The Yaghnobi

 Today I submitted a draft of my MA thesis, Aspects of Yaghnobi Grammar, to my thesis review committee. I am also posting a copy here. I would appreciate the time any of you may take to read this draft and value any comments that you might make. There are still some issues with formatting, hopefully these won’t distract you from the content. Here are links to Adobe acrobat files for each chapter:

Chapter 1: Introduction 
Chapter 2: Overview of the Yaghnobi Language
Chapter 3: Nominal Morphology
Chapter 4: Verbal Morphology
Chapter 5: Grammatical Relations 

11/10/07 Update: I finished chapter 6.
Chapter 6: Copular Clauses

I will need to make any revisions in the next week and a half, so I will appreciate getting any feedback soon.

Concerning phonology of Yaghnobi language, there are many aspects not clearly solved yet. The only available work about this problematique is an old article by V. S. Sokolova in Očerki po fonetike iranskix jazykov, unfortunately I haven’t seen this work yet. From two main articles by A. L. Xromov I tried to compile the basis of Yaghnobi phonological structure. (more…)

The affix /i/ in Yaghnobi appears to be highly polysemous. As a prefix, it can function as an indefinite aritcle, or as the number one (a common set of shared meanings cross lingustically). As a suffix, it can function as a marker for locative, genetive, nominative, or accusative (in perfective aspect) cases. It also appears on any noun that is preceded by a number, functions as a denominalizer, appears on nominal elements in complex predicates, and marks purpose on participles.

The intuition of all three of my language consultants was that /i/ is a single phoneme. Furthermore, in transcriptions of Yaghnobi texts done by other linguists, this morpheme was always transcribed the same way. Since it is so unusual for one phonological segment to have such a wide range of functions I wanted to be sure that this was really a single phoneme (yes, I know this word has been depricated, but how else would you epress this concept?). My language consultant usually interpreted this segment as [i], but sometimes he perceived it as [i:], or [e] so I made acoustic measurements of F1, F2, and vowel length of the /i/ affix uttered in sentences which had each of the different meanings or functions listed above. The results are available in this paper: The Yaghnobi i affix.

(This paper was also origianally an appendix to a longer paper on the Yaghonbi /i/ affix, as was the paper I posted on Yaghnobi Vowels.)

Disclaimer: This is just a preliminary study. The phonetic data presented here is all from one highly fluent language consultant (my teacher, Saifiddin Mirzoev). The grammatical analysis, however, is based on five different sources.

This post was updated 7/22/07

Earlier this year I made acoustic measurements of stressed and unstressed utterances of the vowels /a, e, i, o, u/. These measurements were based on recordings of one speaker and are very preliminary, but may be helpful to anyone planning to make a more complete phonetic and phonological study of Yaghnobi. The paper is available in Adobe Acrobat format here: Yaghnobi Vowels.

Today I presented an overview of Yaghnobi grammar at the U of O Linguistics Colloquium. I have uploaded a copy of my handout for the colloquium here: Overview of Yaghnobi Grammar. This handout is an outline of basic clause structure and grammatical relations with parsed and glossed example sentences. If you need an explanation of any part or have questions please don’t hesitate to leave them in a comment here.

6/9/07 Update: I uploaded a corrected version of the Yaghnobi Grammar Overview today.

6/17/07 Update: I fixed a typo in example 23. I changed kap to kar.

11/4/07 Update: I posted the first draft of my thesis, Aspects of Yaghnobi Grammar here: http://yaghnobi.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/draft-of-aspects-of-yaghnobi-grammar/

The Yaghnobi language is classified as endangered in the UNESCO Red Book of endangered languages. However, an SIL team who conducted a survey of the Yaghnobi language during 2003 and 2004 (Paul, et. al. 2005) concluded that the ethnolinguistic vitality of the Yaghnobi language is strong. Why the differing assessments?

(more…)

Is there a “correct” English way to spell Yaghnobi? (The name Yaghnobi comes from Yaghnob, the name of both the river, and river valley in north-western Tajikistan that is the traditional home of the Yaghnobipeople.) I have been spelling the name with “gh”, representing a voiced velar fricative, because it reflects the way Yaghnobisactually pronounce the name of their language.  However, it seems that in English, the spelling with “g” is more common. Perhaps this is because the modern English language (at least American English) does not have a “gh” sound.

(more…)

While I was in Tajiksitan I scanned a copy of The Yagnobi Language by A. L. Khromov, 1972, Moscow. Recently, Gulruh Muhtarova has been kind enough to translate two sections for me. I have provided links to copies of all the chapters as well as the translated sections.

4/10/07 Update: bulbul has begun translating additional sections. I have added a link to the English translation of the section on adjectives, and translations of additional sections are coming!

I have listed the table of contents below along with links to the original text and the three translated sections: nouns, adjectives (from the chapter on morphology), and Syntax of Sentences. If anyone else has translated sections of this book, I would be glad to post them here as well. Also, if you have any suggestions for improvements to the translation please post them in a comment. (more…)

I just finished writing the first draft of an article on Yaghnobi copular clauses. I’m posting it with the hope that I can get some feedback on my description and analysis. The article is attached here:

 Yaghnobi Copular Clauses

Here is an overview of the article: (more…)

Yaghnobi is mainly a spoken language with very little modern written literature. I say very little modern written literature since the Yaghnobi language is a descendant of one of the dialects of Sogdian and there was a rich body of written literature in Sogdian. This ancient Sogdian literature is the literarary heritage of the Yaghnobi people.

The two systems that have been used for transcribing Yaghnobi are a Latin phonetic system which was commonly employed by Russian linguists during the Soviet period, and the modified Cyrillic alphabet which is also used for the Tajik language. A comparison of the two systems is shown in this Acrobat (.pdf) file: Cyrillic-IPA-Latin transcription chart. The Tajik Cyrillic alphabet has been used in the Yaghnobi textbooks printed for use in grades 1 - 4 in public schools in Yaghnobi speaking areas of Tajikistan. (more…)