Tag: Iranian Languages

Categories
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.

Categories
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).

Continue reading “Iranian Studies in Honour of Adriano V. Rossi”
Categories
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.
Categories
Articles

The Name of the Camel

Redard, Céline, 2020. Le nom du chameau dans les langues iraniennes anciennes. In Damien Agut-Labordère & Bérangère Redon (eds.), Les vaisseaux du désert et des steppes: Les camélidés dans l’Antiquité (Camelus dromedarius et Camelus bactrianus). Lyon: MOM Éditions.

This book is available open access from the link above.

During the first millennium BCE, the dromedary and, more marginally, the camel began to impose their tall silhouettes on the roads of the Middle East and Egypt. Gathered in two workshops, in Lyon then Nanterre, sixteen archaeologists and historians have tried to assess this camel revolution. From Xinjiang to the Libyan Desert, the increasingly intensive use of the old-world camelids has indeed disrupted the fields of caravan transport but also agriculture, redesigning the trade routes, increasing the export capacities of oases, opening up previously isolated areas. Gradually becoming a critical agent of the economic systems of the desert or semi-desert regions, the camels remain at the same time associated with nomadic populations whose expertise is essential to breed and train these large animals.

Categories
Events

Summer School in Languages and Linguistics

The Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics takes place from 13 to 24 July 2020 and offers courses on Old, Middle and New Iranian languages. For more information, see the school’s website.

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 enjoying the company of linguistics students and enthusiasts from all over the world.

Website of the Summer School

Categories
Articles

A typological study of Voice Onset Time

Hussain, Qandeel. 2018. A typological study of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in Indo-Iranian languages. Journal of Phonetics 71. 284–305.

The stop consonants of Indo-Iranian languages are categorized into two to maximum five laryngeal categories. The present study investigates whether Voice Onset Time (VOT) reliably differentiates the word-initial stop laryngeal categories and how it covaries with different places of articulation in ten languages (two Iranian: Pashto and Wakhi; seven Indo-Aryan: Dawoodi, Punjabi, Shina, Jangli, Urdu, Sindhi, and Siraiki; and one Isolate: Burushaski). The results indicated that there was a clear VOT distinction between the voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated stops. The voiceless unaspirated stops showed shorter voicing lag VOTs than voiceless aspirated stops. Voiced unaspirated, voiced aspirated, and voiced implosive stops were characterized by voicing lead VOTs. In the voiceless unaspirated and aspirated categories, palatal affricates showed the longest voicing lag VOT due to the frication interval of this stop type. In contrast, voiceless unaspirated retroflex stops were characterized by the shortest voicing lag VOT. There were no clear place differences in the voiceless aspirated, voiced unaspirated, voiced aspirated, and voiced implosive categories. The findings of the current study suggest that VOT reliably differentiates the stop consonants of all the languages that contrast two (voiceless unaspirated vs. voiced unaspirated: Pashto and Wakhi) or three (voiceless unaspirated vs. voiceless aspirated vs. voiced unaspirated: Burushaski, Dawoodi, Punjabi, and Shina) laryngeal categories. However, VOT does not consistently distinguish the stop consonants of languages (Jangli, Urdu, Sindhi, and Siraiki) with contrastive voiced unaspirated, voiced aspirated, and voiced implosive categories.

Special Issue: Marking 50 Years of Research on Voice Onset Time
Categories
Journal

Journal Asiatique 307 (1)

The first issue of Journal Asiatique 307 (2019) has been published. The following articles are related to the scope of Iranica:

Categories
Articles

L’ère kouchane des documents bactriens

De la Vaissière, Étienne. 2018. L’ère kouchane des documents bactriens. Journal Asiatique 306(2). 281–284.

Categories
Books

A Thousand Judgements: Festschrift for Maria Macuch

Hintze, Almut, Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst & Claudius Naumann (eds.). 2019. A thousand judgements: Festschrift for Maria Macuch. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

This volume in honour of Maria Macuch brings together twenty-six articles by friends and colleagues to celebrate the academic work of the foremost living expert of Sasanian law. The subjects covered here include Iranian linguistics and philology, Judeo-Persian, Zoroastrian law and religion, Manichaeism, and the Babylonian Talmud. They reflect the breadth of the work of Maria Macuch. The volume includes studies of important Iranian legal, grammatical and religious terms and titles, of the intercultural engagement between Zoroastrians, Manichaeans and Jews, and editions and studies of texts and text fragments in Pahlavi, Sogdian, Khotanese and Judeo-Persian languages. The book will be of special interest to legal, cultural and religious historians as well as to philologists and linguists.

