A presentation of Indo Iranian II Iranian Based
A presentation of Indo. Iranian II: Iranian Based on Fortson By Michael Dunham
Introduction • Iranian languages have been spoken in southwest and central Asia • Divided into 3 subbranches: Old (until c. 400 BC) , Middle (until c. 400 BC – c. AD 900) and Modern Iranian • Dialect are divided into East and West Iranian, or Southwest, Central, and Northeast Iranian • Discovery of several Middle Iranian languages and strides in Avestan studies has put Iranian linguistics on equal footing with Indic
Phonology: How Iranian is different from Indic • Deaspiration of voiced aspirates- voiced aspirates lost their aspiration and became voiced stops • Spirantization of voiceless stops – *p, *t, *k became [θ] and [x] before non-syllabic consonants and (mostly in young Avestan) *b, *d, *g became * β, * δ, * γ respectively word internally and before voiced consonants • Development of the palatals- Indo-Iranian palatals *ć and *j (h) became s and z in Avestan and Median and θ and d in Old Persian • Weakening of *s to h-*s becomes h before resonants and vowels, and in some varieties (like Avestan) an *h placed before *a is pronounced *ŋh • Dental-plus-dental clusters and Batholomae’s Law- in dental-plus-dental clusters, the initial dental is omitted and Batholomae’s Law is preserved • Layrngeals- Vocalized layrngeals were lost word-medially. Non-vocalized layrngeals left traces in *h 2 aspirated a preceding voiceless stop and in old Avestan, which maintained laryngeal hiatus • Preservation of diphthongs- Unlike Sanskrit, Iranian preserved the Indo-Iranian diphthongs *ai and *au • In Old Persian, the cluster *tr became ç
Morphology • Due to a lack of material, not all the inflectional endings of Avestan have been confirmed, though Fortson claims a morphological system that is very similar to Sanskrit • Avestan preserves traces of proterokinetic stems (lost in Indic) in r/n stems (Old Avestan also preserves u-stems) • In Old Persian, the Dative was replaced by the Genitive case and the ablative mostly merged with the instrumental and the locative and lost distinction between Aortist and Imperfect.
Avestan • Language of Zoroastrian religion, is considered East Iranian • The ‘Avesta’ consists of the following sacred texts: the Yasna (literagy), the Yašts (sacred poems), the Vendidad (sacred legal text), the Khorde Avesta (short prayers), the Nīrangestān (ritual rules) among others • Some of the oldest texts, like the Yasna, were in Old/ Gathic Avestan, which is grammatically comparable to the Sanskrit of the Rig Veda • The later Avestan texts were written in young Avestan, which was several centuries younger than Gathic Avestan and it is not a direct descendant of it ( like Classical Sanskrit is not a direct descendant of Vedic Sanskrit).
Old Persian • Language of the royal inscriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty of the ancient Persian Empire • Taken from the only preserved Old Iranian texts that are authentic originals, which came from present-day western Iran • Spoken around the same time as late Young Avestan • Has loan words from Median, which is how we know about Median • Written in a cuneiform script with syllabic symbols (for V and CV only) • No information on placement or nature of stress is available
Middle Iranian • Refers collectively to the stages of Iranian that share morphological and phonological developments between Old and Modern Iranian • Broadly distinguished between East and West • West put stress on penultimate and antepenultimate syllables and final syllables were dropped. Nominal inflectional was reduced to 2 cases and the verbal system lost future, perfect, and aorist tenses • East, aside from the verbal system, was more conservative: generally preserved final vocalic endings and the case system in nouns • During this time the greatest geographical distribution of Iranian took place • Most Middle Iranian script was derived from the Aramaic alphabet
Modern Iranian: How does it relate? • Modern Iranian languages are spoken in wide area around central Asia from the Caucuses to Xinjiang • From an Old Iranian stylistic feature came a feature of modern Iranian called ‘split ergativity’ in which the noun is in an oblique case to a past tense verb and the object is in nominative • Modern West Iranian languages: Farsi, Tajiki, Kurdish, Balochi • Modern East Iranian languages: Pashto, Ossetic, Yaghnobi, Wahki
The End • Thank you for your attention! • I hoped you learned a thing or two • Let me know if you have any questions
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