نشریه پژوهش های زبانی - ادبی قفقاز و کاسپین
پیاپی 1 (تابستان 1398)

The paper discusses the Yezidi hymn “Qawlē Ēzdīdī Ĉuk”, recited by a sheikh both during the procedure of revealing sacred objects and at the funeral ceremony. It is an attempt to analyze the parallel between a sacred object and a corpse as two phenomena, which do not belong to the intra-mundane world. The article contains the text of the hymn with the translation and commentaries.

One of the conspicuous characteristics of the toponomastical system of the South-Caspian-Aturpātakān region is the abundance of forms with the formant lāh, like Lāhīǰān, Lākān (probably, from*Lāh(a)kān), Lāhrūd, etc. V. Minorsky suggested, at least regarding Lāhīǰān, that this formant could be somehow connected with Pers. lāh “silk of lower quality”, which is unlikely due to semantical reasons. The author of this paper attempts to interpret lāh- as a later reflex of an old ethnonym, qualifying by that are reliable cases of forms with that lexeme as ethnotoponyms. The article also contains some methodological issues concerning the formation of the ethnotoponyms and ethnic situation in the South Caspian of this region before iranization.

Compiling dictionaries for Iranian languages has basically been concentrated on Persian. Since the 19th century onwards, almost all the bilingual dictionaries of Persian are also limited to some major European languages such as English, French, and Russian. However, in this almost uniform set, we can across a glossary in the 19th century, which is a Gilaki-English one, compiled by Alexander Chodźko (1804- 1891). In his book Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia as Found in the Adventures and Improvisations of Kurroglou (1842), Chodźko has provided the very first glossary of an Iranian language other than Persian, with the English equivalents. This book is a collection of songs of the inhabitants of northern Iran, and the Gilaki ones contain glossaries too. The current article aims to introduce this glossary on one hand, and compare it with some other glossaries published later on top show how the words have undergone semantic changes from the time of Chodźko up to that of ours.

The vitality of languages depends on their speakers. The emergence and growth of cultures and their cross-generational transmission are only possible through language. It is true indeed that a community’s cultural, historical, and literal heritage diminishes with the death of its language. Based on Ethnologue’s estimate 652 languages are today living in Southern Asia, including Iran. Of this number, 25 indigenous language clusters are spoken in Iran. Seven of these 25 languages and their subcategories are dying and about one third are endangered. Taleshi is one of these languages. The Taleshi-speaking community comprises about one percent of the Iranian population living in northwest and west of Gilan. Due to neighboring Gilaki and Turkish, along with the influence of Persian, Taleshi has undergone profound changes so that it is now classified as an endangered language. The aim of this paper is to introduce the UNESCO’s six level categorization criteria of language endangerment. It also provides a brief report on the current status of Taleshi in Iran and the contributing factors to its decline.

Kinship terms are words used to identify relationships between individuals in a family and to address these individuals in a speech community, such as, father, mother, brother and daughter. These names act independently in syntax and morphology in some languages. This independence is not frequently found in other areas of these languages. This article focuses on kinship terms in Caspian languages (i.e., Gilaki, Taleshi and Tati). Rashti dialect has been selected from Gilaki language, Parasari dialect has been sleeted from Taleshi language and Deravi dialect has been selected from Tati language. The data analysis of this research shows that in these dialects the nominative and non-nominative cases of kinship terms are different from the same cases of other words in these dialects. These terms have their exclusive forms for the nominative and non-nominative cases. In terms of morphology there are also specific rules for these terms; for example, in kinship terms of Gilaki language we can see five-part compound names; this phenomenon not only is rare in other Iranian languages, but also in other compound names in Gilaki.

Abhar is one of the cities of Zanjan province located Tehran and Tabriz, near a river by the same name. According to Yāqūt Ḥamavī in Mu'jam al-Buldān, the Iranians called the city, Auhar, they believed it was composed of two parts: āb (water), and har (mill). This paper is devoted to the etymology of toponym Abhar, which author will discuss in two parts; firstly the relationship between “water” (āb) and ab will be discussed and then the process of historical evolution and phonetic transformation of the second component of this toponym (i.e., har) will be described.