program at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study ed. by Éva Ágnes Csató, Lars Johanson, András Róna-Tas & Bo Utas, 185–234. Turcologica 105. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Stolz, Thomas
2006 All or Nothing. In Matras et al., eds., 32–50.Google Scholar
Strand, Richard
2016 The languages, their histories and genetic classification: Nûristânî. In Hock & Bashir, eds., 66–72.Google Scholar
Sundermann, Werner
1989 Westmitteliranische Sprachen. In Schmitt, ed., 106–113.Google Scholar
Tedesco, Paul
1921 Dialektologie der mitteliranischen Turfantexte. Monde Oriental 151.184–258.Google Scholar
Tichy, Eva
2006 A Survey of Proto-Indo-European. Bremen: Hempen.Google Scholar
Tremblay, Xavier
2002 Ist die Aktivendung 3Pl -āra in einigen ostiranischen Sprachen inneriranische Entwicklung oder indogermanisches Erbe? (mit einem Exkurs über die athematischen Endungen des Chwaresmischen. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 621.259–287.Google Scholar
2005 Bildeten die iranischen Sprachen ursprünglich eine genetische Familie oder einen Sprachbund innerhalb des indo-iranischen Zweiges? Sprachkontakt und Sprachwandel. Akten der XI. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 17.-23. September 2000, Halle an der Saale ed. by Olav Hackstein & Gerhard Meiser, 673–688. Reichert.Google Scholar
Weber, Dieter
1980 Beiträge zur historischen Grammatik des Ossetischen. Indogermanische Forschungen 851.126–137.Google Scholar
Wendtland, Antje
2009 The Position of the Pamir Languages within East Iranian. Orientalia Suecana 581.172–188.Google Scholar
Windfuhr, Gernot
1975 Isoglosses: A Sketch on Persians and Parthians, Kurds and Medes. Monumentum Henrik S. Nyberg II, 457–472. Acta Iranica 5. Tehran & Liège: Bibliothèque PahlaviGoogle Scholar
1989 New West Iranian. In Schmitt, ed., 251–262.Google Scholar
1996 Dialectology. Encyclopædia Iranica VII1.362–370.Google Scholar
ed. 2009 The Iranian Languages. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
2009 Dialectology and Topics. In Windfuhr, ed., 5–42.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Bazafkan, Mohammad
2023. ‘They silenced our voices’; a genealogy of the linguistic othering of the Kurds in Iran. Ethnicities DOI logo
Cathcart, Chundra A.
2022. Dialectal Layers in West Iranian: A Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Approach to Linguistic Relationships1. Transactions of the Philological Society 120:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Gholami, Saloumeh
2021. Judeo-Hamadani: The Language of Jews in Hamadan and Its Origins. Iranian Studies 54:5-6 ► pp. 769 ff. DOI logo
Kalyan, Siva, Alexandre François & Harald Hammarström
2019. Problems with, and alternatives to,the tree model in historical linguistics. Journal of Historical Linguistics 9:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Mohammadirad, Masoud & Pollet Samvelian
2021. Procliticization as a residual of second positioning: evidence from West Iranian languages. Folia Linguistica 55:s42-s2 ► pp. 291 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.