Degrees of Irregular Change : Phonological Reduction and Grammatical Convergence in West Iranian

Abstract

This paper employs a quantitative model of irregular sound change to investigate whether West Iranian languages have developed formally similar functional items via parallelism or via contact. I analyze etymologically related functional items in two Middle and eight New West Iranian languages, comparing observed forms to expected outcomes of these forms on the basis of purely regular sound change. A quantitative model is used to measure the distance between the observed and expected forms across West Iranian, particularly with respect to New Persian. I find that, while most New West Iranian languages undergo roughly the same amount of irregular reduction, Balochi, a language with conservative historical phonology, shows significantly more irregular phonological reduction than New Persian in its functional vocabulary. Given this result, it is plausible that the similarity in functional items seen across West Iranian is due to New Persian influence, though this contact may not be quantitatively detectable in all cases.