Agnes Korn

Carina Jahani

Paul Brian Titus

Balochistan has been an important contact zone between the Indian Subcontinent and the Iranian Plateau. It is a region where a variety of languages intermingle, different religions jostle for attention, and traditional ways of living are challenged by modernity. The papers in this volume explore Balochistan's linguistic, socio-political and cultural diversity. Balochistan is in many ways a marginalised region in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. Traditional economies persist, but modernity is rapidly gaining ground. Tensions between traditionalism and modernity are explored in several articles. Other articles examine the impact of economic development in Balochistan.Political borders are always problematic and this is particularly so in southwest Asia. Only in the late 19th century were the present borders between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan drawn. As modern nation states were consolidated in the 20th century, the Baloch found themselves under the dominion of Islamabad and Tehran. The Baloch nationalist movement, which is treated in a number of articles, has been much stronger in former British India-Pakistan than in Iran. A powerful element of self-definition in the Middle East and South Asia is religious belief. In Balochistan this may take the form of Balochi Sunni assertions contra Persian Shia ones, or attempts by the minority Zikri Baloch to resist mainstream Sunnism. Another source of social demarcation is tribal affiliation. Thus difference between self and other is not always Baloch versus non-Baloch. Both religious and social demarcations are discussed in various articles in this volume.The Balochi language is the subject of several articles in the volume. This language is a conglomerate of dialects with diverging grammatical systems, and it is therefore by no means possible to speak of a standard Balochi language. Throughout history the Baloch have been in contact with other groups, and this has influenced their language. In the eastern parts of the Balochi speaking-region contact with Indo-Aryan languages is particularly intense as it is in the western parts with Persian. But other languages are also spoken in Balochistan. This has created widespread multilingualism, where one language (the national language or an international language) may be used for reading and writing and Balochi as well as other local languages are used in various oral domains.

Linguistic, Historical and Socio-political Perspectives on Pluralism in Balochistan

The Baloch and Others

The aim of the present work is to contribute to the knowledge of Balochi historical grammar. The main part of the book is a new discussion of the historical phonology of Balochi, the only comprehensive treatment of which existing so far dates from the end of the 19th century. Meanwhile, new material from a wide range of Balochi dialects and varieties has come to light. This makes it possible to distinguish between sound changes affecting the Balochi language as a whole and those that operate only in some variety; the approach to do so systematically is attempted here for the first time. Reassessing previous treatments and comparing important related languages (chiefly New Persian, Parthian and Avestan), the book analyses the development of Old Iranian sounds to the stage of Common Balochi and the changes leading from that stage to the variants spoken today in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and some other countries. The results indicate contact with other languages, specifically with Persian, as several Balochi sound changes are not such as we might expect in a North Western Iranian language. Concerning other sound changes, Balochi differs from all attested Middle Iranian languages. The predecessor of contemporary Balochi seems to have been a dialect rather similar to Parthian, but differing from it in a number of details. So the study of Balochi sound changes provides evidence for Middle Iranian dialectal variation. The diversity and intensity of contacts with neighbouring languages is also reflected in the Balochi lexicon of which selected fields are presented and discussed. The layers of loanwords show a continuing influence of Persian from the earliest times to the present day, relationships to Kurdish, Pashto and Brahui, and, particularly in the field of kinship terminology, intense contact with speakers of Modern Indic languages. The book is complemented by a morphological appendix and a comprehensive etymological index. It is intended as a contribution in the fields of New Iranian languages and historical Iranian linguistics.

Agnes Korn

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