An analysis of the formation of the Tajik vowel system

An analysis of the formation of the Tajik vowel system Shinji Ido Tohoku University / University of Sydney

The present paper presents a novel analysis of the formation of the Tajik vowel system. It proposes the hypothesis that the vowel shifts that took place in the formation of the Tajik vowel system constitute a push chain shift and argues that Tajik-Uzbek language contact was involved in the chain shift.

0. Introduction In the present paper, I propose the hypothesis that the vowel shifts that took place in the formation of the vowel system of Tajik were a push chain shift and were affected by the language contact between Tajik and Uzbek. For clarity, I decompose this hypothesis into the following three hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: The vowel shifts that took place in the formation of the vowel system of Tajik / Northern Tajik dialects constitute a chain shift. (The vowel system of standard Tajik is based on and identical with that of Northern Tajik dialects (hereafter NTDs), hence the term ‘Tajik/NTDs’ in this statement. ) Hypothesis 2: The Tajik chain shift was a push shift. Hypothesis 3: The Tajik chain shift was affected by the language contact between Tajik and Uzbek. In the remainder of this paper, I will argue for the validity of these hypotheses. My argument will draw on previous scholarship in Tajik and Uzbek dialectology and the study of vowel shifting.

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1. Evidence that supports Hypothesis 1 In this section, I introduce data that support Hypothesis 1, namely the hypothesis that a vowel chain shift took place in the formative period of the Tajik vowel system.

1.1. Evidence 1 A chain shift in the formation of the Tajik vowel system would be manifest if we contrast the vowel system of Early New Persian (hereafter ENP), which is the predecessor of Tajik, with that of Tajik. Windfuhr (1990: 543–544) presents the following chart1 and states that the Tajik vowel system was formed out of the ENP vowel system ‘by the merger of the short and long high vowels and the rounding of long a’. (1)

Thus, for example, ENP rāst ‘right, straight’ and rōz ‘day’ became rost and růz, respectively, in Tajik. (Windfuhr does not say what the value of ů is.) If we convert the correspondence between ENP vowels and Tajik vowels shown in (1) into schematic vowel charts, replacing the symbols ů and o that Windfuhr uses for the mid-central and mid-back vowels respectively with the symbols /ɵ/ and /ɔ/ (which better represent the actual phonemes of Tajik), the formation of the Tajik vowel system would look as follows. (2) Early New Persian

→

Northern Tajik dialects22 / Standard Tajik

A chain shift is evident in these schematized charts, which is the first reason to assume that a chain shift occurred in the vowel system of Tajik/NTDs. Another fact that is apparent in (2) is that the vowel shifts are in accordance with the principles of chain shifting that Labov proposes in Principles of linguistic change (1994), to which we turn now.

1 This is the upper half of the chart that Windfuhr provides in page 543. The lower half in which Dari and Persian vowels are shown is not copied here. 2 In Tajik linguistics, it is often assumed that there was a ‘classical’ stage in the development of Tajik

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1.2. Evidence 2 The second piece of evidence that supports Hypothesis 1 comes from Labov’s principles of vowel shifting. The movements of ENP /ā/ and /ō/ shown in (2) are in line with the principles of chain shifting that Labov (1994) proposes. According to Labov, the raising of long vowels in chain shifts is a phenomenon attested in various (chiefly Indo-European) languages. Labov (1994: 116) accordingly posits the raising of long vowels as a principle of chain shifting, calling it Principle I: ‘In chain shifts, long vowels rise’. Labov proposes a total of seven such principles of vowel shifting, the third of which, Principle III, is also a principle of chain shifting: ‘in chain shifts, back vowels move to the front’. These principles of chain shifting are established on the chain shift data collected from various languages. In other words, the raising of long vowels and fronting of back vowels are two of the typical characteristics of chain shifts. The vowel shifts in Tajik/NTDs exhibit these characteristics – in Tajik/NTDs, the long vowel /ā/ rose and the back vowel /ō/ moved to the front. The agreement of the vowel shifting in NTDs with the principles of chain shifting constitutes another piece of evidence that support Hypothesis 1.

1.3. Evidence 3 The third piece of supporting evidence for Hypothesis 1 comes from Tajik dialect groups other than NTDs. Tajik dialects are typically classified into Northern, Southern, Central, and South-eastern dialects. Southern and Central Tajik dialects are spoken in areas that are adjacent to the areas where NTDs are spoken. South-eastern Tajik dialects, which comprise dialects spoken in villages near the Panj river in Gorno-Badakhshan, are geographically isolated from NTDs. Observe the following charts in which the vowel shifts that took place in Southern, Central, and South-eastern Tajik dialects are at which the vowel system had the following eight vowels (see, e.g., Eshniyozov (1977: 21) and Rastorgueva (1992: 3)).

