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.

The Yaghnobi, who have inhabited the high mountain valley of Yaghnob in west-central Tajikistan for centuries, have been identified as descendants of the ancient Sogdians. The kingdom of Sogdiana existed from before the sixth century BCE until the Arab conquests of the eighth century CE. The Sogdian territory occupied what is now northern Tajikistan and southern Uzbekistan (Raspopova and Shishkina, 1999). From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the Sogdians were the main caravan merchants of  the Silk Road which passed through the Sogdian cities of Samarqand (their capital) and Bukhara (Vaissiere, 2004). The Sogdians also established extensive colonies in what is now western China. Their influence was so extensive that Sogdian, an east-Iranian language, was the lingua franca of Central Asia during the seventh century (Dien). The region to the south of Sogdiana, Ustashana (also called Sorushna) was also populated by Sogdian speaking people (Negmatov, 1999). Its capital, Bunjikat, was near present day Istravshan in northwest Tajikistan (Bosworth, 2005). The dialect of Sogdian spoken in Ustrashana in the eighth century has been identified through lexical and phonological similarities as the language from which modern Yaghnobi has descended.

After the Sogdians were defeated by Arab invaders at the battle of Mount Mugh in 722 CE, many of them fled Arab domination to live in the high mountain valleys (Whitfeld, 2005). According to Belyakov (2003) the village of Pskon in the Yaghnob valley became a de facto capital for the Sogdian refugees. It appears that the Sogdian refugees remained fairly isolated from outside authority and influence, although significant numbers were subject to forced conversion to Islam. Eventually all of the Yaghnobi adopted Islam, but they also retained Zoroastrian beliefs which continue to be a part of their religious practice  (Gunya, 2002).

In the 17th century a significant number of Yaghnobis migrated to the Varzob valley (Bielmeier, 2006) which is mainly populated by Tajiks and closer to the lowland population centers. A sizable Yaghnobi population remain there in half a dozen villages today. The Yaghnobis’ land came under control of the tsar in 1870, but Russian authority was mainly in name only. Aside from tax collection, from which the Yaghnobis were exempted in 1895, there was little control exercised by the Russians and the Yaghnobi remained isolated by the high mountains surrounding their homeland. The first scientific records of the Yaghnobi language were made in 1870 by the Russian scholar Alexander L. Kuhn and his Tajik companion and interpreter Mirza Mulla Abdurrakhman from Samarkand.

In the 1920, the Bolsheviks took control of Russian Turkestan, but because of the rugged terrain surrounding the Yaghnob valley they exercised no real control until 1930 when the first soviet was established in the village of Naumetkan in Yaghnob. In 1929, the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic was created. The Yaghnob valley was in the territory of the Tajik SSR and is about sixty miles from Dushanbe which was designated the capital of the Tajik SSR. With the Soviet political apparatus developing at closer proximity to the Yaghnob valley, further attempts were made to sovietize the Yaghnobi, including the establishment of two largely unsuccessful collective farms in the 1930s (Gunya, 2002). In spite of the increasing Soviet control over the Tajik SSR, the Yaghnobi continued to remain relatively isolated and autonomous because of the absence of roads through the high passes into the Yaghnob valley.

During 1970 and 1971 the Soviet authorities forcibly deported the entire population of the Yaghnob valley to the cotton plantations in the area of Zafarbod on the northwest border between the Tajik and Uzbek SSRs. The deportation was both politically and economically motivated. The fact that the Yaghnobis’ remote location had allowed them to effectively resist Soviet authority, coupled with the pressing economic need for laborers in the cotton fields motivated the government to force the Yaghnobi people from their mountain homes at gunpoint and fly them by helicopter to grow cotton in irrigated desert land (Donovan, 2007). The population of the Yaghnob valley at that time numbered between three and four thousand. Due to the harsh desert climate with temperatures over 105 degrees Fahrenheit, inadequate housing,  lack of sanitary drinking water, and exposure to tuberculosis, between 400 and 700 Yaghnobis died during their first year in Zafarabod (Loy, 2005). During the first few years some of the Yaghnobi fled back to the Yaghnob valley only to be deported again.

In 1990, the Dushanbe based Council of Ministers passed a resolution to reestablish all villages from which people had been deported. Tajikistan became an independent country in 1991. Since independence, the government of Tajikistan has promoted national awareness of the country’s Sogdian heritage as part of an effort to construct a new national identity. Although the Yaghnobi are now permitted to return to live in the Yaghnob valley, only about three hundred have done so since all of the homes had been destroyed and the valley is completely lacking any kind of infrastructure or economic base. About 6,500 Yaghnobis remain in Zafarabod, the largest Yaghnobi population center. In spite of the suffering and hardship they have experienced they have retained much of their culture and continue to speak Yaghnobi as their first language.

