Nuristani Historical Linguistics

Prasun has been regarded as the most divergent Nuristani language and there is evidence to suggest this is due to isolation from the other Nuristani languages and influence from Eastern Iranian languages rather than Indo-Aryan. The orthography in this post will be based on Buddruss & Degener (2017). For this post, we will assume that Prasun originally had penultimate stress, much like in earlier Nuristani before apocope. Pretonic syncope One salient feature of Prasun is the syncope of pretonic (pre-stress) vowels. This regularly happens in diachronically trisyllabic words, as the examples show below: PIIr. *ra u̯čas- "light" + *-ka- > Pr. ürǰ ˈ ug PIIr. *(H)ra u̯ana- "salt" (cf. OIA  lavaṇa -)  + *-ka- > Pr. wuẓn ˈ ug However, pretonic syncope does not apply if the pretonic vowel is * ā (< *ā/*aH): PIIr. *maHas- "moon" + *-iH- + *-kaH- > Pr. mas ˈ ig PIIr. *HaH + *b ʰ and ʰ- "to bind" > * āband-  > * āmand-  > Pr. amond- ...

One phoneme mentioned in Halfmann (2025) is the presence of * ã in Proto-Nuristani reconstruction. The relevant mention of this claim is found in page 94: With this in mind, the word for ‘wool’ can be reconstructed as either PNur. *warnaka-/*warrãka- or *wərnaka-/*wərrãka-, but certainly not as *ūrnaka- as would be required for a parallel with the Indo-Aryan development. Here, we will try to justify the existence of a distinct Proto-Nuristani vowel phoneme * ã by looking at the cognate sets below, and determine if any of the Proto-Nuristani reconstructions above agree with the application of the Comparative Method: Sources For practical reasons, only attested forms alongside a Proto-Indo-Iranian reconstruction will be cited below. Richard Strand's website (https://nuristan.info/lngFrameL.html) will be used alongside sources for Ashkun (Morgenstierne 1929, 1934), Katë (Halfmann 2024), Prasun (Buddruss & Degener 2017), Nuristani Kalasha (Degener 1998, Tāza 2017), and Tregami...

In this post, we explore the historical development of consonant clusters in the Nuristani languages. The last two posts covered single consonant and vowel correspondences. However, similar to vowel developments, consonant clusters have not received much attention before Halfmann (2025)'s recent book on the position of the Nuristani languages. This post will attempt to find regular reflexes of Proto-Indo-Iranian consonant clusters in the Nuristani languages. Some of these were already discussed by Halfmann (2025). Due to lack of information, not all Proto-Indo-Iranian consonant clusters are represented here, though that may change with further research. Sound correspondences We will start with normative (excluding conditioned reflexes) consonant cluster correspondences for the Nuristani languages, based on clearly inherited forms. For practical reasons, only attested forms alongside a Proto-Indo-Iranian reconstruction will be cited below. Richard Strand's website (https:...

Continuing the previous post on Nuristani comparative reconstruction, focusing on single consonant correspondences, we will now turn on to the vocalic correspondences of the Nuristani languages, which are very complicated to understand. We will start with single normative (excluding conditioned reflexes) vowel correspondences for the Nuristani languages, based on clearly inherited forms.  For practical reasons, only attested forms alongside a Proto-Indo-Iranian reconstruction will be cited below. Richard Strand's website (https://nuristan.info/lngFrameL.html) will be used alongside sources for Ashkun (Morgenstierne 1929, 1934), Katë (Halfmann 2024), Prasun (Buddruss & Degener 2017), Nuristani Kalasha (Degener 1998, Tāza 2017), and Tregami (Morgenstierne 1952, Degener 2022). Orthography may be inconsistent, so different letters may represent the same phoneme (eg. v/w and â/ā in NKal.) When orthography is uncertain, the symbols <> are used to indicate the wor...

This post is an attempt at reconstructing the latest common ancestor of the Katë dialects, based on data and orthography provided by Halfmann (2024)'s grammar of the language, using the comparative method. It will also take into account the extensive Katë loanword layer in Prasun, which shows some archaic features that are no longer found in any Katë dialect. Introduction Katë is the largest Nuristani language with around 80 to 90 thousand speakers spread across Nuristan in Afghanistan and some parts of Chitral District in Pakistan. The language is divided into three distinct but mutually intelligible dialects: Western (W), Northeastern (NE), and Southeastern (SE). Alternative names for the language include Kati (from Persian-influenced Katë-ī), Kamkata-vari/Kamkata-viri (from Strand's fusion of the two ethnonyms Kom and Katë), Shekhani (used in Chitral, literally "elder"). It is believed that speakers of the language originate from Ktivi (Kantiwa) before the expansio...

The Nuristani languages are a group of Indo-Iranian languages spoken in the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and small parts of Pakistan. Compared to Indo-Aryan and Iranian, Nuristani is first attested only in the 19th century, and has absorbed a large amount of Indo-Aryan loanwords since the Middle Indo-Aryan period. The Nuristani languages are Ashkun, Katë, Prasun, Nuristani Kalasha, and Tregami. The position of the Dameli language is unknown within Nuristani or Indo-Aryan; it has a large number of Nuristani-derived vocabulary. While there is a serious and urgent need for further research, especially with the groundbreaking works of Georg Morgenstierne and Jakob Halfmann, it is best to start with the principles of the Comparative Method, a powerful tool for analyzing language relationships. The comparative method  The comparative method analyzes the sound correspondences of two (or more) related languages or dialects, and uses that to establish hypothetical earlier forms to es...