The Tajik dialectological literature customarily uses this chart in describing the vowel system of NTDs because in a limited number of Tajik words, /i/ and /u/ whose ENP counterparts are long vowels are pronounced perceptively long in (at least some) NTDs. One such example is Bukharan Tajik [zi…rak] ‘sharp-witted’ in which the /i/ is pronounced longer than the /i/ in [zirak] ‘earring’. However, apparently these words do not constitute a minimal pair in young Bukharans’ Tajik; an informant tells the author of this paper that [zirak] (for ‘earring’) is an Uzbek word whose Bukharan Tajik counterpart is halka ‘ring’ and that she does not use [zirak] in her speech in Bukharan Tajik. This suggests that the phonological vowel length distinction between [zi…rak] and [zirak] exists not in Bukharan Tajik but in (the Bukhara dialect of) Uzbek, in which there are both ziyrak ‘alert, attentive’ and zirak ‘earring’. Aside from this ‘minimal pair’, none of the twelve words that Kerimova (1959: 6) lists as words in which there are long vowels has a word with which it forms a minimal pair in the Bukharan Tajik of today.

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schematized.3 (Broken lines indicate conditioned changes. The broken lines that extend from the arrows in (5) indicate that the vowels moved/changed further in certain environments.) (3) Early New Persian

→

Southern Tajik dialects

(4) Early New Persian

→

Central Tajik dialects (West to Matcha)

Early New Persian

→

Central Tajik dialects (East to Matcha)

→

South-eastern Tajik dialects

(5) Early New Persian4

A glance at the charts in (2), (3), (4), and (5) reveals that the vowel shifts in Southern, Central, and South-eastern Tajik dialects constitute chain shifts. This means that chain shifting is not unique to NTDs but is widely observed in Tajik in general. This supports (albeit in a rather indirect way) Hypothesis 1. 3 The description of the vowel systems here is based on Rastorgueva (1964) and Eshniyozov (1977). Their descriptions of vowel systems are essentially phonological and hence the symbols that appear in (3–5), some of which I replaced provisonally with IPA symbols, may not closely represent the sound values of the phonemes. 4 Some of the vowel movements shown here are speculative. The chart below shows alternative movements of ENP /ō/ in South-eastern Tajik dialects.

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2. Evidence that supports Hypothesis 2 An examination of the vowel shifts schematized in (2), (3), (4), and (5) reveals that ENP /ā/ was invariably raised in all the four dialect groups of Tajik. (6) a. Northern Tajik dialects / South-eastern Tajik dialects

b.

Southern Tajik dialects / Central Tajik dialects

As can be clearly observed in the charts in (6), ENP /ā/ was raised in chain shifts in every major Tajik dialect group. This is despite the diversity that the vowel systems of Tajik dialect groups exhibit today. This renders some plausibility to the assumption that the raising of ENP /ā/ had taken place before the diversification of vowel systems in Tajik took place. It therefore seems reasonable (and explanatorily parsimonious) to assume that the raising of ENP /ā/ initiated different chain shifts in different Tajik dialect groups. This assumption naturally supports the validity of Hypothesis 2. Some instrumental data also exist that seem to support Hypothesis 2. The F1-F2 scatter plots presented in Appendix indicate that the vowel system of a sixty-year-old speaker of Bukharan Tajik, which is a variety that is classified as an NTD, /ɵ/ differs from that of an eighteen-year-old Bukharan Tajik speaker. The sixty-year-old man’s /ɵ/ is markedly more back, and hence also much closer to /ɔ/, than is eighteen-year-old girl’s /ɵ/ (see Appendix). On the other hand, the position of /ɔ/ relative to those of /i/, /e/, /u/, and /a/ does not vary much between them, which appears to allow the assumption that the raising of ENP /ā/ preceded the fronting of ENP /ō/. The position of /ɵ/ in the vowel system of the sixtyyear-old Bukharan may then be considered to represent the stage in the Tajik chain shift where the raised ENP /ā/ (Tajik /ɔ/) pushes the mid-back vowel out of its original position. In this section, I presented two sets of data that support Hypothesis 2. I will turn to Hypothesis 3 in the immediately following section.

