Tag: Iranian Languages

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Books

Iranian and Minority Languages

Sedighi, Anousha (ed.). 2023. Iranian and minority languages at home and in diaspora. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

While the typology, syntax, and morphology of Iranian languages have been widely explored, the sociolinguistic aspects remain largely understudied. The present companion addresses this essential yet overlooked area of research in two ways: (i) The book explores multilingualism within Iran and its neighbouring countries. (ii) It also investigates Iranian heritage languages within the diasporic context of the West.

The scope of languages covered is vast: In addition to discussing Iranian minority languages such as Tati and Balochi, the book explores non-Iranian minority languages such as Azeri, Tukmen, Armenian and Mandaic. Furthermore, the companion investigates Iranian heritage languages such as Wakhi, Pashto, and Persian within their diasporic and global contexts.

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Books

The Book of Zambasta

Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2022. The Book of Zambasta. Metre and stress in Old Khotanese (Beiträge Zur Iranistik Band 49). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

Khotanese, a language belonging to the Iranian branch of Indo-European, which was spoken in the first millennium CE, has a rich literature including the Book of Zambasta, a poetic exposition of Mahāyāna Buddhism in 24 chapters. This poem makes use of three metres, whose nature has been a matter of controversy for more than a century. While its first editor, Ernst Leumann (1859–1931), regarded Khotanese metre as essentially quantitative (moraic) and derived it from a Proto-Indo-European metrical system supposedly reflected also in the Greek hexameter and the Middle High German Nibelungenlied, other scholars have understood it in very different ways: as a purely stress-based metre related to that of poetry in some other Iranian languages; as an adaptation of Indian metrics; or as representing a transitional stage from a quantitative to a stress-based system. The present work offers a closely-argued new analysis, demonstrating that the metre is indeed based on the quantitative (moraic) principle, but with an obligatory ictus in the cadences which leads to the systematic lightening of certain unstressed syllables. The results shed light on the equally controversial issue of Khotanese accentuation and many other aspects of the language and its history. The book includes the complete text of the poem with interlinear scansion. Additional fully searchable text-files available online make it possible for any reader to check the arguments and results.

Table of Contents (ToC)

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Articles

New Ancient Iranian Names from Early Phanagoria

Balakhvantsev, Archil S. & and Natalia V. Zavoykina. 2022. New Ancient Iranian Names from Early Phanagoria. Ancient West & East (21), 247-254.

Graffito of Aratris

This paper presents the publication of two new owners’ graffiti discovered in Phanagoria in 2015. The first one, Ἀράτριος ἡ κύλιξ (the kylix of Aratris), dates back to the end of the first quarter of the 5th century BC. The name Aratris demonstrates obvious parallels to the ethnic name Aratrii mentioned in The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Peripl. M. Rubr.). The second graffito is Ἀρπάτρις (Arpatris). It dates back to the end of the 6th-first third of the 5th century BC. It is possible to suggest that it is a composite name of Scythian origin and it should be translated as ‘the Keeper of Fire’.

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Books

Studies inspired by Agnes Korn

Suleymanov, Murad & Dorian Pastor (eds.). 2022. Tous les chemins menent a Paris: Studies inspired by Agnes Korn. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

This volume is a collection of nine papers by various authors focussing on issues of etymology, historical language contact, morphology and syntax, typological modelling, and folk practices in the Caucasus–Iran–Central Asia area and its immediate vicinity. The volume is a humble token of appreciation offered by the authors to Dr Agnes Korn to honour her continuing support for young researchers during her time in Paris and to highlight her wide array of research interests.

For the table of contents, see here.

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Books

Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology

Bianconi, Michele, Marta Capano, Domenica Romagno & Francesco Rovai (eds.). 2022. Ancient Indo-European languages between linguistics and philology: Contact, variation, and reconstruction (Brill’s Studies in Historical Linguistics, 18). Leiden: Brill.

Studying the Indo-European languages means having a privileged viewpoint on diachronic language change, because of their relative wealth of documentation, which spans over more than three millennia with almost no interruption, and their cultural position that they have enjoyed in human history.

The chapters in this volume investigate case-studies in several ancient Indo-European languages (Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite, Luwian, Sanskrit, Avestan, Old Persian, Armenian, Albanian) through the lenses of contact, variation, and reconstruction, in an interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary way. This reveals at the same time the multiplicity and the unity of our discipline(s), both by showing what kind of results the adoption of modern theories on “old” material can yield, and by underlining the centrality and complexity of the text in any research related to ancient languages.

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Journal

East and West (vol. 60)

East and West (New Series) resumes its publications, after almost a decade of silence, with this first issue of the 2020 volume. This is exactly seventy years after Giuseppe Tucci, in his quality of President of IsMEO, began, with his foreword contained in the first pages of the first issue of East and West 1 (1950), his dialogue between East and West.

