Areal Features in the Languages of South Iran: Focus on Balochi and Baskhardi

International audienceBashkardi, a group of varieties spoken inland of the Strait of Hormuz, is said to be a language of the Persian sub-branch of Western Iranian. However, the differences among the Bashkardi varieties, and the features they share with Balochi raise the questions whether Bashkardi is one language, and whether it belongs in the Persian sub-group. South Bashkardi shares some archaisms with Balochi for which North Bashkardi agrees with Persian. These include the retention of postsonantal voiceless stops (e.g. kert ‘did’, Bal. kurt) and of the inherited pronominal clitics for the plural (e.g. PC.1PL =an, Bal. =in). Conversely, North Bashkardi has lenited stops (kerd, Persian kard) and plural pronominal clitics derived from the singular (PC.1PL =mōn etc.). Perhaps this means that (some of?) South Bashkardi does not descend from the Persian sub-branch, but from a Balochi variety, and that “Bashkardi” is in fact a small linguistic area. One innovation potentially developed in this linguistic area is the progressive, which is based on the infinitive (in SBsh. also the past stem), prefixed with what might be a directional preposition (SBsh. be-kert(en)=īn ‘I am doing’). This is parallel to patterns seen in North-West Iran, but contrasts with both the Balochi inflected infinitive (kanag-ā un) and the Persian auxiliary construction (dāram mi-PRS-INFL)