Northern Talysh by Wolfgang Schulze

Review by: Habib Borjian

Iran & the Caucasus, Vol. 8, No. 1 (2004), pp. 165-168
Published by: BRILL
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REVIEWS 165
Meyer's thoughts on the relations between Russia and the Islamic
peoples of her dominion.
In the last chapter on Central Asia Meyer in turn speaks about the
five independent states-Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turk-
menistan,
and Kyrgyzstan. Unlike the Caucasus, these former Soviet
republics felt like orphans after the collapse of the Union. That was
the reason why they all rushed to become members of the
C.I.S.,
though,
as Meyer quotes Russia's Deputy Prime Minister of the time
Yegor
Gaidar,
Russians at that period would prefer to be on their own
(p. 171). Simply the imperial behaviour of the Russians was once again
underlined, when three Slavic leaders of
Russia, Ukraine and Belarus
created the new Commonwealth without "informing or consulting
their fellow republican presidents in Central Asia" (ibid.). Since their
independence these Muslim republics found themselves in the rapidly
accelerating rivalry between the regional and overseas powers-Rus-
sia, Iran, Turkey, U.S.A., etc., and it has been rather difficult a task to
float safely in that turbulent waters-a dominant imperative for the
Central Asian "godfathers".
The Epilogue raises and provides keys for the answers of the ques-
tion "What is to be done!" It becomes obvious that the one who is
going to answer this question are the United States. Meyer profession-
ally teaches the U.S. administration how to behave in a
region,
which
is mostly covered by the "dust of empires". The two most conspicuous
points are the utmost importance of the History,
i.e. the historical past
of the region and the existence of Allies, i.e. the international support.
Unlike the dominating allergy of the Americans towards the Past,
for
the proud peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia,
as the book
shows,
the History bears a deep and important meaning, acting as a
Master-teacher par excellence.
Vahe Boyajian
Caucasian Centrefor Iranian Studies
Wolfgang Schulze, Northern Talysh, Miunchen: Lincom Europa, Languages of
the World, 2000,
94 pp.
Talishi (Talysh) is a group of dialects spoken in the mountains west of
the province of Gilan in Persia and in the Lenkoran region of the for-
mer Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. It is thus grouped into the so-
called southern and northern branches, a division motivated by politi-
cal boundaries par excellence. Within borders of
Persia,
Talishi is classi-
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166 REVIEWS
fied into southern, central, and northern
subdialects, the latter
of
which, i.e. the dialects spoken in the district of Astara, show close af-
finity with those of further north, across the border, in
Lenkoran,
Lerik, and Masally.
As one of the New North-West Iranian languages, Talishi is
closely
related to the so-called Tati-Azari group of dialects spoken in the west
and south, across the Talish range, and, in a wider sense, to Gilaki and
Mazandarani spoken in the southern shores of the Caspian sea. This
group of dialects includes, besides the aforesaid idioms, Dimili (Zaza)
and Gorani.
This slender volume is based on an oral account, recorded in 1986,
in the village Shuvi, not far away from Baku. The informant, Novruz
Mamedov (p. 4), appears to be the Talishi pundit who has published
extensively on his mother tongue and wrote his dissertation on the
dialect of Shuvi (Baku, 1971). The text is perhaps the only sizeable
documentation of Northern Talishi that has been published since Bo-
ris Miller's
Tal4yskie teksty
(Moscow, 1930). The story, Palangi ahvolot,
translated as 'Encounter with a leopard', has received full grammatical
treatment supplemented by an etymological glossary. Given the size of
the text (234 lexical entries), however, the elaborate statistical ma-
nipulation of its phonology hardly characterises the language as a
whole. Besides, the issues of vowel length and stress are left untouched,
and the transcription generally lacks stress marks. But in handling the
morphosyntax of Northern Talishi, Schulze presents a much broader
image by adding his own field notes as well as data from other sources,
particularly from Miller.
The features of Northern Talishi in morphosyntax are interpreted
in the tradition of functional typology, which includes references to
both the formal and the functional diachrony of the language.
Schulze's portrayal of Northern Talishi is both descriptive and ex-
planatory: it concentrates on features of actance typology (pp. 29-66)
explaining the architecture of its "operating system", and the emer-
gence of split structures from both a typological and a cognitive per-
spective. Additionally, a description of the Northern Talishi phonology
and grammar is given.
Worth mentioning are certain differences between Northern Tal-
ishi and the southern dialects of this language. The nominal system in
Talishi, as in most NW Iranian dialects, is based on the two main
cases, direct and oblique. The case endings, as introduced by Schulze,
are: singular direct -0, oblique -i, ablative-locative -o (with restricted
distribution), plural -on (pp. 1 7f.). Cf. Asalemi, a central Talishi dialect,
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REVIEWS 167
in which the typical case endings are: sing. dir. -o, obl. -i, pl. dir. -e,
obl. -un (Ehsan Yarshater, "The Taleshi of Asalem", Studia Iranica
25/1, 1996: 83-113).