3. Evidence that supports Hypothesis 3 The preceding sections argued for the validity of the hypothesis that the vowel shifts that occurred in the Tajik vowel system (i.e. the vowel system of NTDs) was a push chain shift. In this section, I argue that Tajik-Uzbek language contact was involved in the chain shift in Tajik/NTDs. The foremost reason to assume that Uzbek influenced the formation of the vowel system of Tajik/NTDs is the correspondence between the vowel system of Tajik/NTDs and that of the Uzbek dialects which are in intensive contact 69

with NTDs. Observe the vowel system of the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek, which are the Uzbek dialects that are most intensively in contact with NTDs. (7)

Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek

This vowel system is identical with the vowel system of NTDs (compare (2) with (7)).5 It is unlikely that NTDs and the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek developed the same vowel system independently from each other.6 The unlikeliness derives from the following facts. Firstly, in Uzbek, the use of the vowel system in (7) is confined to the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects. Secondly, the use of the vowel system in (2) is confined to NTDs. Thirdly, the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek are in contact with NTDs. The confinement of the use of a vowel system that is unique among the dialects of both Tajik and Uzbek specifically to the dialects that are in intensive Tajik-Uzbek contact is unlikely to occur by chance. It is therefore possible to state with some certainty that Tajik-Uzbek language contact exerted influence on the formation of the vowel system of Tajik/NTDs7. Another reason to assume the validity of Hypothesis 3 is the difference between (6a) and (6b). NTDs diverge from the Tajik dialect groups that are geographically adjacent to them in having moved ENP /ō/ not to high-position but to the front. As we have seen in § 1.2, the movements of ENP vowels schematized in (6) are within the explanatory power of Labov’s Principle I and Principle III. However, even if Labov’s principles are sound, as I assume in the present paper that they are, the question remains as to what determines the direction of vowel shifting when multiple principles are in conflict with each other. The two differing movements of /ō/ that are observed in (6) are a case in point – Principle 5 This is not to say that the vowels in NTDs and their corresponding vowels in the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek are phonetically identical, though each vowel phoneme in NTDs seems to be within the allophonic variation of its corresponding vowel in the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek. Four of the vowel phonemes of the Bukhara dialect of Uzbek (spoken by Uzbek monolinguials) have a large degree of allophonic variation, which is not surprising because they came into existence as a result of mergers (see Mirzaev 1969: 28–33). Bobomurodov’s (1978: 13) assertion that the Tajik mid-central vowel is more front than its Uzbek counterpart may have to be assessed in this context. 6 The argument here is based on the assumption that two language varieties in contact can move their vowels so that their vowels coincide. Data presented in Bullock & Gerfen (2004) and Bond et al. (2006) appear to support this assumption. 7 As it probably did on the formation of the vowel system of the Qorluq-Chigil-Uyg'ur dialects of Uzbek. The Qorluq-Chigil-Uyg'ur dialects, which comprise the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects, constitute a dialect group in Reshetov’s classification of Uzbek dialects (see Reshetov & Shohabdurahmonov 1978: 36–42). See Coşkun (2000: xxviii–xxxii), Rajabov (1996: 76–98), and Reshetov & Shoabdurahmonov (1978: 29–42) for other classifications of Uzbek dialects.

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I may raise ENP /ō/ (as it apparently did in (6b)) while Principle III can move it to the front (as it apparently did in (6a)). Tajik-Uzbek language contact can provide an answer to this question, because the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek have the mid-central vowel towards which ENP /ō/ moved in NTDs and with which the /ɵ/ of NTDs coincide. Thus, it is possible to ascribe the movement of ENP /ō/ that is responsible for the difference between (6a) and (6b) to utilization of /ɵ/ in the Bukhara-Samarqand dialects of Uzbek, with which NTDs have been in contact for centuries. The ascription of the movement of ENP /ō/ in NTDs to the Uzbek influence is not novel.8 Perry (2005: 15) writes that the mid-central position of /ɵ/ in Tajik ‘is due to its having merged with Uzbek /u̇ /’ (/u̇ / is the symbol that Perry uses for the midcentral vowel phoneme in Tajik).9 Thus, the existence of a mid-central vowel in the Uzbek dialects that are in contact with NTDs can serve as another piece of evidence that Tajik-Uzbek language contact had an impact on the formation of the vowel system of Tajik/NTDs.10

