Abstract
Gorani refers alternately to a subgroup of the Iranian languages spoken in the borderlands between Iraq and Iran with small islands of speakers stippling the map from the Iranian border to Nineveh or to a literary standard used widely until the decline of the Ardalan dynasty in the 19th century. Here, we explore both these uses of the term to understand the place of Gorani varieties among the regional languages. The role of Gorani has, at times, been the local idiom of minoritized groups or a prestigious literary standard. Gorani and its speakers have substantially impacted its neighbors, including Neo-Aramaic, Southern and Central Kurdish, and Laki. It has been the chosen literary language and spoken vernacular of various religious groups. The conservative character of Gorani varieties has made it essential to understand Iranian dialectology. Here, we explore all aspects of Gorani, explicitly focusing on its diachronic and sociolinguistic developments and the history of its study.
Published in Gorani in its historical and linguistic context
About:
Gorani refers to under-documented, endangered varieties spoken in a cluster within the Zagros mountains (Iran/Iraq). These varieties possess conservative features of importance to linguists. However, their study has been plagued by nomenclature and taxonomy issues. Traditional names for these languages have been supplanted first by orientalists‘ prescriptions and then by their linguist heirs. Inaccurate terminology has sewn discord between speaker communities, disturbing the sociolinguistic landscape. This volume represents the state of the art of Gorani’s historical and socio-linguistics, documentation, and literature, as well as an effort to aid the „decolonization“ of Gorani linguistics.
Contents:
- Shuan Osman Karim & Saloumeh Gholami: Gorani in its historical and linguistic context
- Saeed Karami & Saloumeh Gholami: Examining the structural differences and similarities between literary Gorani and Hawrami through the lens of diglossiaby
- Parvin Mahmoudveysi: The Gūrānī variety of Bzɫāna and the literary language of Saydī
- Hamidreza Nikravesh: Judeo-Gūrānī: Tracing the emergence of a literary corpus
- Geoffrey Khan & Masoud Mohammadirad. Gorani influence on NENA
- Shuan Osman Karim: Pattern borrowing/convergence in the Southern Kurdish Zone
- Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand: The Laki of the Ahl-e Haqq community in Češin: Some morphosyntactic features
- Mahîr Dogan: Problems in Zazakî nomenclature
Abstract:
The purpose of this article is to update existing views on the Zazaki dialectology and answer these two questions: Are the Zazas Kurds? Is Zazaki Kurdish? To answer this question, methods of comparative linguistics and perceptual dialectology are used. The first part of this article deals with the background of Zaza studies. The second part, based on the perspectives of perceptual dialectology, attempts to provide a clear picture of the complex status of the identity of the Zazas from emic and etic perspectives. The third section focuses on comparative linguistics research and examines a number of typologically marked grammatical characteristics in several Iranian languages that are important for studying the classification of Zazaki. The last section provides a conclusion and answers the two main questions of this research.