Table of Contents (PDF)

  • Miguel Ángel Andrés-Toledo: “Ritual Competence and Liability of Minors in Ancient Zoroastrianism. On Avestan dahmō.kərəta– and š́iiaoϑnāuuarəz-“
  • Samra Azarnouche: “Les fonctions religieuses et la loi zoroastrienne: le cas du hērbed“
  • David Buyaner: “Zur Haar- und Nagelpflege im Zoroastrismus. Beiträge zur Erklärung mittelpersischer Rechts- und Religionsterminologie. III.”
  • Alberto Cantera: “About the Epithet pauruuaniia- of the Zoroastrian Sacred Girdle (Y 9.26)”
  • Iris Colditz: “Eine vergessene zoroastrische Märtyrerin?”
  • Desmond Durkin-Meisterernst: “Manichaean Book Quires”
  • Yaakov Elman †: “The Torah of Temporary Marriage. A Study in Cultural History”
  • Ela Filippone: “On Old Persian tačara- and its Elusive Meaning”
  • Philippe Gignoux: “Les ‹ Mémoires › dans l’archive pehlevie de Berkeley/Berlin”
  • Jost Gippert: “Onomastica Irano-Iberica. II. The Name of a Zoroastrian “Bishop””
  • Rika Gyselen: “Les données de géographie administrative sassanide
  • dans le Šahrestānīhā-ī Ērānšahr : une réévaluation”
  • Almut Hintze: “Maria Macuch and Iranian Studies”
  • Tal Ilan and Reuven Kiperwasser: “Virginity and Water: Between the Babylonian Talmud and Iranian Myth”
  • Éva M. Jeremiás: “The Technical Term tarkīb “Compound” in the Indigenous Persian “Scientific” Literature”
  • Judith Josephson: “Aristotle’s Theory of the Elements and Zoroastrian Dualism”
  • Yishai Kiel and Prods Oktor Skjærvø: “Normative and Theological Dissent in Early Zoroastrian Law: Pahlavi Nīrangestān 23″
  • Götz König: “Die Pahlavi-Literatur des 9./10. Jahrhunderts und ihre frühe Kodex Überlieferung (I)”
  • Manfred Lorenz † : “Ignatius Pietraszewski – ein polnischer Iranist in Berlin”
  • Mauro Maggi: “Annotations on the Book of Zambasta, V: Indian Parallels to 2.139 and the Musk of Khotan”
  • Enrico Morano und Christiane Reck: “Vom ersten bis zum 30. Tag: Ein Blatt mit soghdischen prognostischen und medizinischen Kalendertexten”
  • Antonio Panaino: “Thе Liturgical Daēnā. Speculative Aspects of the Next-of-Kin Unions”
  • Adriano V. Rossi: “Iranian Words in čam°*”
  • Martin Schwartz and Alexis Manaster Ramer: “Some Interlinguistic Iranian Conundrums”
  • Nicholas Sims-Williams: “The Wisdom of Aḥiqar and the Wisdom of Ādurbād: A Manichaean Parallel”
  • Dieter Weber: “The Story of Windād-Burzmihr. A Zoroastrian Entrepreneur in Early Islamic Times”
  • Yutaka Yoshida: “Some New Interpretations of the Two Judeo-Persian Letters from Khotan”

Categories
Articles

A (New) Old Iranian Etymology for Biblical Aramaic אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎

Noonan, Benjamin J.  2018. A (new) Old Iranian etymology for Biblical Aramaic אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎. Aramaic Studies 16(1): 10 – 19.

Despite the many advances that have taken place in our understanding of the Hebrew Bible’s Old Iranian terminology, the donor terms of several words have remained elusive. Among them is Biblical Aramaic ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎ (Dan. 3:2–3). Proposed Old Iranian etymologies for this word suffer from various phonological and semantic difficulties, rendering them unlikely. This paper proposes that Biblical Aramaic ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎ is best derived from *ādrangāžara- ‘announcer of financial obligation’, a compound of *ādranga- ‘financial obligation’ and *āžara- ‘announcer’. A derivation from Old Iranian *ādrangāžara- adequately explains the form of Biblical Aramaic ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎. Furthermore, this etymology also suits the context well in that ‮אֲדַרְגָּזַר‬‎ occurs just prior to ‮גְּדָבַר‬‎ ‘treasurer’ and therefore falls logically within the progression from political administration to finances to law evident in the lists of Nebuchadnezzar’s officials (Dan. 3:2–3).