A partial tree of Central Iranian
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Agnes Korn
Abstract
Relations within the Iranian branch of Indo-European have traditionally been modelled by a tree that is essentially composed of binary splits into sub- and sub-subbranches. The first part of this article will argue against this tree and show that it is rendered outdated by new data that have come to light from contemporary and ancient languages. The tree was also methodologically problematic from the outset, both for reasons of the isoglosses on which it is based, and for not taking into account distinctions such as shared innovations vs. shared archaisms. The second part of the paper will present an attempt at an alternative tree for Iranian by proposing a subbranch which I will call “Central Iranian”. Such a branch seems to be suggested by a set of non-trivial morphological innovations shared by Bactrian, Parthian and some neighbouring languages. The reconstruction of the nominal system of Central Iranian which will then be proposed aims to show the result one arrives at when trying to reconstruct a subbranch as strictly bottom-up as possible, i. e. using only the data from the languages under study, and avoiding profitting from Old Iranian data and from our knowledge about the proto-languages.
© 2016 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Inhalt
- Repetition Analysis Function (ReAF) II
- Studies in Armenian historical phonology (II)
- Hittite kapart-/kapirt - ‘small rodent’ and Proto-Semitic *ˁkbr-t- ‘mouse, jerboa’
- Hittite yaya(i)-i
- Some transitive motion verbs and related lexemes in Late Luwian
- On the origin of Latin suffixes in -d- and -es, -itis
- Zu lykisch ϑϑẽ und seiner etymologischen Interpretation
- Latin crassus, grossus, classis
- Hittite heterographic writings and their interpretation
- Phrygian mekas and the recently discovered New Phrygian inscription from Nacoleia
- The problem of the -a ending in the Hittite dative/locative
- On syncope of u-vocalism in Sabellic
- The Anatolian stop system and the Indo-Hittite hypothesis
- Beiträge zur Tagung. The Sound of Indo-European 3, Opava 2014
- Laryngeal aspiration and the weakening of dentals in Classical Armenian
- In defense of Narten roots
- Vowel weakening in the Sabellic languages as language contact
- Beiträge zum Workshop. Indo-European from within, Göttingen 2016
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- Zu einigen Perfektbildungen im Sabellischen
- Pronominierte Nominalformen im Altlitauischen
- The development of the Tocharian causative system – top-down or bottom-up?
- A partial tree of Central Iranian
- Induktive versus abduktive Rekonstruktion
