Eastern Iranian languages

The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times (from c. the 4th century BC). The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian. The largest living Eastern Iranian language is Pashto, with some 50 million speakers between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan. As opposed to the Middle Western Iranian dialects, the Middle Eastern Iranian preserves word-final syllables.

The living Eastern Iranian languages are spoken in a contiguous area, in eastern Afghanistan as well as the adjacent parts of western Pakistan, Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province of eastern Tajikistan, and the far west of Xinjiang region of China, while it also has two other living members in widely separated areas, the Yaghnobi language of northwestern Tajikistan (descended from Sogdian) and the Ossetic language of the Caucasus (descended from Scytho-Sarmatian). These are remnants of a vast ethno-linguistic continuum that stretched over most of Central Asia in the 1st millennium BC.

History

Eastern Iranian is thought to have separated from Western Iranian in the course of the later 2nd millennium BC, and was possibly located at the Yaz culture.

With Greek presence in Central Asia, some of the easternmost of these languages were recorded in their Middle Iranian stage (hence the "Eastern" classification), while almost no records of the Scytho-Sarmatian continuum stretching from Kazakhstan west across the Pontic steppe to Ukraine have survived.

Classification

Eastern Iranian remains a single dialect continuum subject to common innovation. Traditional branches, such as "Northeastern", as well as Eastern Iranian itself, are better considered language areas rather than genetic groups.^[2][3]

The languages are as follows:^[4]

Old Iranian

• Scythian and Old Saka†

Avestan† (c. 1000 – 7th century BC) is commonly classified as Eastern, but is not assigned to a branch in this classification.

Middle Iranian

• Bactrian†, c. 4th century BC – 9th century AD
• Khwarezmian† (Chorasmian) c. 4th century BC – 13th century AD
• Sogdian, from c. the 4th century BC.
• Scytho-Khotanese (c. 5th century – 10th century AD) and Tumshuqese (formerly Maralbashi, 7th century AD)
• Scytho-Sarmatian, from c. the 8th century BC

Neo-Iranian

• Pashto (dialects: Kandahari, Ghilji, Northern, Yusufzai, Wazirwola, and others)
  • Wanetsi
• North Pamir
  • Yazgulami, Wanji
  • Shughni, Roshorvi, Bajuwi, Barwozi, Roshani, Khufi, Bartangi, Sarikoli
• Sanglechi–Ishkashimi (dialects: Sanglechi, Ishkashimi, Zebaki)
• Wakhi (with Saka influence)
• Munji–Yidgha
  • Munji
  • Yidgha
• Ormuri–Parachi (perhaps not Eastern Iranian)
  • Ormuri
  • Parachi
• Northern (perhaps not Eastern Iranian)
  • Yaghnobi
  • Ossetian (dialects: Iron, Digor, Jassic†)

Characteristics

The Eastern Iranian area has been affected by widespread sound changes, e.g. č > ts.

Lenition of voiced stops

Common to most Eastern Iranian languages is a particularly widespread lenition of the voiced stops *b, *d, *g. Between vowels, these have been lenited also in most Western Iranian languages, but in Eastern Iranian, spirantization also generally occurs in the word-initial position. This phenomenon is however not apparent in Avestan, and remains absent from Ormuri-Parachi.

A series of spirant consonants can be assumed to have been the first stage: *b > *β, *d > *ð, *g > *ɣ. The voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ has mostly been preserved. The labial member has been well-preserved too, but in most languages has shifted from a voiced bilabial fricative /β/ to the voiced labiodental fricative /v/. The dental member has proved the most unstable: while a voiced dental fricative /ð/ is preserved in some Pamir languages, it has in e.g. Pashto and Munji lenited further to /l/. On the other hand, in Yaghnobi and Ossetian, the development appears to have been reversed, leading to the reappearence of a voiced stop /d/. (Both languages have also shifted earlier *θ > /t/.)

The consonant clusters *ft and *xt have also been widely lenited, though again excluding Ormuri-Parachi, and possibly Yaghnobi.

External influences

The neighboring Indo-Aryan languages have exerted a pervasive external influence on Eastern Iranian, as it is evident in the development in the retroflex consonants (in Pashto, Wakhi, Sanglechi, Khotanese, etc.) and aspirates (in Khotanese, Parachi and Ormuri).^[2] A more localized sound change is the backing of the former retroflex fricative ṣ̌ [ʂ], to x̌ [x] or to x [χ], found in the Shughni–Yazgulyam branch and certain dialects of Pashto. E.g. "meat": ɡuṣ̌t in Wakhi and γwaṣ̌a in Southern Pashto, but changes to guxt in Shughni, γwax̌a in Central Pashto and γwaxa in Northern Pashto.

Notes

• ^1 Munji dā is a borrowing from Persian but Yidgha still uses los.
• ^2 Ormuri marzā has a different etymological origin, but generally Ormuri [b] is preserved unchanged, e.g. *bastra- > bēš, Ormuri for "cord" (cf. Avestan band- "to tie").

See also

• Western Iranian languages
• Dari (Eastern Persian), which despite the name is dialect of a Western Iranian language
• Sakan language

References

1. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Eastern Iranian". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. 
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Nicholas Sims-Williams, Eastern Iranian languages, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 2008
3. ↑ Antje Wendtland (2009), The position of the Pamir languages within East Iranian, Orientalia Suecana LVIII
4. ↑ Gernot Windfurh, 2009, "Dialectology and Topics", The Iranian Languages, Routledge

External links

• Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, ed. Schmitt (1989), p. 100.