A Historical Analysis of Past Stems in Balochi (Western Dialects)

The past stem with its varied forms in different dialects of Balochi, like other Iranian languages which are inflected languages, has special value in morphology, grammar, and standardization etc. In this article the authors describe the morphological structures of past stems in Balochi using a diachronic-synchronic method. The basic sources for gathering data are the collection of 201 simple verbs of Bampuri dialect which is a western dialect of Baluchi. The verbs are arranged according to the morphemes used for representing past stems. The findings show that past stem in the Bampuri dialect of Balochi, with its varied uses, is represented in ten distinguished forms. Among them, five are regular and five others irregular. In addition, the structural differences are due to the four following factors: 1- historical remnants from Iranian languages, 2- morphological contexts, 3-dialectical differences, 4- analogy with other verbs. 
 
1. Introduction
Balochi is one of the Northwestern Iranian languages and a descendant of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European language family. It also has some features of the Eastern Iranian languages. Scholars generally consider two major dialects for Balochi, namely Eastern and Western dialects. Today, Western Balochi covers most of the Balochi language and by the name of Balochi, mostly Sarhadi and Makkorani dialects are intended. It is noteworthy that the Balochi mentioned in this article, is more related to Western Balochi dialect in Iran’s geographical area. Speakers of this language are now mainly living in parts of southwest of Pakistan, southeast of Iran in Sistan and Balochistan province and are scattered in several other provinces in Iran, in the southern part of Afghanistan and some countries around Persian Gulf. Smaller groups of Balochi speakers live as dispersed tribes or families in Marv in Turkmenistan and in some African and European countries. This article declines in a descriptive manner and diachronic-synchronic view on the morphological structures of past stems in Balochi language. Since the Eastern dialect shows significant differences in this respect from the western dialects, it has been refrained from addressing the Eastern dialects to make the discussion more specific.
 
2. Theoretical Framework
The present stem in Balochi is the same as the verb root. In other words, the root without any derivation is the present stem. This can be illustrated as follows:
root + zero derivation > present stem
For the past stem in Balochi, the suffix for past stem is added to the root of the verb. In this case, it is possible for the root to remain unchanged (for regular verbs) or some phonemic changes may occur (for irregular verbs).   
The process for making past stem of regular and irregular verbs in Balochi is as follows:
1. regular verbs: root + (-ât, -et, -t) > past stem
2. irregular verbs: different morphological changes with some transformation in the root > past stem
 
3. Methodology
There are ten different forms for past stem construction in Balochi and here, for each one, up to five examples are given according to the frequency of usage. After that, phonetic changes are studied both synchronically and diachronically. The number of verbs studied in this paper is a total of 210. These verbs are classified according to the endings they have for forming past stem. The past and present stems for all these verbs are checked with Balochi- Persian Dictionary.
 
4. Result & Discussion
The past stem of the verb in Balochi is formed based on the verbs root. The root in ancient Iranian languages is changed in ablaut forms, bearing three different gradation of the vowel (zero, short and long) in the root. This system has remained in Balochi. In addition, the past stem is formed with the phoneme /t/ which is also presented as /et/ and / ât/. This is the phoneme /t/ in Middle Persian and New Persian which has four forms such as /t/, /d/, /îd/, /âd/. The findings of the present study show that there are ten forms for forming past stem in Balochi. Five of these forms are regular while five forms are irregular. The reason for the differences between these forms are: 1. The past stem is the same as the historical past stems, 2. The phonological context of the past stem may cause the differences, 3. The differences between the dialects of Balochi, 4. The past stem is formed by analogy with other stems.
 
5. Conclusions and Suggestions
The results of the present study show that since the past stem, whether regular or irregular, is used for forming infinitives, past participles, nouns and compounds in Balochi, it is an important part of this language. The main mark for past stem in Balochi is the morpheme /t/ which is represented by three different allomorphs namely /t/, /et/ and /ât/ and seems to be similar to the Middle Persian and New Persian /t/, /d/, /îd/, /âd/. Following the methodology outline in this paper, there are ten different forms for past stem construction in Balochi (five regular forms while five irregular forms). The most regular and frequent is the second form which is the regular past stem form in Balochi. Therefore, we can predict that if any of the irregular verbs have a tendency to become regular, or new verbs are coined in Balochi, they will adapt themselves to the second type of stem formation according to the principle of analogy. There are two main reasons for the differences between past stem formations in Balochi, one are the historical changes of the sounds and second is the analogy with other verbs. The outcome of such factors is the difference in the dialects of Balochi which then makes the standardization of this language more difficult.
 
Select Bibliography
Abolghasemi. M. 2014. Historical Grammar of Persian. Tehran: Samt. [in Persian]
Afrashi. A. 2014. The Structure of the Persian Language. Tehran: Samt. [in Persian]
Arlotto. A. 1994. Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Tehran: Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. [in Persian]
Dabir Moghaddam. M. 2013. Typology of Iranian Languages. Tehran: Samt. [in Persian]
Elfenbein. J. 1989. Balôčî, in Rüdiger Schmit (eds.), Compendium Linguarium Iranicarum, Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag. 350-362.
Jahandideh. A. 2017. Balochi-Persian Dictionary, Tehran: Mo’in. [in Persian]
Korn. A. 2005. Towards a Historical Grammar of Balochi. Wiesbaden
Malherbe. M. 2007. Languages of People in the World. Trans. Efat Molanazar. Tehran: Entesharat-e elmi-farhangi. [in Persian]
Shahbakhsh, A. 2004. The Balochi Verb: An Etymological Study, University of London.
Rezai BaghBidi. H. 2009. History of Iranian Languages. Tehran. Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia. [in Persian]
Tabatabai, A. 1997. Simple Verbs and Word Formation in Persian. Tehran: Markaz-e Nashr-e Daneshgahi. [in Persian]