Lexical Similarities and differences between Kerman Turkic and Azeri Turkic (Tabriz Variety)

The main geographic locations of Turkic languages speakers are Turkey, the Caucasus, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tatarstan. There are also substantial Turkic-speaking communities in northwestern China (Kornfilt, 1991). Johanson (1998) distinguishes following 6 branches for Turkic languages, attempting to combine the area distribution of this language family with typological and genetic features:1-Southwestern branch, Oghuz Turkic 2-Northwestern branch Kipchak Turkic 3-Southeastern branch Uyghur Turkic4-Northeastern branch Siberian Turkic 5- Chuvash representing, Oghur or Bulghar Turkic 6-Khalaj representing, Arghu Turkic. Each branch includes subbranches that due to article limitation, they are not mentioned here. Azeri Turkic, is the language of a large part of northwestern of Iran, including East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardabil and Zanjan provinces and also some parts of central areas of Iran and Gilan province. Azeri Turkic has different varieties which are spoken in cities like Tabriz, Ardabil, Urmia, Khalkhal, Sarab, Pars Abad and other cities in Iran. The Turkic language which is spoken in Iran and all over Azerbaijan, south of Caucasus, and Anatolia is the Oghuz Turkic. There are two Turkic-speaking tribes in Kerman province. Afshar tribe whose language is Oghuz Turkic (Field,1964, p.49; Hamedani,1959, p.35) and Bochaghchi tribe.The present study aims at surveying the lexical similarities and differences between the Turkic spoken in some Turkic-speaking villages in Orzuiye county in Kerman province and Tabriz variety of Azeri Turkic. The corpus of study consists of available data in Iran linguistic atlas (ILA) which have been gathered based on the questionnaire prepared for this atlas. The data belongs to 10 villages of Orzuiye county in Kerman province including, Damane Tiroft, Sorkhan, Sargaz Dolat Abad, Shahmaran, Ali Abad, Fath Abad, Mahmood Abad, Motor Bistohaft-e Khordad, Motor Zargarha and Motor Ghorkhmazei. The main questions of the present study are as follow:1-How much lexical similarities and differences are there between the studied words in Turkic spoken in Kerman Province and their equivalents in Tabriz variety of Azeri Turkic statistically?2-What is language contact effect on the language of the Turkic-speaking villages of Orzuiye county in Kerman province? Has local Persian which is spoken in the neighboring villages of the studied ones effected on their Turkic language?