Indo-Iranian Languages

This research is designed to produce detailed descriptions of the morphological ergativity in three South Asian languages. The chosen sample includes Hindi/Urdu, Pashto and Balochi, as morphologically enough to achieve the goals and generalizations of the research. The study presents the range of variation in case and agreement marking in these South Asian descendants of the common Indo-Iranian language, in which the distinct systems of ergative case marking and agreement is to be compared, both within the nominal and verbal domain. While these individual languages are common examples of morphological ergativity, the range of variation among these languages has not been examined comparatively. The goals of this research are twofold. After a comprehensive overview, we present a detailed typology of ergative marking and agreement in the predetermined languages, demonstrating their common split ergative behavior. This process is manifested in two distinct strategies of markedness: Differential Case Marking (DCM) [including Differential Subject Marking (DSM), as well as Differential Object Marking (DOM); Aissen 1999] in the nominal domain, and marked agreement in the verbal domain; which is considered within a comparative account.

Indus script is a Bronze Age south Asian writing system. In this article I present the Indus sign list with sound values published in my 2011 book Indus Script Dictionary, along with images of various Indus seals which show or mention Hindu deities.

Recent research has shown that the vocabulary of certain Northwestern Tibetan dialects contains  a  significant  number  of  Indo-Iranian  loanwords.  It  is,  however,  still  unclear  if  these  loanwords  have  been  borrowed  from  a  single  or  from  several  sources,  and  whether  their  presence  is  the  result  of  substratum  or  adstratum  interference.  Likewise,  the  exact  genetic  position  of  the  donor-language(s)  within  the  Indo-Iranian  group  so  far  remains  undeter-mined. The study of all these issues should, no doubt, be based on facts of historical phonol-ogy. In this article I attempt to identify the most conspicuous historical-phonological features of  the  Indo-Iranian  elements  found  in  Northwestern  Tibetan  varieties.  Furthermore,  I  make  some  preliminary  conclusions  concerning  the  linguistic  geography  of  the  region  in  the  pre-Tibetan period, as well as the direction and relative chronology of Tibetan migrations.

The present paper aims at summarizing and re-evaluating the sources of the
Jász (Alan) language once spoken in medieval and early modern Hungary. The
Jász people were a sub-branch of the Alans, themselves speaking an eastern
Iranian language, who settled in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary possibly in
the early fourteenth century. Jász ethnic groups were given royal permissions
to found communities in different regions of Hungary, and the most significant
group of them settled in the area what is still known as Jászság (area of Jász
people) between the Tisza and Danube rivers. While the later history of the Jász
people is well known in the secondary literature and is consequently beyond the
scope of the present paper, their linguistic traces show more uncertainties that
need to be reassessed.
As far as our sources are concerned, onomastic data, such as early fourteenth
century personal names as well as the so-called Jász–Hungarian–Latin wordlist
(discovered in 1957) written probably in the fifteenth century, all prove that Jász
was an Alan dialect and is closely related to the present-day Digor dialect of the
Ossetic language, though among the Jász onomastic data we can find several
mixed names of Turkic or Turko-Iranian and also of western Iranian origin.
On the other hand, Jász names preserved in 16th century Ottoman administrative sources offer a rare glimpse at the possibly latest stage of this language.
They should be treated, however, cautiously due to different problems of transcription and transmission. Yet, despite all the problems, these later onomastic data along with some newly discovered material of geographical names of
allegedly Jász background represent a hitherto largely unnoticed and neglected
group of documents of the Jász language, which might have become extinct
around 1600 CE as a spoken language in Hungary according to the contemporary sources.

The Northwestern fringe of the Tibetan-speaking area, now forming a part of the Jammu and Kashmir state of India and of Pakistani-controlled Northern Areas, was in the past an area of intensive ethnic and language contact. This contact resulted in the linguistic assimilation of the local pre-Tibetan population by the Tibetans. More than a century ago it was hypothesized that this pre-Tibetan population may have spoken a certain Dardic language. The article attempts to check this hypothesis through the etymological analysis of the vocabulary of Northwestern Tibetan dialects. The results of this analysis suggest the existence of a significant Indo-Iranian, probably Dardic, lexical stratum, as well as of numerous lexemes borrowed from some early form of Burushaski. The author seeks to define the dialectal distribution of Indo-Iranian and Burushaski loanwords in the area under study.

The twelfth and last month of the Old Persian (OP) calendar, corresponding to Akkadian Addāru (February -March), appears in the Behistun inscription as v i -i-y-x-n-. Its Elamite equivalent is spelled in the same inscription . On the Persepolis tablets we find sixteen different spellings of this Elamite word, the most frequent ones being Mi-ya-kán-na-iš/-aš, Mi-ya-kán-na-, Mikán-na-iš, Mi-kán-na-(Schmitt 2003: 24). The Elamite spellings indicate that OP v i -i-y-x-n-must be read as viyax(a)na-, while the shorter form Mikán ̊ points to the later (already in the time of Xerxes) OP contraction -iya-> -ī-, for which cf. Kent 1953: 13.