LEXICAL COMPARISON OF PASHTO AND SOGDIAN LANGUAGES AND HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS OF THEIR PHONOLOGIES FROM THE PROTO-IRANIAN LANGUAGE

Abstract

According to Morgenstern (1982), Pashto is an Iranian language, classified as historically belonging to the northeastern branch of the Iranian family and spoken today in southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern parts of Pakistan. This linguistic study is comparative and historical in nature. It carries out a lexical comparison of Pashto and the Sogdian language and investigates their phonological development by a comparison with each other and also the Proto Iranian language, which is a hypothetical parent, common to all the Iranian languages (Cheung, 2006). The importance of current study is, to uncover phonological development in Pashto and Sogdian since Proto-Iranian era, as well as this study traces history of Pashto and possible homeland of Proto-Pashto. Furthermore, similarities and differences between Sogdian are illustrated. Methodology of this study is explorative and qualitative. The Data collection is secondary, which has been obtained from different sources such as literature, dictionaries and other documents. Drawing on secondary data available in Sogdian and Pashto languages and the reconstructed roots of Proto-Iranian, it seeks to uncover the historical changes in the phonology of Pashto and Sogdian among them, it discusses changes peculiar to each, changes common to both and the retentions of Proto-Iranian reflexes peculiar to Pashto and Sogdian and change common to each. Among these, it is found that the treatments of the proto-Iranian stops and their clusters and proto-Iranian sonorants are of paramount importance as isoglosses. It is concluded that the parent of Pashto language was historically in close contact with the Sogdian language and can be located in parts of Central Asia from where it migrated to the present homeland and a testimony to this is the development of retroflex sounds in Pashto due to contact with the Indo Aryan.