Affiliation:
1. Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Abstract
Abstract
This paper examines the history of aspiration in Eastern Balochi and aims to posit the course of its development
and the extent to which it can be said to be contrastive. It uses primary data obtained by the author directly from various
locales and compares sets of these data with the secondary data available on Balochi from 19th and early 20th century material. I
maintain that, historically, voiceless aspiration arose word-initially in Eastern Balochi, in the sounds /p t č k/, and spread
from there to other positions. In the discussion of aspiration, literature on Balochi has seen the question of influence from the
neighbouring Indo-Aryan languages as an important problem. In this paper it is argued that equally relevant to the issue are two
other important historical phenomena: post-vocalic lenition of stops and affricates, and gemination, a widely found but less well
explored feature of Balochi. Also observed in Eastern Balochi, but less frequently remarked upon, is the breathiness found in
voiced stops and affricate, a feature hitherto understood to be restricted to a small lexicon borrowed from Indo-Aryan. Focusing
on a large number of Eastern Balochi varieties rather than seeing it as a unified whole, I attempt to show that contrastive status
of aspiration appears to be gradually developing in these varieties. Many processes are leading in this direction, such as
degemination and fortition of fricatives; among these one important diagnostic for the ultimate status of aspiration, I propose,
is the transposition of glottal fricative.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
Cited by
2 articles.
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