References

Belyakov, Dmitri. 2003. Poteryavshiiya Narod. Ezhenedel’nii Zhurnal. http://supernew.ej.ru/058/life/04/index.html23
(November 23, 2005.)

Bielmeier, Roland. 2006. Yaghnobi, in Encyclopedia Iranica. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/ot_grp10/ot_yaghnobi_20060303.html

Bosworth, C. Edmund. 2005. Orushana, in Encyclopedia Iranica. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/ot_grp8/ot_osrusana_20050606.html
(October 13, 2007.)

Vaissiere, Etienne De La. 2004. Sogdian Trade. in Encyclopedia Iranica. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/ot_grp7/ot_sogd_trade_20041201.html

Dien, Albert E. Year unknown. The Glories of Sogdiana. Web site: The Silk Road Foundation. http://www.silk-road.com/artl/sogdian.shtml, Accessed 10/14/07

Donovan, Leslie. 2007. Causes and Consquences of 1970-1971 Forced Migration of the Yaghnobis in the Tajik SSR. MA Thesis. California State University Dominquez Hills.

Gunya, Alexei. 2002. Yagnob Valley: History, Nature and Chances of a Mountain Community. Moscow: KMK Scientific

Loy, Thomas. 2005. Jaghnob 1970: Erinnerungen an eine Zwangumsiedlung in der Tadschikischen SSR. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag

Lurje, P.B. 2003. How long was Sogdian spoken in Transoxiana? : A Toponymical Approach. Proceedings of the 5th European Conference of Iranian Studies. http://www.societasiranologicaeu.org/Sito%20Conferenza/pap&part.html

Negmatov, N. 1999. Ustrashana, in Srednjaja Azija v rannem srednevekov’e, ed. G. Brykina, M. “Nauka” Publishing House: Moscow? http://www.kroraina.com/ca/h_ustrushana.html

Raspopova, V and G. Shishkina. 1999. Sogd, in Srednjaja Azija v rannem srednevekov’e, ed. G. Brykina, M. “Nauka” Publishing House: Moscow? http://www.kroraina.com/ca/h_sogd.html

Whitfeld, Susan. 2005. “From Plov to Paella,” Index on Censorship 1: 125-30

Soviet scholars made several expeditions to the Yaghnob valley to document and learn the language. One of the results of their work was a book published in 1957 and was called Yaghnobi texts - Ягнобские тексты. There were published 45 fairy-tales and fokl-stories from different villages of the Yaghnob valley, each text is published in Yaghnobi, a Russian translation than follows. At the end of the book there is aslo an appendix in form of a Yaghnobi-Russian dictionary, the dictionary also contains a brief etymological information. The advantage of the dictionary is also a Russian-Yaghnobi index; the disadvantage of the dictionary and of the texts is a system of transcription used there - it is based on phonetical system and not on historical principles. Nevertheless, this dictionary serves as the best available Yaghnobi dictionary for scholar purposes.

I scanned this book and I separated it in two parts - the firts part are the Jagnobskije teksty (40 MB) and the second part is the Jagnobsko-russkij slovar’ (32 MB).

M. S. Andrejev - Je. M. Peščereva: Jagnobskije teksty s priloženijem jagnobsko-russkogo slovarja, sostavlennogo M. S. Andrejevym, V. A. Livšicem i A. K. Pisarčik. Moskva 1957.

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. I tried to add some actual observations I made during the Summer School of Yaghnobi in Ravenna - some features I consulted with Sayfiddin Mirzozoda to improve my knowledge of present phonology of the language.

The main difference in the system as was presented by Xromov is a different pronunciation of pharyngeals, they do not keep its original Arabic sounds but merge with sounds native to the language. Other interesting feature is that difference between short and long vowels seams to dessapear slowly, instead of quantity the quality is becoming more important - Vinogradova notes, that in present language vowel quantity is of less importance and a short vowel can become long under the influence of stress. Also an /ү/ sound seams to be only a dialectal feature instead to be a part of the vocalic system of “common Yaghnobi”

The result of my try can be seen here. An attempt to unite the systems of transliterations used for Yaghnobi is available here.