The verbal system of Talishi diverges from most of the other West
Iranian dialects by employing the present stem for the imperfect and
the past stem for the present, e.g. Asalemi pres./past stem vrj-/vrit-
'run', a-vrij-im 'I was running' (a- is the durative marker), b-a-vrit-im 'I
run, I am running' (ibid). In Northern Talishi this system persists only
in a limited number of verbs, e. g. pres./past stem kd-/kard- 'do, make',
a-kd-i-m 'I was doing' (i- is the past-stem marker), ba-kard-e-m 'I will
do', kard-e-da-m 'I do (I am doing (?))'. With most verbal stems, how-
ever, this binary system is harmonised in Northern Talishi in favour of
the historical present-tense stem, which is also used as a past-tense
stem by affixing the marker -i-, e. g. vasVk-/vaskk-i- 'lie', toz-/toz-i- 'drive',
gon-Igan-i- 'fall', c(an-!c'an-i- 'gather'. Schulze suggests that this process in
Northern Talishi has resulted from contacts with Azari Turkish. Nev-
ertheless, it is more likely that Northern Talishi has followed Persian,
in which a "regular" verb has a past stem deduced by adding -id- (a
secondary denominative marker) to the present stem.
Another construction considered by the author as if borrowed from
a Turkic vernacular type is the locative morpheme da (p. 47). It is,
however, a typical locative-ablative postposition found also in other
NW Iranian languages (e.g. Gazi sa:r de i-zgi 'he bought from the
town'). Subsequently, this same "locative" -da- is supposed by Schulze
to emerge also in the present (continuous?) tense, as in s-e'-da-m 'I am
carrying, I carry', again following a Turkic verb construction (al-mak-
ta-yzn 'I am carrying') (pp. 46ff.). Yet, we have comparable continu-
ous-tense morpheme in other West Iranian idioms: the verb 'to have,
to hold', e.g. colloquial Persian daram miravam, Khorzuqi daru wa-sanjue
'he is weighing', and the locative copula 'to be in, to exist', e. g. Ma-
zandarani ddre varembi 'we are carrying'.
This line of reasoning is extended to the structure of the imperfect:
om-e-da b-i-m 'I was coming' (cf. Turk. gel-mek-te i-di-m), and then taken
as an argument against the well-founded assumption of relating it to
the old present-stem formative *-nt
<
present participle *-nt- (pp.
47ff.). Moreover, this latter hypothesis is attributed to Ludwig Paul in
his 1998 article on Dimili, but ultimately it goes back to W. B. Hen-
ning (in his groundbreaking article "The Ancient Language of Azer-
baijan," Transactions of the Philological
Society,
London, 1954), and, as for
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168 REVIEWS
Dimili, it was first proposed by Garnik Asatrian (in Encyclopaedia Iranica
s.v. Dim(i)li).
Concerning diachrony, the author hardly offers any reasonable
analysis of the language. Statements such as "Verbs that have their in-
finitive marked by -ie < Old Iranian *-itan (sic!) normally have retained
the opposition present/past stem, etc." (p. 45) are not intelligible at all.
The etymological glossary (pp. 78-87) too calls for improvements.
The following Arabic-Persian words are assumed to be Turkic or Ira-
nian: odam 'man' (< adam), tdmrno 'look' (< tamd!ad, badan 'body', gasam
'oath' (< qasam), naf(a)s 'breath', tamiz 'clean' (< tam
z),
mizon 'aim (i. e.
'target')' (< miziin), miilayim 'lenient' (< mul&'im), and albahal 'in this
moment' (<? al-hal). Iranian words designated "Azeri" (that is Turkic):
xorak 'food' (Pers. xurdk), ang 'jaw' (Ir. ang 'crooked'), kara(n) 'time' (cf.
MPers. karan 'end, limit'), al 'crimson' (Ir./regional lexeme), etc.
Turkic words presented as Iranian: balang 'arm', diiz 'right', etc. There
are also a considerable number of incorrect etymologies. Cf. abi 'there'
(cannot be from OPers. abi 'towards'), bar 'bush' (Turk. source is un-
likely), by 'smart' (rather, a regional form), dala 'inside' (cf. Pers. dil
'heart'), ebarde 'swallow' (cf. M.Pers. ipartan 'id.' < OIr.
*awa-pdr-),
g6c
'teeth' (onomatopoeic?), gardo 'round' (< *wrt-), kbaskor 'wish-making'
(<? Pers. havas-kdr), ila 'one' (< *ev-1a),
jo
'separate' (< *yuta-), kalla
'head' (cf. Av. *ka-mara3a-), nave 'walk' (<? *naw-), voe 'fall' (<
*awapat-,
cf. Pers.
j/luftdd-),
zoa 'guy, boy' (cf. Asalemi zora 'son' and Pers. za-da
'offspring',
but definitely not comparable to MPers. zTavdn (sic!) 'youth'.
Moreover, the (fossilised?) verbal prefix e- 'down, away' is unlikely to
be from OIr. *awa-, as proposed by the author; it comes probably
from OIr. *apa- (as in aganie 'fall down' < *apa-kan-, cf. Classical Pers.
ajigan-),
etc.
Habib Borjian
Yerevan State Universiy
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