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Khalaj Language

Khalaj is a language spoken primarily in Iran and Afghanistan. It belongs to the Turkic family of languages. There were approximately 42,000 speakers of this language as of 2000. ISO 639-3 uses the name [http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=klj Turkic Khalaj] to distinguish it from the Indo-Iranian language called "Khalaj".

Classification

Khalaj has traditionally been classified with Turkoman or Azerbaijani dialects, primarily because of its proximity to those languages. However, it´s not a dialect of Azerbaijani, as previ- ously supposed. Further, features such as preservation of three vowel lengths, preservation of word-initial Proto-Turkic *h, and lack of the sound change *d > y has led to a non-Oghuz classification of Khalaj. An example of these archaisms is present in the word ''hadaq'', which has preserved the initial *h and medial *d. The equivalent form in nearby Oghuz dialects is ''ayaq''. Therefore it is an independent language, became distinct very early from other extant Turkic languages. Because of the preservation of these archaic features, some scholars have speculated that the Khalaj are the descendants of the Arghu Turks.

Geographical distribution

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

Dialects

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

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Vowels in Khalaj occur in three lengths: long (e.g. 'blood'), half-long (e.g. 'head'), and short (e.g. 'horse'). Additionally, some vowels are realized as falling diphthongs, as in ('arm, sleeve').

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:

Verbs

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

:Stem + Voice + Negation + Tense/Aspect + Agreement

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:

*1 -
*2 -
*3 -
*4 -
*5 -
*6 -
*7 -
*8 -
*9 -
*10 -
*20 -
*30 -
*40 -
*50 -
*60 -
*70 -
*80 - (Turkic), (Persian)
*90 - (Turkic), (Persian)
*100 -
*1000 - ,

Examples

;''Excerpt from Dorfer & Tezcan (1994) p. 158-9''