The Iranian Languages
Sixteen colleagues have contributed to this volume: In addition to this editor, these include Prods Oktor Skjrerv0, Yutaka Yoshida, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, and Ronald E. Emmerick for the Old and Middle Iranian languages; John R. Perry, Ludwig Paul, Ernest N. McCarus, Carina Jahani and Agnes Korn for the West Iranian languages; Barbara Robson, Habibullah Tegey, D. (Joy) I. Edelman, Leila Dodykhudoeva, and Elena Bashir for the East Iranian languages; and Charles M. Kieffer for the Southeast Iranian languages. In collaborating with these colleagues, this editor did aim to attain as much equal sequence and coverage of the topics as possible in each chapter. Admittedly, that hands-on approach sometimes proved challenging for both parties, but was appreciated by others, and gratitude is due to all contributors for their patience.
The present volume could only appear because of the generous help in the editorial tasks by a number of these colleagues. Greatest gratitude is due to Prods Oktor Skjrervo, both for his advice and assistance in editing several chapters, and for his hands-on dataprocessing expertise and the availability of his data bases...
Gerilot Windfuhr
FOREWORD
Sixteen colleagues have contributed to this volume: In addition to this editor, these include Prods Oktor Skjrerv0, Yutaka Yoshida, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst, and Ronald E. Emmerick for the Old and Middle Iranian languages; John R. Perry, Ludwig Paul, Ernest N. McCarus, Carina Jahani and Agnes Korn for the West Iranian languages; Barbara Robson, Habibullah Tegey, D. (Joy) I. Edelman, Leila Dodykhudoeva, and Elena Bashir for the East Iranian languages; and Charles M. Kieffer for the Southeast Iranian languages. In collaborating with these colleagues, this editor did aim to attain as much equal sequence and coverage of the topics as possible in each chapter. Admittedly, that hands-on approach sometimes proved challenging for both parties, but was appreciated by others, and gratitude is due to all contributors for their patience.
The present volume could only appear because of the generous help in the editorial tasks by a number of these colleagues. Greatest gratitude is due to Prods Oktor Skjrervo, both for his advice and assistance in editing several chapters, and for his hands-on dataprocessing expertise and the availability of his data bases.
Work on this volume began some twelve years ago. Sadly two dear colleagues passed away, Ronald' E. Emmerick in 2001 and Habibullah Tegey in 2005. In addition, the project encountered repeated critical challenges that threatened its completion. Most recently, it was only by the extraordinary gracious collaboration of Carina Jahani and Agnes Korn who, in spite of numerous other commitments, accepted the challenge of composing the chapter on Balochi in just a few months, that this volume could finally appear.
My fond appreciation goes to a good number of my former students at the University of Michigan, including Donald L. Stilo, Iraj Bashiri, David I. Peterson, and Karl I. Krahnke, and their enthusiasm and inspiration during work on earlier dialectological projects. For the present project doctoral student Rev. Harry Weeks assisted the project with his sophisticated editing and typesetting of earlier drafts, until his untimely death in 2005. I am likewise grateful for those students who diligently worked on the multiple aspects of the project during its various phases, most recently doctoral student Robert Haug who produced the excellent four essential maps for Chapter 2 on the typology of the Iranian languages.
The original impetus for this volume came from a letter in December of 1996 sent by Jonathan Price, then Commissioning Editor at Curzon Press (since merged with Routledge l Taylor & Francis). Once the project got started a couple of years later, he also worked with me editorially until 2005 and earned my lasting gratitude. I am equally grateful for the cordial cooperation with successive editorial teams who took his place folIowing the commercial mergers. These include most recently Senior Production Editor Geraldine Martin, Editorial Assistant Samantha Vale Noya, and, at Swales & Willis, Production Managers Colin Morgan and Richard Willis, and copy-editor Therese Wassily Saba for their stellar efforts during the production phase of this volume. I would also like to thank all editorial teams who have collaborated with me on this project for their patience during delays that occurred over the years. Finally, I am grateful to Routledge/Taylor & Francis for assuming the editorial costs involved in preparing this volume.
Gerilot Windfuhr
Ann Arbor,
April 27, 2009
THE IRANIAN LANGUAGES
Edited by
Gernot Windfuhr
Routledge
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2009
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(c) 2009 Gernol Windfuhr
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Elena Bashir specializes in the languages of northwestern Pakistan. She has conducted fieldwork on a number of these languages, including Kalasha, Khowar, Wakhi, Burushaski, Shina and Balti. Additionally, she has worked on Balochi, Pashto and Brahui. Her PhD dissertation from the University of Michigan is entitled "Topics in Kalasha syntax: An areal and typological perspective". At present her main research concentration is on Khowar, and she has been instrumental in the authorship and acceptance of new Unicode characters needed for Khowar, Burushaski and Khowar. Currently she teaches Urdu at the University of Chicago.
Leila R. Dodykhudoeva, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow at the U nit of iranian Languages of the Department of Indo-European Languages at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. She is an expert in minor Iranian languages. She has worked extensively in the field with speakers of Pamiri languages. She has numerous publications on Pamiri languages, especially of the Shughnani-Rushani group.