References:

A. L. Xromov: Jagnobskij jazyk. Moskva 1972.

A. L. Xromov: Jagnobskij jazyk. In: V. S. Rastorgujeva (ed.): Osnovy iranskogo jazykoznanija. Novoiranskije jazyki II - Vostočnaja gruppa. Moskva 1987; pp. 644-701.

V. S. Sokolova: Jagnobskij jazyk. In: V. S. Sokolova: Očerki po fonetike iranskix jazykov. Moskva - Leningrad 1953, pp. 59-57.

S. P. Vinogradova: Jagnobskij jazyk. In: Jazyki mira. Iranskije jazyki III - Vostočnoiranskije jazyki. Moskva 2000, pp. 290-310.

Update: I updated the tables according to present state of IPA, the only changes I did are the phonetic symbols for /š/ and /ž/ and a reinterpretation of phonology of /w/.

The Splashcast below is an audio recording of Saifiddin Mirzoev reading a traditional Yaghnogi folk story.  Saifiddin transcribed this story in 1990 in Zafarabad. The storyteller was Muhmadrasul who was originally from the village of Sokan in the Yaghnob valley.

I was originally going to have the Splashcast display the parsed and glossed text sentence by sentence in sync with the audio recording. But, I didn’t have time, so here is a link to the parsed and glossed text:  The king and his water-man

By the way, if someone would like to add the parsed and glossed text to the Splashcast, I would be happy to give them a fine reward- like being added as an author on this blog!

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/

If you have been reading my posts about the Yaghnobi language on Birds’ Word’s, then this blog will look familiar. Since I started posting about Yahgnobi three months ago, I have been delighted to discover others who are also interested in the Yahgnobi people and their language.

Today, I decided it was time to create a new blog dedicated just to Yaghnobi and open to posts from others. I copied all my posts on Yaghnobi from Birds’ Words to this new blog. I invite all of you who are interested in the Yaghnobi people, their language, history, and culture to become authors and post to this blog as well. If you would like to be included as an author on this blog, just leave a comment here. If you would like to add photos, change the layout or do anything else to help maintain this blog you are also most welcome!

The clock is ticking and I need to finish writing my MA thesis, Aspects of Yaghnobi grammar, this month, if not sooner! I’m posting the abstract here with the hope that you will be so eager to read about these fascinating aspects of the Yaghnobi language that you will leave frequent comments urging me to get busy writing and deliver what I’ve promised!

 Abstract of Aspects of Yaghnobi grammar

This thesis is a basic description of the grammar of the Yaghnobi language, a member of the eastern branch of the Iranian language family that is spoken by approximately 12,500 people in Tajikistan. The core elements of the grammar will be described from a functional-typological perspective. This description covers morphosyntax up to the level of the basic clause. At each point, analysis will be presented suggesting that encoding of direction and location, rather than subject and object, seem to be core functions of Yaghnobi grammar.

There has been very little previous study of the Yaghnobi language. This thesis presents new descriptions and analysis of many core grammatical forms and functions. The analysis will differentiate two different copular forms and their functional ranges. It will also present the verb-auxiliary complex, especially the previously undocumented historical-present and historical-future verb forms. The functions of prepositions and postpositions will be described with special attention to the differentiation of directional and locational functions of postpositions. In the area of grammatical relations, the suffix /i/, analyzed elsewhere as an oblique case marker, will be shown to have more functions than previously realized. Furthermore, although locative affixes are traditionally analyzed as a type of oblique marker, it will be argued that the majority of the functions of the /i/ suffix are basically locative even when it is not marking what would traditionally be called the oblique case. Supporting this analysis is the discovery that pronouns and demonstratives each have two different forms and the functions of one form correspond to the locational functions of the /i/ suffix. A related discovery is that the /i/ suffix also marks animate definite noun phrases which by traditional analysis would be considered direct objects but which alternatively can be analyzed as locations of action.

The grammar description presented in this thesis is based primarily on field work and personal study under a Yaghnobi linguist conducted during the fall of 2006 and, secondarily, on the published work of Tajik and Russian linguists. The appendix contains parsed and glossed Yaghnobi texts and a Yaghnobi - Tajik - English dictionary.

November 5, 2007 Update: I submitted a draft of Aspects of Yaghnobi Language to my thesis committee yesterday. I’ve also posted the draft here: http://yaghnobi.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/draft-of-aspects-of-yaghnobi-grammar/

Related link: Table of Contents for Aspects of Yaghnobi grammar