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Kalasha-ala
Southern Nuristani language From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Nuristani Kalasha (Kalaṣa-alâ), also known as Waigali,[2] is a Nuristani language spoken by about 10,000 people in the Nuristan Province of Afghanistan. The native name is Kalaṣa-alâ 'Kalasha-language'. "Waigali" refers to the dialect of the Väi people of the upper part of the Waigal Valley, centered on the town of Waigal, which is distinct from the dialect of the Čima-Nišei people who inhabit the lower valley. The word 'Kalasha' is the native ethnonym for all the speakers of the southern Nuristani languages.
Nuristani Kalasha belongs to the Indo-European language family, and is in the Nuristani group of the Indo-Iranian branch. It is closely related to Zemiaki[3] and to Tregami, the lexical similarity with the latter being approximately 76% to 80%.[1]
It shares its name with the Indo-Aryan Kalasha language (Kalaṣa-mun), spoken in Pakistan's southern Chitral District, but the two languages belong to different branches of Indo-Iranian. Speakers of Nuristani Kalasha (Kalaṣa-alâ) are sometimes called "Red Kalasha", while the speakers of Indo-Aryan Kalasha are called “Black Kalasha.”[4] The Kalash people are very close to the Nuristani people in terms of culture and historic religion. According to linguist Richard Strand the Kalasha of Chitral apparently adopted the name of the Nuristani Kalasha, who at some unknown time had extended their influence into the region of southern Chitral.
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Name
The name Kalasha-ala comes from Kalaṣa [kalaˈʂa], a term denoting the Kalash people, which also covers the distantly related Indo-Aryan Kalasha language (Kalaṣa-mun), hence the language is called "Nuristani Kalasha". The name "Waigali" comes from Vägal [væˈɡal] < Vâigal [vaːi̯ˈɡal], from Vä [ˈvæ] < Vâi [ˈvaːi̯] "Vai" and gal [ˈɡal] "valley".
Dialects
According to linguist Richard Strand, Nuristani Kalasha contains several dialects spoken among the Väi, Vai, or Vä peoples, the Čima-Nišei people, and the Vântä people. Within the Väi, the Väi-alâ, Ameš-alâ, and Ẓönči-alâ subdialects are spoken. Among the Čima-Nišei, the Nišei-alâ and Čimi-alâ subdialects are spoken. The exact dialect of the Vântä is unclear, but is most probably Nišei-alâ. For this article, most cited forms will be based on the Nišei dialect (Nišei-alâ).
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Phonology
Symbols in brackets are foreign sounds.
- /ɳ/ becomes [ɽ̃] intervocalically.
- /w/ becomes [β] before /ɹ, ɹ̃/ and next to front vowels.
- Post-consonantally, /ɽ/ retroflexes the following vowels in the word, sounding like a /ɹ/ before or after the vowel. Post-consonantally before a front vowel, /ɽ/ simply turns to /ɹ/.
Grammar
Summarize
Perspective
Morphosyntactic Alignment
Nuristani Kalasha is a head-final SOV language with a split ergative system:[6]: 137-139
- There is a morphologically unmarked 'direct' case used for the subjects of all intransitive verbs and an 'oblique' case used for all indirect objects and benefactives and also for postpositions.
- For transitive verbs in the perfective ('preterite'), perfect, and pluperfect, the direct object is in the direct case and the transitive subject is in the oblique case. (These verb forms are all morphologically based off of the preterite stem and conjugate not only for person but for sex-based gender.)
- For transitive verbs in the present, future, imperfect, and subjunctive, the subject is in the direct case. The direct object is also in the direct case if it is indefinite, but it is in the oblique case if it is definite. (These verb forms are all morphologically based off of the present stem and mostly conjugate only for person and number.)
Nominal morphology
Kalasha-ala nouns are marked for case (direct, oblique, instrumental, locative, and vocative) and sometimes for number (singular or plural).
The case endings change slightly in form depending on the declension of the noun to which they are attached, usually by merging with the final vowel of the stem. A genitive is made by attaching -ba to the oblique.
Only oblique and vocative nouns have unique fusional forms for the singular and plural. For some nouns, however, a plural may be made by adding a suffix to the stem:[6]: 78
- -kina for many personal terms like 'father', with the plural ending -kinā̃ in the oblique, and
- -ān or -ā̃ for many animals, with -āna in the oblique.
Noun declensions, unlike adjective and verb endings, never vary based on gender.[6]: 78
Verbal morphology
There are two basic stems for verbs from which are built a number of conjugated tense/aspect/moods - the present stem is used to make not only presents but futures, imperfects, imperatives, and subjunctives;[6]: 42 the preterite stem is used to make not only the preterite, but the perfect and pluperfect as well as some futures (likely originally future perfects).[6]: 68 In addition there are a few non-finite verb forms using one of the two stems. There is a morphological causative with its own stem, typically built off the present stem.[6]: 41
Conjugated verb forms reflect the person and number and, in some tenses, sex-based gender of their subjects.
Numbers
Like in many languages of the area, the number system is base twenty.[6]: 91-95
| 1 | ew, e | 11 | yāš |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | dü | 12 | bāš |
| 3 | tre | 13 | trõš |
| 4 | čatā | 14 | čadiš |
| 5 | ponč | 15 | pačiš |
| 6 | ṣu | 16 | ṣẽš |
| 7 | sot | 17 | satāš |
| 8 | oṣṭ | 18 | ṣṭaš |
| 9 | nu | 19 | ẽši |
| 10 | doš | 20 | wiši |
Compound numbers are formed by multiplying twenties with an oblique -e and then adding the remainder, e.g. wiše yāš "31"; dü-wiše ew "41". Curiously, the common word for "400", azār, is borrowed from the Persian word hazār for "thousand", and čatā sawa from the Pashto sawa "hundred" is also used.
Numbers are often suffixed with -i when not accompanied by count nouns, possibly from from ...ye "and...". For some odd multiples of 10, the doš seems to require an -i, so dü-wiše doši "50" and tre-wiše doši "70".
There is a multiplicative suffix -ar (e-ar "once", čatā-ar "four times") and a distributive made by reduplication of the first consonant (dadü "per two", papũč "per five", wawoṣṭ "per eight"; nane "each" is irregular).
The only attested ordinals are the Persian loanwords awal "first" and düum "second".
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Vocabulary
Pronouns
References
Bibliography
External links
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