ANĀRAKI

 

ANĀRAKI, the dialect of Anārak, a town with 2,100 inhabitants in the Bīābānak region northeast of the city of Nāʾīn. It is closely related to the dialect of Nāʾīn; both are members of the complex network of isoglosses usually called central dialects. Some typical lexical items are: ker/kert “do,” k/keft “fall,” wāǰ/wāt “speak,” bend/bes “hit,” wān/wānt “cut,” hanīk/hanīkišt “sit,” hmer/hmert “break,” yošnow/yošnuft “hear,” mul “neck,” masa “big,” malī “very, much,” enǰū “woman,” engolī “finger.”

Phonology. Like most central dialects, Anāraki has the following historical developments: initial *w/y = w/y, e.g., werf “snow,” yūmū “dress, clothes;” initial *dw > b, e.g., ber “door,” * k/g > s/z, e.g., masa "big,” zūmā “son-in-law;” *kw/gw > sp/zb, e.g., sibī “white,” zūūn “tongue;” *θr > r, e.g., pūr “son, boy.” Later changes: *fr/xr > (h)r, e,g., hrōš “sell,” hrīn “buy;” *xt > (h)t, e.g., rot “sold” (< *fra-waxt-); *xw > xu-, e.g., “sister.” Intervocalic d tends to become a glide, e.g., ǰīyā “separate,” čār “chador,” final d is mostly lost, e.g. zūmā “son-in-law.” Generally *ē/ō > ī/ū, e.g., mīš “sheep,” gūš “ear,” but “mountain,” hrōš “sell;” ā is strongly rounded; āN > ūN, e.g., zūmā “son-in-law;” ū > ī before old coronals, e.g., “hair” (< mōy), pīl “money.” Short vowels tend to be raised: a/e/o > e/i/u.

Grammar. Personal pronouns, personal affixes, and verbal endings are as follows:

?empty#Pronoun#Affix#Ending##

I#mu#(e)m#ī##

you (sing.)#tu#(e)t#ī##

he/she/this#ī#?empty#?empty##

he/she/that#ū#(e)š#e##

this here##?empty#?empty##

we##mūn/mn-#em##

you (plur.)#šemā#tūn/tn-#id##

they/these#īhā#?empty#?empty##

they/those#ūhā#šūn/šn-#en##

these here#dīhā##

?empty#“is”#“was”##

I####

you (sing.)####

he/she/it##bī(yō)##

we#hem#bīyem##

you (plur.)#hīd#bīyīd##

they#hen#bīyen##

The 2nd sing. ending is zero in the imperative; the 3rd sing. ending is zero in past forms. The existential verb, dār/dārt “there is/was,” expresses possession with personal affix, e.g., yak mallū-i xūb dāre “There is a nice cat,” xer-eš dārt “He had a donkey” (literally: “to him there was a donkey”). The pronouns occur both independently and before nouns, e.g., dī mēr “this man,” ī enǰū-š “this wife of his.” The affixes are used as 1) possessives, following the noun, e.g., xer-eš “his donkey;” 2) direct objects, in which case they precede the verb, e.g., se pīl š-ihrōšī “you sell it for three coins,” tu ī-š-I-nī “you take it” (ī “this,” š 3rd sing. affix); 3) indirect objects, e.g., m-I-wā “I want” (literally: “for me is necessary”); 4) agents in past of transitive verbs, in which case the three plural forms mn-/tn-/šn- are used, e.g., mā mn-I-wāt “we said.”

Plural is marked by . Indefinite suffix is ē/ī. Direct object is usually unmarked, but Persian occurs, e.g., xer-o t-I-rot “you sold the donkey” (o < rā after consonant as in Persian). Subordinate noun and adjective are often unmarked, or are connected by e, e.g., mallū-i xūb “a good cat” (i < -y-e).

