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.
Archives
Towards a dialectology of Southern Kurdish: Where to begin?
This contribution provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on the dialectology of Southern Kurdish (hereafter SK). The introductory paragraphs discuss the concept of SK, survey existing sources and briefy address core issues of terminology. The bulk of the study reviews Fattah’s (2000: 9) proposed dialect classifcation, and complements it with the evaluation of language data from older sources, the author’s own research in Kermānshāh Province and other documentation activities recently carried out in the SK-speaking area, sketching possible directions for future research.
Les dialectes kurdes méridionaux
The History of Kurdish and the Development of Literary Kurmanji
This chapter tackles several interrelated issues around the Kurdish language. It provides a general internal classification of Kurdish varieties, proposing also a theoretically informed distinction between language history and collective identity perceptions of speakers to resolve the classification disputes around Zazaki and Gorani varieties. ‘Kurdish’ in this sense is considered more a sociolinguistic unit than a purely linguistic entity. The chapter then provides summary discussion of the position of Iranian philology on the history of Kurdish, whereby it is shown that Kurdish is not in a direct descendant relationship with any of the known languages of the Old and Middle Iranian periods. The chapter traces the history of written and literary Kurmanji Kurdish. The rise of literary or written code in Kurmanji is shown to have taken place in late sixteenth century within the wider sociopolitical context of, on one hand, the emergence of powerful Kurdish principalities and widespread madrasa education, and, on the other hand, a general trend in the vernacularization of local community languages in Kurdistan. Finally, the development of modern Kurmanji as a polycentric variety is discussed and the current approximation of written norms are projected to merge in a more comprehensive plurinormative Kurmanji standard.