Turkish Varieties of Lurestan Province, Influence of Language Contact Situation

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Author
R. Amini
Assistant Professor in Linguistics, Department of Contemporary Languages and Dialects, Research Center of Linguistics, Inscriptions and Texts, Research Institute for Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Tehran, Iran
10.48311/LRR.15.4.137
Abstract
In this article, the situation of the Turkish varieties of Luristan province is studied. The main languages of the province are Luri and Laki, and in some regions varieties of Persian impacted by Luri. However, in Aligudarz, Azna, and Borujerd counties of the province, there are a number of Turkish-speaking villages too. Turkish varieties spoken in these villages, lexically, and sometimes morphologically and syntactically, show their own specific properties. We can argue that these Turkish varieties have acquired these properties as a consequence of being in contact with Luri as the dominant language of the region. Investigations of this research shows that the Turkish varieties in question, in some lexical categories, clearly, are impacted by Luri and Persian more significantly than the other lexical categories. On the other hand, the Turkish varieties in the three aforementioned counties do not seem to be influenced by Luri equally. Therefore, regarding different conditions of the language communities these varieties are used in, we should imagine different perspectives for them in terms of language survival.



1. Introduction

The main languages of Lurestan province in Iran are Luri and Laki, and in some regions, varieties of Persian impacted by Luri. However, in some villages of Aligudarz, Azna and Boroujerd of the province, there are a few Turkish-speaking villages. These varieties have been in contact with Luri, as the dominant language of the province, and Persian as the lingua franca and formal language of Iran. Therefore, we can argue that these Turkish varieties, under the influence of Luri and Persian, have acquired properties that make them different from the other Turkish varieties of Iran, namely Azeri Turkish.

Research Question(s)

In this article, the Turkish varieties of Lurestan are studied, mainly, to answer the following two questions.

A. What are the linguistic properties of Turkish varieties of Lurestan?

B. Knowing that the language communities of Lurestan's Turkish varieties are in contact with a much larger language community, what perspective can be imagined for their survival?



2. Literature Review

Language contact is an important issue in sociolinguistics; and since a large number of different languages around the world are in contact with other languages, the consequences of these contacts are investigated by researchers. However, as far as the author knows, the Turkish varieties of Lurestan are not studied till know. And, even it seems that they are not known out of the province. To the knowledge of the author, Zarinjuyi (2018) is the only report in which the Turkish-speaking villages of Lurestan are mentioned. Additionally, in some historical books we confront the name of Turk tribes of Lurestan region.

3. Methodology

Methodologically, this research is an inductive one, and in terms of method, the research is of descriptive-analytical type. In other words, the results and findings of the research are based on describing and analyzing data. The data are parts of the data have gathered for the “Linguistic Atlas of Iran”.



4. Results

Based on the analyses and discussions of the article, we can argue that vowel harmony, as one of the characteristic features of Turkic languages, has been weaken in Turkish varieties of Lurestan, because of contact with Luri and Persian. Moreover, the data shows that some of the lexical categories of these Turkish varieties are impacted by Luri and Persian, particularly categories of kinship terms and words related to plants. In addition, considering the different conditions of the language communities of these Turkish varieties, it seems that these language varieties are not in the same situation in terms of survival. Accordingly, it seems that Turkish variety of Chaman-Soltan in Aligudarz county, and Turkish varieties of Azna county, are in better conditions, because of having more populous and cohesive language communities. But, the perspective for survival of Turkish varieties of Borujerd county doesn’t seem to be hopeful, because of having scattered and small language communities, and the heavy impacts of the much larger community of Luri and migration.

 

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Subjects

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Language Related Research
Volume 15, Issue 4 - Serial Number 82
September and October 2024
Pages 137-168