Tag: Linguistics

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Articles

On the linguistic history of Kurdish

Jügel, Thomas. 2014. On the linguistic history of Kurdish. Kurdish Studies 2(2). 123–142.

Historical linguistic sources of Kurdish date back just a few hundred years, thus it is not possible to track the profound grammatical changes of Western Iranian languages in Kurdish. Through a comparison with attested languages of the Middle Iranian period, this paper provides a hypothetical chronology of grammatical changes. It allows us to tentatively localise the  approximate time when modern varieties separated with regard to the respective grammatical change. In order to represent the types of linguistic relationship involved, distinct models of language contact and language continua are set up.

Read the article here.

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Books

Introduction to Avestan

This is an English translation of the introduction, which was first published in 2001 in Spanish.

Martínez, Javier & Michiel de Vaan. 2014. Introduction to Avestan (Brill Introductions to Indo-European Languages I). Leiden/Boston: Brill. Translated from Spanish by Ryan Sandell.

This Introduction to Avestan provides a concise grammar of the Avestan language, the language of the followers of the Iranian prophet Zarathustra. The grammar focuses on spelling, phonology and morphology, but also includes a chapter on syntax. Abundant information on the historical development of the language is included, which renders the grammar very useful for students of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European. Also, a small number of selected Avestan texts is added, with a complete glossary, so that students can practise reading Avestan.

From the book’s description.

See here for more volumes in the series.

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Events

Sixth International Conference on Iranian Linguistics

Abstracts are invited for the Sixth International Conference on Iranian Linguistics (ICIL6), to be held in Tbilisi / Georgia in June 2015. We expressly solicit contributions from the full range of Iranian linguistics, including formal theoretical perspectives, computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, typological and functional perspectives, as well as diachronic and areal perspectives.

Categories
Events

Conference of Iranian languages and dialects

Call for Papers

The Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia has the honour of organising the

2nd International Conference of Iranian Languages and Dialects

4–5 January, 2015

Tehran, Iran

Aims of the conference

  • To spread and to consolidate the theoretical discussions on Iranian Languages and dialects
  • To contribute to scholarly studies of Iranian Languages and dialects
  • To introduce the latest researches about the Old, Middle and New Iranian Languages
  • To investigate the spread of Iranian languages as one of the main element of relation among the people of region.

Main themes of the conference

  1. New and scholarly researches on the Old Iranian Languages (Old Persian, Avestan, Scythian (Saka) and Median Languages)
  2. New and scholarly researches on the Western Middle Iranian Languages (Middle Persian and Parthian)
  3. New and scholarly researches on the Eastern Middle Iranian Languages (Soghdian, Khotanese, Khwarezmian and Bactorian).
  4. New and scholarly Lingual researches about the New Iranian Languages and Dialects.
  5. The Geography of Iranian Languages.

Although there will be a strong regional emphasis on the Iranian languages and dialects, this does not exclude a consideration of lingual researches on the classical Persian texts, especially when carried out by scholars who have specialised in Persian literature.

The organisers plan to publish a selection of the papers in a peer-reviewed book.

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