Syntactic Changes In Qashqai Turkic Due To Contact With Persian

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
S. Hemmati 1
M. Dabirmoghaddam 2
1 Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies
2 Allameh Tabataba’i University
10.29252/LRR.14.2.7
Abstract
Qashqai Turkic is one of the southwestern​​ (Oghuz) Turkic languages which is spoken in the south of Iran. The intense and long-term linguistic contact of Qashqai Turkic with Persian has caused profound changes in it’s original characteristics at all language levels and its convergence with Persian language is increasing day by day. In this research, in the framework of the code-copying model introduced by Lars Johanson, the syntactic changes occured in this language as a result of contact with Persian have been studied. Changes in causation strategies, strategies for expressing modality, expressing the verb "have", deletion of genitive case marker of the possessor in a genitive-possessive construction, change in the expression of copula and existential verbs, investigation of evidentiality, investigation of newly made compound "belä+possessive suffix", change of case government in some verbs, investigation of the presence of Persian Ezafe, Persian indefinite article and Kurdish definite article in Qashqai Turkic, deletion of the interrogative enclitic -mI and change in order of adjective and indefinite article (bir) are the items that have been studied in this study. In this research, in addition to re-evaluating the results of previous research about syntactic changes in Qashqai Turkic, some new achievements have also been introduced by investigating and analyzing a written corpus consisting of seven story books and relying on the quantitative data obtained from this investigation.



1. Introduction

Contact-induced change which is traditionally called borrowing, is one of the main types of language change. The rate and extent of this change is directly proportional to the intensity and duration of language contact. Qashqai Turkic, which is one of the southwestern (Oghuz) Turkic languages in Iran, has undergone profound changes in its syntactic structure due to its intense and long-term contact with Persian. In this research, we have identified these changes at the level of simple sentences, and by statistical analysis, we have determined the extent and progress of the changes and also re-evaluated the results of past research in this regard.



2. Literature Review

Researchers who have worked in the field of contact linguistics in Turkic languages have pointed out various syntactic changes that have occurred as a result of their contact with Indo-European languages and especially Iranian languages. Changes in causation strategies, strategies for expressing modality, expressing the verb "have", deletion of genitive case marker of the possessor in a genitive-possessive construction, change in the expression of copula and existential verbs, change in evidential marking role of the suffix -mIš, change in pronominal system by newly made compound "belä+possessive suffix", change of verb government of postpositions (case suffixes) in some verbs, investigation of the presence of Persian Ezafe, Persian indefinite article and Kurdish definite article in Turkic varieties of Iran, deletion of the interrogative enclitic -mI and change in order of adjective and indefinite article (bir) before nouns are among the changes that have been mentioned. These studies were reviewed here as Soper (1987), Johanson (1998), Özkan & Musa (2004), Csató (2005), Kıral, F. (2005), Hashemi Zarajabad (2009), Karakoç (2009), Bosnalı (2010), Erfani (2012), Nazari & Routamaa (2012), Sultanzade (2016), Bulut (2016, 2018), Heydari (2019) and Johanson et al. (2020).



3. Methodology

In this study, contact-induced syntactic changes have been identified by examining and analyzing seven story books published in Qashqai Turkic in Iran. The extent and progress of these changes have been also determined by statistical results obtained from counting native and modified structures. The theoretical framework used in this research is the code-copying model introduced by Lars Johanson and applied in a lot of research about contact linguistics in Turkic languages.



4. Results

By examining the corpus and based on quantitative data obtained from counting both native and modified structures, the results of this study can be summarized as follows:

Despite the native order, the dative object often appears after the verb.
Following Persian paradigms, two analytic causative constructions have been developed using the verbs qoy- (to put) and ver- (to give).
In modals of necessity and possibility, instead of the native morphological strategies, the analytic use of the modal adverb gäräk (must) and bälkäm (maybe) which appears with the main verb of the clause in optative mood, has been developed. According to a pattern that exists in Farsi, verbs sometimes used in the past tense to refer to irrealis mood. To express the ability, an analytic solution has been developed using the verb bašar- (to succeed).
Along with more and more convergence with Persian, a more advanced construction has been developed to express the verb to have in Qashqai.
The presence of Persian Ezafe construction, Persian indefinite article and Kurdish definite article was confirmed with a relatively limited extent.
In most genitive-possessive constructions, the possessor noun appears without the genitive case marker.
The verb government of postpositions (case suffixes) in some verbs such as bɑšlɑ- (to start), soruš- (to ask), inɑn- (to believe) and ɑs- (to hang) has been changed by following the Persian paradigms.
Copula and existential verbs were used interchangebly with relatively low frequency.
The evidential marking role of the suffix -mIš in Qashqai Turkic has been lost under the influence of Persian and this suffix is ​​used to express the perfect aspect. In addition, a copied analytic construction is also developed to express evidentiality using demä ki (Don’t say that...).
Qashqai pronominal system has been changed by a newly made compound "belä+possessive suffix" following Persian pronominal system.
The interrogative enclitic -mI has been disappeared and replaced by a rising intonation at the end of sentence.

The order of adjective and indefinite article (bir) before nouns has been changed.

Keywords

Subjects

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https://www.ethnologue.com/language/qxq
Language Related Research
Volume 14, Issue 2 - Serial Number 74
May and June 2023
Pages 225-259