4. Summary In this paper, I presented data that support the hypothesis that the vowel shifts that took place in the formation of the vowel system of Tajik constitute a push chain shift and that the chain shift was affected by the language contact between Tajik and Uzbek. In section 1, I interpreted vowel shifts that took place in Tajik as a chain shift, drawing on existing descriptions of the vowel system of NTDs. 8 NTDs are the dialects that are known for (and partly defined by) their intensive contact with Uzbek. On the other hand, the contact between Central Tajik dialects and Uzbek is limited. Contact with Uzbek is minimal in Southern Tajik dialects. Any linguistic feature that is found in NTDs but not in the other Tajik dialects geographically adjacent to them is therefore a candidate for a contact-induced feature. 9 Incidentally, this passage precedes the following bracketed note: ‘(orig. common Turkic vowels /ö/ and /ü/)’, which he repeats in paraphrase in Perry (2006: 485). This information is incorrect. Uzbek /ɵ/ (Perry’s /u̇/) corresponds to Turkic /ö/ and /o/ (see, e.g., Reshetov and Shoabdurahmonov 1978: 45). 10 One apparent obstacle to the ascription of the fronting of ENP /ō/ in Tajik/NTDs to Tajik-Uzbek language contact is the fronting of ENP /ō/ in South-eastern Tajik dialects, which are geographically isolated from Uzbek (though ENP /ā/ was, in certain environments, raised to high-position via mid-position in South-eastern Tajik dialects). I do not have a ready explanation for the fronting of ENP /ō/ in South-eastern Tajik dialects. However, considering the fact that they are dialects that are in contact with the Pamir languages some of which (particularly Šughnī, which is the largest among the Pamir languages in terms of number of speakers) utilize mid-central vowels and also the fact that at least some parts of the area in which South-eastern Tajik dialects are spoken today were areas where the Pamir languages were spoken, it is possible that the contact between Pamir language and Tajik played a role in the fronting of ENP /ō/ in South-eastern Tajik dialects. Payne writes that Wanī was ‘formerly spoken in the Vanč valley, but by the 1920s at the latest replaced by a dialect of Tāikī’ and that ‘a Pāmir languge might once have been spoken … in the Darvaz and Karategin areas of Tadžikistan’ (Payne 1989: 420). See in Édel'man (1987a: 238–240 and 1987b: 350–351) the vowel systems of the Pamir languages that are geographically close to South-eastern Tajik dialects (See also Wurm & Lee-Smith 1996).

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In section 2, I analyzed different chain shifts that took place in various Tajik dialects and argued for the hypothesis that the Northern Tajik chain shift was a push chain shift. In section 3, I used Uzbek dialectological data to show that TajikUzbek language contact is likely to have been responsible in moving ENP /ō/ to the front. One novelty of the analysis of the Tajik vowel system made in this paper lies in its asserting that at least some instances of vowel shifts in Tajik are chain shifts. To my knowledge, no previous work in Iranian linguistics exists that identifies a chain shift in the formation of the Tajik vowel system. While I posit a chain shift in the formation of the Tajik vowel system, I also argue for the validity of Hypothesis 3. One result of this approach is the identification of the formation of the Tajik vowel system as a ‘joint product’ of internally motivated language change and externally driven language change. Much work on chain shifting has focused on chain shifting as a language-internal phenomenon (see, e.g. Langstrof 2006, Maclagan & Hay 2007, and Labov 1994). As a result, limited attention has been paid to ‘external’ factors in chain shifting such as language contact.11 The analysis of the formation of the Tajik vowel system that I have proposed in this paper indicates that including language contact as a factor in the analyses of chain shifting can increase their explanatory, if not predictive, power.

References Bobomurodov, Shakar. 1978. Sadonoki “ū” va mavqei on dar sistemai vokalizmi zaboni adabii tojik. Dushanbe: Universiteti Davlatii Tojikiston ba nomi V. I. Lenin. Bond, Z. S. et al. 2006. Sixty years of bilingualism affects the pronunciation of Latvian vowels. Language variation and change 18, 165–177. Bullock, Barbara & Chip Gerfen. 2004. Phonological convergence in a contracting language variety. Bilingualism: Language and cognition 7(2), 95–104. Coşkun, Volkan. 2000. Özbek Türkçesi Grameri. Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu. Édel'man, D. I. 1987a. Šugnano-rušanskaja jazykovaja gruppa. IN V. S. Rastorgueva ed. 1987. Osnovy iranskogo jazykoznanija (Novoiranskie jazyki: Vostočnaja gruppa). Moskva: Nauka. 236–347. Édel'man, D. I. 1987b. Jazguljamskii jazyk. IN Rastorgueva, V. S. ed. 1987. Osnovy iranskogo jazykoznanija (Novoiranskie jazyki: Vostočnaja gruppa). Moskva: Nauka. 348– 407. Éshniyozov, M. 1977. Dialektologiyai tojik (Dasturi Ta"limī) Qismi yakum. Dushanbe: Universiteti Davlatii Tojikiston ba nomi V. I. Lenin. Kerimova, A. A. 1959. Govor tadjikov buxary. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo Vostočnoy Literatury. Labov, Willaim. 1994. Principles of linguistic change Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Langstrof, Christian. 2006. Acoustic evidence for a push-chain shift in the intermediate period of New Zealand English. Language variation and change 18, 141–164. In fact, Labov (1994: 233) also makes use of an ‘external’ factor in accounting for the Valais raising of back vowels.

