Doctoral Dissertation Research: Yazgulyami Syllable Structure [yah]

亚兹古利亚米语（英语：Yazgulyami）是一种严重濒危的帕米尔语（伊朗东南部），主要使用于塔吉克斯坦东部山区的亚兹古利亚米河沿岸。 最近的历史见证了塔吉克文化的入侵和几个邻近的帕米尔语言的死亡。 该项目有两个主要目标，一个是描述性的，一个是理论性的。 首先，这项工作将创建一个由注释音频和视频记录以及多语言词典组成的Yazgulyami语音的活语言语料库。 此外，本研究将探讨并正式模式化的音节辅音集群。 在Yazgulyami，最多三个辅音可以开始一个词。 先前的研究表明，这些音节簇可能是多音节的，它们创造的音节完全由辅音组成，比如pt和zv。 如果是这样的话，Yazgulyami是极少数允许无元音音节的语言之一。 像这样的语言提出了一个问题，即音节是由什么组成的，这是一个重要的经验问题。为了实现这两个目标，将从塔吉克斯坦东部的一个Yazgulyami村庄收集语音数据。 各种各样的故事，对话和歌曲将被记录，包括诗歌和语言游戏，这将补充单词初始音节的声学分析。 诗歌和语言游戏（如Pig Latin）经常涉及音节，这给研究者提供了一个机会，让他们了解母语者对音节边界的理解。 根据当代语音学和音系学理论，本研究的实证结果将被形式化，解决这些音节结构的底层和表层实现问题。本项目将为世界上一个未被充分研究的地区的快速变化的语言提供所需的文件。 此外，该项目将使研究生能够与濒危语言社区合作，描述他们的语言，同时对一种很少得到证实的声音模式进行理论分析。

Yazgulyami is a severely endangered Pamiri (Southeastern Iranian) language, spoken primarily along the Yazgulyam River in the mountains of eastern Tajikistan. Recent history has seen the encroachment of Tajik culture and the concomitant death of several neighboring Pamiri languages. This project has two primary aims, one descriptive and one theoretical. Firstly, this work will create a living language corpus of Yazgulyami speech composed of annotated audio and video recordings alongside a multilingual dictionary. Additionally, this research will examine and formally model the syllabification of consonant clusters. In Yazgulyami, up to three consonants may begin a word. Previous work on the language suggests that these clusters may be polysyllabic, creating syllables composed entirely on consonants, like pt and zv. If this is the case, Yazgulyami is one of the very few languages that allow vowel-less syllables. Languages like this raise the question of what makes up a syllable, an important empirical question. In pursuit of these two goals, speech data will be collected from a Yazgulyami village in eastern Tajikistan. A variety of stories, conversations, and songs will be recorded, including poetry and language games, which will supplement acoustic analysis of word-initial syllables. Poetry and language games (e.g. Pig Latin) often refer to syllables, giving the researcher an opportunity to access native speaker conceptions of syllable boundaries. Empirical findings from this study will be formalized according to contemporary phonetic and phonological theory, addressing the underlying as well as surface realization of these syllabic structures.This project will provide a needed documentation of a swiftly changing language in an understudied region of the world. Moreover, the project will enable a graduate student to collaborate with an endangered speech community on the description of their language while producing a theoretical analysis of a rarely attested sound pattern.