Zolfaghari Sima. The Bakhtiaris: an anthropological-linguistic lexical study of Haft Lang nomads of southwestern Iran

Leiden University, 2017. — 408 p.This research is organized in six chapters and ten appendices. Chapter one contains some introductory remarks on the reasons behind the choice of Bakhtiari for this research and the background studies, as well as some explanations over the methods that were employed to carry out this study. Some ideas for further research are also suggested in the last section of this chapter (See 1.5 below). In chapter two the socio-historical background of the Bakhtiaris is critically reviewed by providing first hand observational and analytic facts that at times contradict the existing and mainstream notions on the subject. As an example, in section 2.2.2, a new etymology for lænɡ is proposed. This word is a crucial term in Bakhtiari but its meaning is ambiguous. In the last two hundred years, a number of hypotheses on its meaning have been repeated without substantial revision. Here, all the previous notions are reviewed critically and the proposed etymology incor-porates the ideas and suggestions of some prominent contemporary linguists specialized in Iranian studies. At the end of chapter two, parts of my M.A thesis are included. Although it was carried out around two decades ago, it is considered to this day as a pioneer socio-linguistic study on a modern Iranian language, subsequently, several articles, M.A. theses and PhD theses have been written at the Iranian universities based on this model. Chapter three presents a novel study for an Iranian language, viz. a semantic study of the vo-cabulary from an anthropological viewpoint. For this research I had no previous model to follow, so that it presented many challenges. The chapter contains two sections. In the first section the semantic fields of kinship terms (3.1.1) and body parts (3.1.3) are detailed studies based on exist-ing theories of language universals and word categories. The second part of the chapter three is a new study of the Bakhtiari fauna and flora. It investigates the ways in which Bakhtiari nomads classify their natural surroundings (Ethno-taxonomy). The study of ethnic taxonomies, or as it is usually referred to, Ethno-biology, is relatively new, and to this day it has not received due atten-tion among scholars working on the Iranian languages. Therefore, at the beginning of this chapter, this field of study is introduced very briefly and then several semantic fields of Bakhtiari are examined. The new findings are presented with tentative explanations that are rooted in the cul-tural history of the nomads. Chapters four to six constitute the linguistic part of the study. In chapter four a brief introduc-tion to the phonemic system of the present day Haftlang variety of Bakhtiari is provided. This chapter should be regarded as a guide to study the bulk of the words and sentences that are used throughout the book. For a more detailed study of the Bakhtiari phonology, the interested reader is encouraged to consult Anonby (2014). In chapter five a thorough discussion of noun morphology is presented.