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Maclagan, Margaret & Jennifer Hay. 2007. Getting fed up with our feet: Contrast maintenance and the New Zealand English “short” front vowel shift. Language variation and change 19, 1–25. Mirzaev, M. M. 1969. O'zbek tilining Buxoro gruppa shevalari. Toshkent: Fan. Payne, John. 1989. Pamir languages IN Schmitt, Rüdiger ed. 1989. Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. 417–444. Perry, John. 2006. Tajik Persian. IN Keith Brown et al. (eds.) 2006. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics 2nd Edition. Elsevier. 484–487. Perry, John. 2005. A Tajik Persian reference grammar. Leiden: Brill. Polivanov, E. D. 1933. Uzbekskie govory i uzbekskiy literaturnyi jazyk. Tashkent: Gosizdat. Rajabov, Nazar. 1996. O'zbek shevashunosligi. Toshkent: O'qituvchi. Rastorgueva, V. S. 1964. Opyt sravnitel'nogo izucheniya tadjikskix govorov. Moskva: Izdatel'stvo Nauka. Rastorgueva, V. S. 1992. A short sketch of Tajik grammar (translated by Herbert H. Paper). Bloomington: Indiana University. Reshetov, V. V. & Shonazar Shoabdurahmonov. 1978. O'zbek dialektologiyasi. Toshkent: O'qituvchi. Shoabdurahmonov, Shonazar. 1971. O'zbek shevalari va ularni o'rganish haqida umumiy ma"lumot. IN Shonazar Shohabrahmonov (ed.) 1971. O'zbek xalq shevalari lug'ati. Toshkent: Fan. 386–407. Windfuhr, Gernot. 1990. Persian. IN Bernard Comrie (ed.) 1990. The world’s major languages. London: Croom Helm. 523–546. Wurm, S. A. & M. W. Lee-Smith. (comp.) 1996. Languages in the Pamir and in Yunnan. IN Stepphen A. Wurm, Peter Mühlhäusler, and Darrell T. Tryon eds. 1996. Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas (Volume 1: Maps). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. map 99.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Alan Libert for his comments on a draft of this paper. Financial support for this research came in part from MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (20720101) and the Matsushita International Foundation.

Contact information Shinji Ido Research Center for Language, Brain and Cognition Tohoku University 41 Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai Japan [email protected] http://ido.ifdef.jp/

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Appendix: F1-F2 scatter plots of Bukharan Tajik vowels pronounced in isolation 100

iiiiiiii ii i i iiii iiiiiiiiii iiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiii iiiii i iiiii iiii i ii i i iiiiiiiiiiii iii iii iii ii i i iiiiiii i iiii iiiiiiii i iiiii i i i i iii i eee e

uu uuuuuuu uuuu uuuuuuuu u uuuuuuuuuuu u uuuuuuu uuuuuuuuu

F1 (Hz)

eeeee e eee eeeeee ee ee eeeeeeeee eeeeee e eeee eeee eeeeee e eeeeee e e ee e eeee e e e eeeeee eeeeee e eeeeeeeeee eeee eeeeee eeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eee eeeee ee eeee eee e eeee eee eeeeeeee eee eee e e e e

öööö öööö öööööö öööö ö ööö öööööö ööööööööö ööö ööö ö ööö öö öö ö öö ö ö öööö ööö

a

ö öööööööööööööööööö öö ö ööööööööööööööööö ö ö ö öööööööööööööööö ö öö öö ööö öö ö ö ö ööööööööööööööö öö öö öö ö ööööööööööööööööööööö ö ö ö ö ö ö ö ööö öö

aaa aaaaa aaaaaa a a a

aaaaaaaaaaa aaa aaa a a a aa

1000 2500

400 F2 (Hz)

60 yo male Tajik speaker (recorded in Bukhara on 07 August 2006) 100

F1 (Hz)

i iii i ii iii iiiiiiiii iii

uuuuuuuuuu uu uuu uuu uu u uuu uu uu uu eeee e eeee ee e e e e e eeee e eeeeeee eee eeee

ööö öö öööööö ö ö öö öööö öööööö ö ööööö

aaaaaaaaa aaa aaa aa aaaaaaaaaaaa aaaa a

1000 3500 F2 (Hz) 18 yo female Tajik speaker (recorded in Bukhara on 06 June 2007)

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400