The verb systern from which that of Anāraki derives is typically western Iranian; it consists of the following: present and past imperfective, present and past perfective, preterite (more properly aorist), present and perfect subjunctive (more properly imperfective and perfective subjunctive), counterfactual (expressed by the past imperfective and past perfective), and imperative. A peculiar feature of Anāraki is the merger of the subjunctive and past prefix be with the imperfective prefix i. The resulting prefix appears as i if stressed, such as in the imperative, but as a reduced vowel I if unstressed, in which case it tends to assimilate to the verbal vowel; it may be absent if the verb is isolated: e.g., i-šo “go!” but ū o-šo “he goes” (ū “he, she”), šo “he goes;” ū š-o-wāt “he said” (š marker of 3rd sing. agent). (For this phenomenon in the central dialects see K. J. Krahnke, Linguistic Relationships in Central Iran, University of Michigan Ph.D. dissertation, 1976, pp. 136, 186.) As in the other central dialects, in the past of transitive verbs the agent is marked by the personal affix preceding the verb form or attached to the object, e.g., š-I-wāt, xer-o t-I-rot yā ne-t-I-rot “She said, " Did you sell the donkey or did you not sell it?"” (š 3rd sing, agent, t 2nd sing, agent), dī mīre xer-eš pālū ker “This man saddled the donkey” (-eš . . . ker). The system of transitives may be exemplified as follows (wīn/dī “see,” 1st sing.; traditional terms added). Note that some forms are reconstructed by analogy with other documented forms and that stress distinctions marked are tentative):

Indicative

Present#mu I-wīn-ī′##

Imperf.#mu m-í-dī##

Preterite#mu m-I-dī′##

Pres. Perf.#mu m-I-dī′-y-a##

Past Perf.#mu m-I-dī′-y-a bī##

Non-Indicative

Pres. Subj.#mu í-wīn-ī##

Counterfact.#mu m-í-dī##

Past#mu m-I-dī′##

Perf. Subj.#mu m-I-dī′-y-a bō?##

Past Counterfact.#mu m-I-dī′-y-a bī##

Directional-locational prefixes are as follows: ha, e.g., ha-gīr/ha-girif “take,” ha-d/ha-dā “give,” ha-nīk/ha-nīkišt “sit down,” ha-bend/ha-bes “hit;” wer, e.g., werders/wer-dešt “sew,” wer-nivīs/wer-nivišt “write,” wer-šumār/wer-šumārt “count,” wer-yošnow/wer-yošnuf “hear;” wa/we, e.g., wa-pūš/wa-pušt “cover,” weyus/we-yussā “stand up.” Causative is marked by suffix n, e.g., čānn- < čār-n- “(let) graze.” Inchoative “become” is expressed by gert, e.g., dī mēr qamnāk gerte “This man became sad.” Modal verbs are wā/pī “will, want, must,” preceded by personal affix, e.g., m-I-wā i-šī “I want to go,” š-I-pīyā i-hrōše “He wanted to sell;” šāw “can,” e.g., m-I-šāw “I can.”

The syntax of Anāraki appears to be typically western Iranian, as seen in the following sample sentences (see V. Ivanov, “Two Dialects Spoken in the Central Persian Desert,” JRAS, 1926, pp. 417-18): Yak mīre xer-eš dārt; š-I-pīyā xer-eš i-hrōše. “A man had a donkey; he wanted to sell it.” Sub ke gerte, dī mīre xer-eš pālū kert; š-I-nī be wāzār “When morning came, this man saddled the donkey, took it to the market.” Welī muštarī dī-n-a n-I-š-pīyā i-hrīne. “But no customer wanted to buy this (donkey).”

See also Anārak.

Bibliography:

See also V. Ivanov, “Notes on the Dialects of Khūr and Mihrijān,” Acta Orientalia 8, 1930, pp. 45-61; “Additional Notes on the Anārakī Dialect,” pp. 57-59.

H. Kanus-Credé, “Notizen zum Dialekt von Anārak,” Iranistische Mitteilungen 5, 1971, pp. 10-22.

(G. L. Windfuhr)

Originally Published: December 15, 1985

Last Updated: August 3, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. II, Fasc. 1, pp. 2-3

Cite this entry:

G. L. Windfuhr, “ANĀRAKI,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, II/1, pp. 2-3, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/anaraki-the-dialect-of-anarak (accessed on 30 December 2012).