Khalaj language


Khalaj, also known as Arghu, is a Turkic language which is spoken in Iran today. Although it contains many archaic Old Turkic elements, it became widely Persianized.

Classification

The Turkic languages are a language family of at least 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples.
While initially thought to be closely related to Azerbaijani, linguistic study, particularly that done by Gerhard Doerfer, led to the reclassification of Khalaj as a distinct non-Oghuz branch of Turkic language. Evidence for this includes the preservation of the vowel length contrasts of Proto-Turkic, word-initial *h, and the lack of the sound change *d → y characteristic of Oghuz languages.
The preservative character of Khalaj can be seen by comparing the same words across different Turkic varieties; for example, in Khalaj, the word for "foot" is hadaq, while the cognate word in nearby Oghuz languages is ayaq. Because of the preservation of these archaic features, some scholars have speculated that the Khalaj are the descendants of the Arghu Turks. Some Turkish scholars consider Khalaj to be one of the "last examples" of Old Turkic.
Ethnologue and ISO formerly listed a Northwestern Iranian language named "Khalaj" with the same population figure as the Turkic language. The Khalaj speak their Turkic language and Persian, and the supposed Iranian language of the Khalaj is spurious.

Geographical distribution

Khalaj is spoken mainly in Markazi Province in Iran. Doerfer cites the number of speakers as approximately 17,000 in 1968; Ethnologue reports that the population of speakers grew to 42,107 by 2000.

Dialects

The main dialects of Khalaj are Northern and Southern. Within these dialect groupings, individual villages and groupings of speakers have distinct speech patterns.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Doerfer claims that Khalaj retains three vowel lengths postulated for Proto-Turkic: long, half-long, and short. However, Alexis Manaster Ramer challenges both the interpretation that Khalaj features three vowel lengths and that Proto-Turkic had this three-way contrast. Some vowels of Proto-Turkic are realized as falling diphthongs, as in .

Grammar

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns in Khalaj may receive a plural marker or possessive marker. Cases in Khalaj include genitive, accusative, dative, locative, ablative, instrumental, and equative.
Forms of case suffixes change based on vowel harmony and the consonants they follow. Case endings also interact with possessive suffixes. A table of basic case endings is provided below:
CaseSuffix
Nominative-
Dative-A, -KA
Accusative-I, -NI
Locative-čA
Ablative-dA
Instrumental-lAn, -lA, -nA
Equative-vāra

Verbs

Verbs in Khalaj are inflected for voice, tense, aspect, and negation. Verbs consist of long strings of morphemes in the following array:

Syntax

Khalaj employs subject–object–verb word order. Adjectives precede nouns.

Vocabulary

The core of Khalaj vocabulary is Turkic, but many words have been borrowed from Persian. Words from neighboring Turkic dialects, namely Azerbaijani, have also made their way into Khalaj.

Numbers

Khalaj numbers are Turkic in form, but some speakers replace the forms for "80" and "90" with Persian terms:
Excerpt from Doerfer & Tezcan 1994:

English-language sources