Notes on the historical phonology of Indo-Iranian loanwords in Northwestern Tibetan dialects

Unlike Indo-Aryan, Iranian or Nuristani, certain apparently Dardic historical-phonological isoglosses have been detected in our material. They are as follows:

1) the deaspiration of Proto-Indo-Iranian voiced aspirates, including the aspirated affricate *jh;

2) loss of historical sibilants in Indo-Iranian clusters of the type “sibilant + voiceless aspirate”; See the note on the intervocalic retroflex in Balti kadik `small branches' and Ladakhi katik `branches and leaves of trees as fodder for animals in the spring'.

3) PIE *tk' > *ch with subsequent dentalization to ch.

Two of the three above isoglosses are found outside Dardic (the isogloss (1) in Iranian and Nuristani, and the isogloss (2) in Middle and New Indo-Aryan) but the bundle as a whole seems to be unique to the Dardic group. The isogloss (3) indicates that the donor language, being Dardic, could not, however, have belonged to the East Dardic subgroup, where word- initially the Proto-Dardic *ch was cerebralized into *ch and thus merged with the reflex of PII *ks (Kogan 2016; 2019).

Importantly, none of the three above-mentioned sound changes is found in lexical items peculiar to Muslim dialects alone. It means that these historical-phonological features most probably characterize the earliest stratum of Indo-Iranian loanwords, common to all the Northwestern Tibetan varieties. This fact substantially contributes to clarifying the nature of the Tibetan-Indo-Iranian language contact. As already noted, there are reasons to believe that the earliest (“common Northwest Tibetan”) loanwords have been borrowed from a single source. Since this source-language could have been neither East Dardic nor Indo-Aryan or Iranian, and it is to these groups that all the known Indo-Iranian neighbors of Ladakhi, Balti and Purik belong or belonged, the substratum influence in our case seems to be much more likely than the adstratum one.

The tentative picture of linguistic and ethnic contact obtained from the present research may thus be represented in the following way. As a result of the northwestward expansion of the Tibetans in the early Middle Ages, a number of Tibetan dialects fell under the influence of a certain Indo-Iranian substratum lect. Geographically, the zone of this substrate contact was most probably located in present day Ladakh. The substrate language must have belonged to the Dardic group but, no doubt, was not an early form of Shina, Brokskat or Kashmiri, nowadays spoken in zones adjacent to Ladakhi and Balti. After a certain time period, during which considerable loan vocabulary was acquired, a new migration to the northwest took place. Its consequence was the spread of the Tibetan language in what is now Baltistan and Kargil. The majority of the local pre-Tibetan population seems to have spoken a certain variety of Burushaski (Kogan 2019) Burushaski seems to have exerted some influence on the Indo-Iranian language of pre-Tibetan Ladakh. This is indicated by the existence of Burushaski loanwords common for Ladakhi, Balti and Purik. It is remarkable that some of these loanwords are attested with the Indo-Iranian formant -k (see 34). but the presence of some Indo-Iranian forms of speech is also probable. The latter lects must have influenced the early form of Balti, as is clear from the existence of several Indo-Iranian loanwords specific to the Balti dialects. The exact source of such loanwords, as well as the type of contact that has resulted in their adoption, remain unknown because of the extreme scarcity of the material. There is, however, a possibility that future field linguistic research will yield sufficient new lexical data, instrumental in the clarification of these both issues.

Abbreviations for language names

Av. -- Avestan;

OIA -- Old Indo-Aryan;

PIE -- Proto-Indo-European;

PII -- Proto-Indo-Iranian

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Аннотация

Об историко-фонетических особенностях индоиранских заимствований в северо-западных тибетских диалектах

А.И. Коган

Как показали недавние исследования, в лексике ряда северо-западных тибетских диалектов имеется значительное количество индоиранских заимствований. Остается, однако, неясным, были ли эти заимствования усвоены из одного или нескольких источников и является ли их наличие следствием воздействия субстрата или адстрата. Не установлено и точное генетическое положение языка-донора внутри индоиранской языковой общности. Изучение данного круга вопросов, несомненно, должно опираться на факты исторической фонетики. В статье представлена попытка выявить наиболее яркие историко-фонетические особенности индоиранских элементов в северо-западных диалектах тибетского языка. Кроме того, делается ряд предварительных выводов, касающихся лингвистической географии исследуемого региона в дотибетскую эпоху, а также направления и относительной хронологии миграций тибетцев.

Ключевые слова: историческая фонетика; языковые контакты; языковой субстрат; индоиранские языки; дардские языки; тибетские диалекты; язык ладакхи; язык балти; язык пурик.

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