Table of contents of No.1:

  • Foreword by Adriano V. Rossi
  • G. Gnoli: More on the “Traditional Date of Zoroaster:” the Arsacid Era and Other Topics
  • S. Ferdinandi: Mons Thabor: status questiones
  • G. Buffon: Mount Tabor and the Politics of Archaeology in the Holy Places (1858-1924). The Custody of the Holy Land’s Defence of Property Rights, Excavation Campaigns and Building Work on the Mount of Transfiguration
  • A. Taddei: The Skeuophylakion of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople: Events of the Fourth to Sixth Centuries CE
  • M. Baldi: From Meroe to Modern Sudan: the Kushite Building Techniques in the Present Vernacular Architecture in the Area of Begrawiya
  • F. Desset, M. Vidale, N. Eskandari, K. Caulfield: Distaffs and “Temple” in Early Bronze Age Iran
  • A. Askari Chaverdi, P. Callieri: Tol-e Ajori and Takht-e Jamshid: a Sequence of Imperial Projects in the Persepolis Area
  • A. Filigenzi: A Space of Mobility: the Interregional Dynamics of Buddhist Artistic Production as Reflected in Archaeological Evidence

Table of contents of No. 2:

  • S. Morra: Rethinking mālūf, Arab Andalusian Music in Tunisia
  • G. Banti: Some Further Remarks on the Old Harari Kitāb alfarāyid
  • N. Mahzounzadeh, E. Bortolini: Beyond Shape: a New Perspective on the Classification of Arrowheads from the Historical Pre-Islamic Period in Iran
  • B. Genito: The State/Imperial Political Formation of the Achaemenid Dynasty, an Archaeological Question
  • C.G. Cereti: MAIKI Activities on the Paikuli Monument and Its Surroundings
  • E. Matin: The Achaemenid Settlement of Dashtestan (Borazjan): A View from Persepolis
  • F. Sinisi: Iconography of the Elite in post-Greek Bactria and North-West India and Its Transmission from the Saka to the Yuezhi
  • O. Nalesini: Old Tibetan <ʼbrong>, Burmese and Old Mon
  • S. Vignato, Motherly Landscapes: Matrifocality, Marriage, Islam and the Change of Generation in Post-Conflict, Post-Tsunami Aceh

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Events

15th Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics

The 15th Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics will take place online from 12–23 July 2021. Registration is now open.

The Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics offers a varied program of specialised courses in Descriptive linguistics, in Chinese, Germanic, Indo-European, Indian, Iranian, Semitic languages and linguistics, as well as a number of introductory linguistic courses.
During these two weeks of intense learning, you will be able to deepen and broaden your knowledge, at the same time enjoy the company of linguistics students and enthusiasts from all over the world.

The summer school includes Avestan, Sogdian, Bactrian and Modern Persian, but also discussions of Indo-European myths and rituals. You will find the programme and registration information by following the link above.

این مدرسه تابستانی شامل کلاسهای اوستایی، سغدی، باختری و فارسی نوین است، و همچنین کلاسهایی در مورد افسانه‌ها و آیین‌های هند و اروپایی. با دنبال کردن پیوند بالا، اطلاعات برنامه و ثبت نام را پیدا خواهید کرد.

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Books

Advances in Iranian Linguistics

Larson, Richard K., Sedigheh Moradi & Vida Samiian (eds.). 2020. Advances in Iranian Linguistics (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 351). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

This volume brings together selected papers from the first North American Conference in Iranian Linguistics, which was organized by the linguistics department at Stony Brook University. Papers were selected to illustrate the range of frameworks, diverse areas of research and how the boundaries of linguistic analysis of Iranian languages have expanded over the years. The contributions collected in this volume address advancing research and complex methodological explorations in a broad range of topics in Persian syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, typology and classification, as well as historical linguistics. Some of the papers also investigate less-studied and endangered Iranian languages such as Tat, Gilaki and Mazandarani, Sorani and Kurmanji Kurdish, and Zazaki. The volume will be of value to scholars in theoretical frameworks as well as those with typological and diachronic perspectives, and in particular to those working in Iranian linguistics.

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Books

Iranian Studies in Honour of Adriano V. Rossi

Badalkhan, Sabir, Gian Pietro Basello and Matteo de Chiara (eds.). 2019. Iranian studies in honour of Adriano V. Rossi. Napoli: UniorPress.

Iranian Studies in Honour of Adriano V. Rossi collects more than fifty essays by foremost scholars and young researchers from South Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the USA. The topics range from Iranian philology and linguistics to history and archaeology. This two-part Festschrift is offered to Adriano V. Rossi by the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies of “L’Orientale” University of Naples (Italy) and is introduced with a foreword by Elda Morlicchio (Rector) and Michele Bernardini (Head of the Depart ment).

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Journal

Iranian Studies (vol. 53, issue 3–4)

Vol. 53 (2020), issues 3–4, of Iranian Studies dedicated to the memory of Ehsan Yarshater and entitled Endangered Iranian Languages: Language Contact and Language Islands in Iran has now been published with Saloumeh Gholami as guest editor.

The Table of Content is too extensive to be posted here. Please consult the journal website by following the link above.