The Hindu Kush–Karakorum and linguistic areality

Abstract

Abstract The high-altitude Hindu Kush–Karakoram region is home to more than 50 language communities, belonging to six phylogenies. The significance of this region as a linguistic area has been discussed in the past, but the tendency has been to focus on individual features and phenomena, and more seldom have there been attempts at applying a higher degree of feature aggregation with tight sampling. In the present study, comparable first-hand data from as many as 59 Hindu Kush–Karakoram language varieties, was collected and analyzed. The data allowed for setting up a basic word list as well as for classifying each variety according to 80 binary structural features (phonology, lexico-semantics, grammatical categories, clause structure and word order properties). While a comparison of the basic lexicon across the varieties lines up very closely with the established phylogenetic classification, structural similarity clustering gives results clearly related to geographical proximity within the region and often cuts across phylogenetic boundaries. The strongest evidence of areality tied to the region itself (vis-à-vis South Asia in general on the one hand and Central/West Asia on the other) relates to phonology and lexical structure, whereas morphosyntactic properties mostly place the region’s languages within a larger areal or macro-areal distribution. The overall structural analysis also lends itself to recognizing six distinct micro-areas within the region, lining up with geo-cultural regions identified in previous ethno-historical studies. The present study interprets the domain-specific distributions as layers of areality that are each linked to a distinct historical period, and that taken together paint a picture of a region developing from high phylogenetic diversity, through massive Indo-Aryan penetration and language shifts, to today’s dramatically shrinking diversity and structural stream-lining propelled by the dominance of a few lingua francas.