Sawi, Savi, or Sauji, is an endangered Indo-Aryan language spoken in northeastern

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

and north-western

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

. It is classified as a member of the Shina language cluster within the Dardic subgroup. It is spoken in the village of Sau, on the east bank of the

Kunar River The Chitral River, also known in Afghanistan as the Kunar River, is a long river in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. It originates from the Chiantar glacier, located at the border of Gilgit Baltistan and Chitral in Pakistan. At A ...

, around south of the town of Arandu, which is on the border with Pakistan's Chitral region. Sawi speakers consider themselves part of the Gawar ethnic group, which is found in half a dozen of the surrounding villages and whose language is Gawarbati. In communicating with them, the people of Sau reportedly resort to using

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

. During the long period of unrest, the population of the village was displaced into refugee camps in Chitral and Dir, but reportedly many people have now returned to Afghanistan.

History

The closest relative of the Sawi language is the southern variety of Palula spoken in Ashret further up the Kunar Valley in Chitral. Many Sawi speakers are aware of the similarity between the two languages, and some consider the people of Ashret as their "brothers". Henrik Liljegren's study of the shared linguistic features and the local oral traditions suggest that the ancestors of these language communities are likely to have migrated from the present-day

Diamer District Diamer District (), also spelled Diamir District, is a district of Pakistan-administered territory of Gilgit–Baltistan in the disputed Kashmir region. The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of ...

on the Indus River. There was probably an early split between Northern and Southern Palula, with Sawi subsequently branching off from the latter. The current similarity between the two varieties of Palula is then explained as a result of convergence.

Grammar

The presence of weak voiced aspirates () was cautiously reported by Buddruss in 1967, but found them to be absent from the speech of his consultant(s). It is likely that the loss of aspiration in the ancestor language could have been related to the development of a tone system.. Cf. the analysis of Kolkati in Possibly under the influence of Gawarbati, Sawi has developed a voiceless lateral fricative ' out of the ''*tr'' consonant clusters of the earlier language, compare for example Sawi ''ɬo'' with Southern Palula ''tróo'' 'three'. Unlike the main Shina varieties, where the past and present tense are typically marked for

person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations suc ...

, Sawi and Palula verb tenses are almost entirely

participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adject ...

-based, with only traces of

agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus (disambiguation), a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of ...

for person. Like Torwali, Sawi has grammaticalised the category of

animacy Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is. Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around ...

in its nominal morphology (in contrast to

Kalasha A kalasha, also called Pūrṇa-Kalaśa, Pūrṇa-Kumbha, Pūrṇa-Ghaṭa, also called ghat or ghot or kumbh ( , Telugu: కలశము Kannada: ಕಳಶ literally "pitcher, pot"), is a metal (brass, copper, silver or gold) pot with a large ...

Khowar Khowar (, ''Khōwār'', ), also known by its common exonym Chitrali, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic group, primarily spoken by the Kho (Chitrali) people, native to the Chitral region and surrounding areas of Pakistan. Khowar is th ...

, Shumashti and Pashai, where animacy has instead been grammaticalised in the verbal morphology). The

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...

suffix is ''-e'' for

perfective The perfective aspect (abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole, i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imp ...

transitive verbs. Unlike the main Shina varieties, Sawi does not seem to possess an agent suffix for imperfective transitive verbs.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{Dardic languages Dardic languages Languages of Afghanistan Languages of Pakistan