D. (Joy) I. Edelman is Professor PhD of Linguistics at the Unit of Iranian Languages of the Department of Indo-European Languages at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. She is an expert in Iranian, Dardic, Nuristani and Burushaski languages. Professor Edelman has published extensively on broader issues of these languages in descriptive, typological, regional and comparative perspective.
Ronald E. Emmerick was Professor of I ranian at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and Projektleiter of the A kademienvorhabens Turfanforschung, Berlin. He was an internationally renowned expert in Khotanese, a Middle-Iranian language spoken in Xinjiang, as well as Tibetan and Sanskrit medical literature. His publications include an edition and translation of a Khotanese poem, the Book of Zambasta, and editions of the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts of the medical text Siddhisiira. He died in 200I.
Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst is a researcher at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities; Berlin, Germany where he works on the Iranian fragments in the Berlin Turfan Collection.
Carina Jahani is Professor of Iranian Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is an internationally renowned scholar on the Balochi language and has published books and articles both about structural and sociolinguistic aspects of this language as well as about its literature. She has also organized one workshop and two conferences on Balochistan studies in Uppsala and edited proceedings from these events (alone and together with Agnes Korn and Paul Titus). She has made several field journeys to Balochi speaking parts of Pakistan and Iran from 1 986 up to the present.
Dr. Charles M. Kieffer is an expert in the Iranian languages of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has devoted his life's work to the documentation of endangered languages in the region and has published widely in this field, in particular on Parachi and Ormuri, and the increasing progression of Persian superstrates, culminating in his most recent work, Grammaire de ormuri de Baraki-Barak (Logor; Afghanistan) (2003).
Agnes Korn is Associate Professor for Comparative Linguistics at Frankfurt a.M. University, Germany. She holds an MA in Indo-European linguistics (Vienna University, Austria) and a PhD in comparative linguistics (Frankfurt a. M. University). She has published widely on Balochi, specifically its historical grammar of Balochi. Currently her research interests focus on Western Iranian languages, including issues of diachronic and synchronic grammar and typology.
Ernest N. McCarus is Professor Emeritus of Arabic and Kurdish Linguistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His publications on Kurdish include a grammar of and textbooks for the Kurdish of SUlaimania, Iraq, and essays on the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Sorani Kurd ish.
Ludwig Paul is Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Hamburg. He is an expert in Iranian languages, specializing on Middle Persian, New Persian, and West Iranian languages and dialects. His approach is both historical-linguistic and typological . He has published a reference grammar of Zazaki (NW-Iranian) and is currently working on a grammar of Early ludaeo-Persian.
John R. Perry is Professor of Persian (emeritus) at the University of Chicago. He has conducted fieldwork in linguistics and folk literature in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. His publications include Form and Meaning in Persian Vocabulary: The Arabic Feminine Ending (Mazda Publishers, 1 99 1 ), A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar (Brill, 2005), and a broad range of articles on the history and linguistics of Persian.
Barbara Robson is the co-author, with Habibullah Tegey, of a series of Pashto language textbooks funded by the US Department of Education. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Texas/Austin. As a senior researcher at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC, she wrote a number of pu blications for general audiences on languages and cultures of the Middle East and Indochina.
Prods Oktor Skjrervo is Aga Khan Professor of Iranian at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He is an internationally recognized expert in Iranian languages and Zoroastrianism and has published extensively in these fields. His work includes an edition of the Middle Persian inscription of Narseh at Paikuli and a catalogue of the Khotanese manuscripts in the British Library, as well as a translation into Norwegian of Zoroastrian texts.
Habibullah Tegey was arguably the world's foremost authority on the Pashto language. He was a native Pashtun and holder of a PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois. As a Professor of Pashto at Kabul University, he published numerous articles and papers on the grammars and literatures of both Pashto and Dari. In the United States, he was for many years a senior editor of the Voice of America's Pashto service, where he received a number of accolades and awards for his programs about and in Pashto. He died in 2005.
Gernot Windfuhr is Professor of Iranian Studies (emeritus) at the University of Michigan, USA. He is an internationally recognized expert in Persian linguistics, Iranian languages and related areal linguistics as well as pre-Islamic Iranian religions. His publications include a monograph of the state and history of Persian grammatical studies, a grammar and analytical dictionary of Sangesari, a Persian textbooks series, numerous theoretical and descriptive studies of verb systems, Iranian dialects, as well as studies on the cosmology, philosophy, and ritual of Zoroastrianism and other pre-Islamic Iranian religions.
Yutaka Yoshida is Professor of Linguistics at Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Japan. His main interest is Sogdian and other Iranian languages once spoken along the Silk Road. He is well known as a decipherer of the Sogdian materials recently discovered in China. He has also published alI the Sogdian texts preserved in Japan, among which is one brand on two pieces of sandalwood imported to Japan as long ago as 1 300 years before. He is unique among Iranists in studying I ranian words transcribed in Chinese characters.
