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Traces of Pharyngeal Consonants in Isfahani Persian: A Case of Language Contact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Habib Borjian
Habib Borjian*
Affiliation:
Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University
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Abstract

The word-final /-a/ and the diphthong /ay/ of earlier New Persian shift respectively to /-e/ and /ey/ in modern Persian. Isfahani Persian follows suit, e.g. dande “rib” and meydun “plaza.” However, the earlier phonemes survive only in a finite set of words: Arabic loanwords in which the /a/ succeeds pharyngeal consonants, e.g. ǰomʾa (< ǰumʿa) “Friday,” fâtaː (< fātiḥa) “funeral,” ayd (< ʿayd) “feast.” Isfahani Persian shows other vocalic anomalies adjacent to original pharyngeals, including syllable-final iʿ > aː in qânaː (< qāniʿ) “content,” maːmâr (< miʿmār) “architect.” This article investigates these phonological irregularities and their geographic distribution and historical periodization.

Keywords

Pharyngeal ConsonantsVowel ColorationSound ShiftLanguage ContactPersian VarietiesMedianArabs in IsfahanJews of Isfahan
Type
Linguistics
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1-2 , March 2021 , pp. 281 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2021

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Footnotes

This study was presented at the Eighth International Conference of Iranian Linguistics (ICIL-8), Yerevan, 11–13 October 2018. The author would like to thank Daniel Anthony Barry for his comments on the manuscript of this paper.

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