Profiling Indo-Aryan in the Hindukush-Karakoram: A preliminary study of micro-typological patterns

Abstract

Abstract The study is a typological profile of 31 Indo-Aryan (IA) languages in the Hindukush-Karakoram-Western Himalayan region (covering NE Afghanistan, N Pakistan, and parts of Kashmir). Native speakers were recruited to provide comparative data. This data, supplemented by reputable descriptions or field notes, was evaluated against a number of WALS- or WALS-like features, enabling a fine-tuned characterization of each language, taking different linguistic domains into account (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon). The emerging patterns were compared with global distributions as well as with characteristic IA features and well-known areal patterns. Some features, mainly syntactic, turned out to be shared with IA in general, whereas others do have scattered reflexes in IA outside of the region but are especially prevalent in the region: large consonant inventories, tripartite pronominal case alignment, a high frequency of left-branching constructions, and multi-degree deictic systems. Yet other features display a high degree of diversity, often bundling subareally. Finally, there was a significant clustering of features that are not characterizing IA in general: tripartite affricate differentiation, retroflexion across several subsets, aspiration contrasts involving voiceless consonants only, tonal contrasts and 20-based numerals. This clustering forms a “hard core” at the centre of the region, gradually fading out toward its peripheries.