A Grammar of Dimili (Also Known as Zaza) (Linguistics, Turkey, Indo-Iranian).

Abstract

Dimili is an Iranian language, part of the Indo-Iranian subgroup of Indo-European. It is spoken in central eastern Turkey. Our knowledge of the structure of the language had been based exclusively on fieldwork done before 1910 partly due to official policy restrictions in the area where Dimili is spoken. The present research was done in West Germany where a number of Dimili speakers live as guestworkers and /or refugees. A sizable corpus resulting from two years of monolingual elicitation is the source of data for this dissertation. The analysis consists of three chapters presented in a format which is accessible to linguists of varied theoretical backgrounds and is cross-referenced to the only substantial grammar of Dimili previously published (Mann-Hadank, 1932). Chapter One systematically describes the phonology including syllable structure and stress. Chapter Two presents word structure and inflection. Chapter Three sketches phrase, clause and sentence syntax. Three appendices provide illustrative verb data, texts with English translations and a Dimili-English glossary of more than 1200 entries.