The Yazgulyam language (also Yazgulami, Yazgulyami, Iazgulem, Yazgulam, Yazgulyamskiy, Jazguljamskij, Qzgulqmski

tg, yazgulomi) is a member of the Southeastern subgroup of the

Iranian languages The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are grouped ...

, spoken by around 9,000 people along the Yazgulyam River in

Gorno-Badakhshan Gorno-Badakhshan, officially the Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region,, abbr. / is an autonomous region in eastern Tajikistan, in the Pamir Mountains. It makes up nearly forty-five percent of the country's land area, but only two perce ...

Tajikistan Tajikistan (, ; tg, Тоҷикистон, Tojikiston; russian: Таджикистан, Tadzhikistan), officially the Republic of Tajikistan ( tg, Ҷумҳурии Тоҷикистон, Jumhurii Tojikiston), is a landlocked country in Centr ...

. Together with Shugni, it is classified in a Shugni-Yazgulami subgroup of the areal group of Pamir languages. Virtually all speakers are bilingual in the

Tajik language Tajik (Tajik: , , ), also called Tajiki Persian (Tajik: , , ) or Tajiki, is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by Tajiks. It is closely related to neighbouring Dari with which it forms a continuum of mutually intelligibl ...

. The Yazgulyam people are an exception among the speakers of Pamir languages in that they do not adhere to

Ismailism Isma'ilism ( ar, الإسماعيلية, al-ʾIsmāʿīlīyah) is a branch or sub-sect of Shia Islam. The Isma'ili () get their name from their acceptance of Imam Isma'il ibn Jafar as the appointed spiritual successor (imām) to Ja'far al-Sa ...

Dialects

The Yazgulami language consists of two dialects: one of these is spoken higher in the mountains, the other lower. The differences are not significant and are limited to the vocabulary. Differences in the vocabulary are also detectable between the languages used in different villages in the lower mountains. The extinct Vanji language (also Vanži) is closely related to Yazgulami. Other languages spoken in the Pamirs differ greatly from the Yazgulami language. The disparities are the largest in the vocabulary.

History

The language was first recorded by Russian traveller G. Arandarenko in 1889, listing 34 Yazgulami words recorded in 1882. The language was described in greater detail by French linguist Robert Gauthiot in ''Notes sur le yazggoulami, dialecte iranien des Confins du Pamir'' (1916). In 1954 the Yazgulami living on the mountain slopes were resettled, about 20% of them forcibly, to the Vakhsh valley, where they live dispersed among the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Russians and other ethnic groups.

Phonology

The phonology of the Yazgulyam language differs from the basic "Shugni-Roshani" type in its system of

dorsal consonant Dorsal consonants are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum). They include the palatal, velar and, in some cases, alveolo-palatal and uvular consonants. They contrast with coronal consonants, articulated with the flexi ...

s: in addition to the velar and uvular stops ''g, k, q'' and fricatives ''x̌, γ̌, x, γ,'', Yazgulami has a palatalised and a labialised series, transcribed as ''ḱ, ǵ'' (palatalised velars), ''k° g° x̌°'' (labialised velars, there is no labialised velar voiced fricative) and ''q° x° γ°'' (labialised uvulars). A significant number of labialised consonants etymologically correspond to Proto-Iranian ''*Cv'' or ''*Cu'', e.g. ''x̌°arg'' < ''*hvaharā-'' "sister", while others are unrelated to Proto-Iranian ''v'', e.g. ''sk°on'' < ''skana-'' "puppy". This threefold system of articulation of dorsals has been compared typologically to the three reconstructed rows of dorsals in the

Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

Morphology

In the past tense, Yazgulyam has tripartite marking—one of the very few languages in the world to have it at all. This means that the subject of an

intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...

sentence is treated differently from both the subject and the object of a transitive sentence. Dixon, R.M.W. (1994). ''Ergativity''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 40.

Literature

*Ėdel’man, D.I. ''Jazguljamskij jazyk''. Moskva: Nauka, 1966. *Ėdel’man, D.I. ''Jazguljamsko-russkij slovar’''. Moskva: Nauka, 1971. * Zarubin, I.I. Two Yazghulāmī Texts. Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, 1936, vol. 8, no. 2/3, p. 875-881. *Payne, John, "Pamir languages" in: Rüdiger Schmitt (ed.), ''Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum'', 417–444. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1989.

References

External links

Eki.ee/books/redbook/yazgulamis/shtml

Grierson G. A. Ishkashmi, Zebaki, and Yazghulami, an account of three Eranian dialects. (1920)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yazgulyam Language Pamir languages Eastern Iranian languages Languages of Tajikistan Endangered Iranian languages