Doctoral Dissertation Research: Yazgulyami Syllable Structure [yah]

雅兹古利亚米语是一种严重濒危的帕米里语(伊朗东南部)，主要在塔吉克斯坦东部山区的雅兹古里亚姆河沿岸使用。最近的历史见证了塔吉克文化的侵蚀和几种邻近的帕米里语的消亡。这个项目有两个主要目标，一个是描述性的，一个是理论的。首先，这项工作将创建一个雅兹古里亚米演讲的活语料库，包括带注释的音频和视频记录以及一本多语言词典。此外，本研究还将考察辅音簇的音节划分，并对其进行形式化建模。在雅兹古拉米，一个单词最多可以有三个辅音开头。以前对这种语言的研究表明，这些簇可能是多音节的，形成完全由辅音组成的音节，比如pt和zv。如果是这样的话，雅兹古拉米是为数不多的允许无元音音节的语言之一。像这样的语言提出了音节是由什么组成的问题，这是一个重要的经验性问题。为了实现这两个目标，将从塔吉克斯坦东部的一个雅兹古利亚米村收集语音数据。将录制各种故事、对话和歌曲，包括诗歌和语言游戏，这将补充单词开头音节的声学分析。诗歌和语言游戏(如小猪拉丁语)经常提到音节，这让研究者有机会接触到母语人士对音节边界的概念。这项研究的实证结果将根据当代语音和音系学理论进行形式化，解决这些音节结构的潜在和表面实现。该项目将提供所需的文件，在世界上一个研究不足的地区迅速变化的语言。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，同时对很少被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.