Descriptive grammar of the Sogdian language based on the synchronic analysis

粟特语属于印欧语系的伊朗分支。粟特人是丝绸之路沿线的国际商人，他们的语言在他们活跃到10世纪的时期一直是中亚的通用语。在11世纪，他们被入侵，随后被伊斯兰势力统治，他们的语言不再被使用。伊朗语族包括古代语言如阿维斯陀语和早在基督教时代之前就说的古波斯语，以及许多现代语言，如波斯语、库尔德语、普什图语、雅格诺比语（所谓的现代粟特语）等。除了古代和现代伊朗语言外，该语系还包括在伊朗和中亚伊斯兰化之前使用和书写的中伊朗语言。粟特语属于中伊朗的东部方言群。由于古伊朗和中伊朗时期的许多文本材料被保存下来，也由于现代口语的丰富，对粟特语的语言学研究主要是文字学和历时性的；人们对伊朗语在大约2500年的时间里是如何变化的很感兴趣，并将这些发现与印欧语系其他分支的发现进行了比较。因此，迄今为止出版的粟特语语法是从历时变化的观点出发的。在基金资助的研究期间，我主要关注粟特语的共时性方面，并试图在文本共时分析的基础上呈现描述性语法。作为我过去三年研究的结果或成果，我已经起草了一个新的和全面的粟特语语法，包括大约300页，其中包括一篇关于粟特人历史的短文，以及从20世纪初发现粟特文本材料开始的语言研究历史。希望那些对粟特语感兴趣的人可以自学，我的语法由23节课组成，配有练习和词汇表。语法中引用的每个句子和单词都提供了语音表示，这对非专业人士很有帮助，因为书写粟特语所用的文字是所谓的辅音文字，没有任何字母来表示元音。我还发表了几篇单独的文章和一本有关相关主题的书。其中最有趣的是最近在中国西安发现的公元580年的铭文。这个铭文很重要，因为迄今为止在中国大陆还没有发现粟特文字，那里肯定有许多粟特人作为永久居民和旅行商人。少

Sogdian belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. The Sogdian people were international traders along the Silk Road and their language served as a lingua franca of Central Asia during the period when they were active until the 10th century. In the 11th century they were invaded and subsequently ruled by the Islamic force and their language was no longer spoken.The Iranian language group comprises such ancient languages as Avestan and Old Persian spoken long before the Christian era as well as many modern languages such as Persian, Kurdish, Pashto, Yaghnobi (so-called Modern Sogdian), etc. Apart from the ancient and modern Iranian languages, the group also comprises Middle Iranian languages which were spoken and written before the Islamization of Iran and Central Asia. Sogdian belongs to the eastern dialect group of Middle Iranian. Due to the fact that many texts materials are preserved both from Ancient and Middle Iranian periods and also due to richness of mo … More dern spoken languages, the linguistic study of the Sogdian language has mainly been philological and diachronic ; one has been interested in the way how Iranian had changed through the period of ca.2500 years and the discoveries have been compared with those of the other branches of the Indo-European language family. Thus the Sogdian grammars hitherto published were written from the view point of diachronic change. During the period of research supported by the grant I mainly focused on the synchronic aspects of the Sogdian language and tried to present the descriptive grammar based on the synchronic analysis of texts.As a result or fruit of my study of the last three years I have drawn up a new and comprehensive grammar of Sogdian comprising ca.300 pages which includes a short essay of the history of Sogdians and the history of the study of the language from the very beginning of the discovery of Sogdian text materials in the early 20th century. In the hope that those who are interested in Sogdian might teach themselves, my grammar is consisting of 23 lessons provided with exercises and a glossary. Each sentence and word cited in the grammar is provided with a phonetic representation, which will be helpful for non-specialists, because the scripts employed for writing Sogdian are so-called consonant scripts without any letter for representing vowels.I have also published several separate articles and a book concerning the related subjects. One of the most interesting was an inscription of 580 CE discovered recently in Xian, China. The inscription is important in that no Sogdian text had hitherto been discovered in mainland China, where there must have been numerous Sogdians as permanent residents and traveling merchants. Less