درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The main West Iranian languages، i.e. Old Persian، Parthian، Middle Persian، New Persian and – in some respects – Avestan، may be studied in a uniquely continuous development stretching over close to 3 000 years. These languages are not only the result of their genetic inter-relations but also of their cultural، religious and political history. They may be labelled ‘high languages’ (‘Hochsprachen’)، in the sense that they are cultured and standardized and used for a great number of purposes by people of various linguistic backgrounds. This article presents an over-view of their development seen from a specific perspective. The traditional Iranian walled-in garden، the pairi-daēzaof the Avesta، is used as a metaphor for a high language in contrast to the free vegetation of spontaneous human speech in social interaction. The latter is here called ‘dialect’، a concept that includes both ‘geolect’ and ‘sociolect’. These high language ‘gardens’ are thus viewed as a kind of cultural artefacts. Among other things، this has implications for views on the dichotomy literacy/orality، showing that writing is not language and that ‘orality’ belongs both to ‘high language’ and ‘dialect’. It is furthermore argued that literacy and orality were present in complementary distribution throughout the whole known history of the Iranian cultural sphere.

The aim of the present paper is to study the status of the short vowels /i/ and /u/ in five selected Iranian Balochi dialects. These dialects are spoken in Sistan (SI), Saravan (SA), Khash (KH), Iranshahr (IR), and Chabahar (CH) regions located in province Sistan va Baluchestan in the southeast of Iran. This study investigates whether these two vowels have the same qualities as the short /i/ and /u/ do in the Common Balochi inventory (i, iː, u, uː, a, aː, eː, oː). The Common Balochi inventory is the vowel system represented generally for Balochi language, which is a North-Western Iranian language, a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian family. The data for this survey are gathered from villages, rural areas, and cities in these regions in the forms of free speech and verbal elicitation from more than 20 literate and non-literate male and female language consultants, 2 males and 2 females for each dialect. The investigation reveals that the short /i/ and /u/ show strong tendencies towards a lower position. This study suggests phonemic systems in which the short /i/ is modified to short /e/ in all dialects, but /u/ is modified to /o/ only in SI, SA, and CH; the lowering of the short /u/ to short /o/ in KH and IR may still be in the transition stage. It is possible that Persian, as the dominant language has had its influence on these dialects causing a lowering tendency in the two vowels under study.