 Yeah, thank you. About Nuristani, the only problem is, I don't know very much about this group of languages yet, we are just in the process of initiating a research project about Nuristani languages at the University of Cologne, so I will talk about what we would like to know about the Nuristani languages, I will provide some background information about them and especially I would like to talk about the problems with affiliating the Nuristani languages within the Indo-Aryanian group of languages. So the structure of the talk will be the following. I will first speak about the geography where the languages are spoken and the background information about the speakers. Then I will talk about the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European and it will become apparent why this is necessary. I will say some words about how we discriminate between Indo-Aryan and Iranian within Indo-Iranian and sketch the situation in the Hindu-Kushu region now. Then I will turn to the Nuristani languages themselves and the features of the Nuristani languages and subsequently I will try to situate the Nuristani languages within Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Indo-Iranian and try to introduce how we are going to proceed at the University of Cologne in the years to come. This will be the last point. Geography. The Nuristani languages are spoken in just one province of Afghanistan and in just one valley in Pakistan near the border to Afghanistan. Here you see the map of Afghanistan and the Hindu-Kushu region. The circle, the insert region corresponds roughly to the province of Nuristan which was previously called Kaferistan because it was inhabited by tribes who had a special tribal religion until the end of the 19th century. This religion encouraged people living in what is now Nuristan to live in a state of permanent war against any other tribe, any tribe with a different religion to kill people to steal cattle to make slaves and so on. In the years 1895 and 1996 the region was conquered by the government of Kabul in a war and stopped the unpleasant activities. You see how the region is geographically formed. Nuristani languages are spoken by tribes living in river Vellis cut by rivers into the mountain. We have only five of them. The language names are Kati, Prasun, Weigeli and Ashkun and the languages are spoken by some 30,000 persons were spoken by some 30,000 persons found out by a German expedition in the year 1935 but later estimations confirm the numbers of speakers for the 60s and 70s for the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. We have some 20,000 speakers of Kati, some 2,000 speakers of Prasun, then some 5,000 speakers of Weigeli and 7,000 Ashkuns. The social linguistic situation is very different Kati is a kind of Limba Franca of region and for this reason some Kati is usually learned by Prasun and Weigeli less by Ashkun. Prasun is not learned by anyone leaving outside the Prasun valley and so Weigeli is also not learned by speakers of Kati and so on. The Nuristani languages are surrounded by Indo-Iranian languages and now I lost my map, sorry sorry, I cannot locate my map. This is a map made by an American linguist who used to live for some 20 years in the vicinity. The colored regions are the habitats of the Nuristani languages so the blue region here and here, this is Kati then in between is Prasun the green region is Weigeli and this here is Ashkun. I also, the stars representing Indo-Aryan languages spoken in the region and the half moons Iranian languages here Mungi and Vahi in the Badakhshan and here is Pashto which is spreading for some two generations in the region so we see the Nuristani languages are surrounded by Indo-Iranian languages and they are generally also believed to belong to Indo-Iranian too. The next point which has to be addressed is what are the Indo-Iranian languages? Indo-Iranian is actually a branch of Indo-European they are related to Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic and so on and Indo-Iranian languages consist of two sub-branches the Indo-Aryan branch which is represented basically by Sanskrit which is attested since the late 13th century and Iranian languages are Western and Old Persian the attestation starts a little bit later Why do we actually believe that Indo-Iranian languages are related to Celtic, Latin, Greek and so on? We have actually two criteria to establish this We have numerous matches with Greek, Latin, Celtic and so on and the lexicon and we also have inflection patterns which are very similar to those found in the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe If you use a handbook you would probably first find for the lexicon something like a virus in Sanskrit, a virus in Lithuanian I just took Lithuanian but I could easily have taken a different language a variety of languages spoken in Europe such as Old Irish and Freak and Latin and so on Then we have ghost, or god, sweet wine, wool, otter and so on but lexims with designating such concepts as men are usually not very significant for establishing genetic relationship between languages because they are easily borrowed Neal is the same or partly the same lexims and a language which is usually not considered to belong to Indo-European at all it's a Uralic language which is called Komi and spoken at the Uralic mountains is a member of the Uralic family You see we also have some matches between Sanskrit and Komi in lexims such as Marta's, Mord, Men, Human and so on More significant for establishing that actually, and in the European branch of languages are etiological matches and words with more abstract meanings such as pronouns, local and temporal alphabets and here we find plenty of evidence which is pretty unequivocal but then we also have inflectional similarities between the Iranian and the other Indo-European languages spoken all over the Old World For instance, such as given in 3a it's a part of the inflection of the verb to be in Sanskrit, Yankavestan, one of the most ancient Iranian languages and Old Latin and Gothic You see the inflection functions very similarly and we have clear matches in the suffixes used in the different languages but also in the personal indexes and verbs such as T in Sanskrit, T in Yankavestan and T in Latin, T in Gothic and also in the overall structure of the paradigm we can clearly see that for instance in the indicative mood in the singular we have the root consisting of a vowel and an S in Sanskrit and also in Yankavestan and Old Latin and in Gothic in the indicative mood we have by contrast the root morpheme consisting of just the consonant the vowel is not here in the subjunctive mood the vowel appears again and we have this in Sanskrit again in Sanskrit, Yankavestan but also in Old Latin and Gothic and so on This means that Indo-Iranian languages clearly belong to the Indo-European language family Indo-Iranian languages constitute a separate branch of Indo-European because of again, non-trivial some innovations in them we have non-trivial phonological innovations and we have exclusive morphological innovations for the phonology the most silent innovation is probably the merger of the liquids in Proto-Indo-Iranian we see Lithuanian is clearly distinguishing between two liquids and Sanskrit, Old Western do not a more interesting innovation is the merger of R and O which are distinguished by the languages of Europe such as Greek in Proto-Indo-Iranian playing R but the short R turns out as long R in Opal-Medial syllables it's a very characteristic innovation of Indo-Iranian as for morphological innovation we can consider the innovation given in 5 it's a special form of middle voice, second singular imperative based of the active voice, second singular imperative recently univobated with a pronoun with the so-called Indo-European reflexive pronoun in the accusative singular so we have a secondary imperative something like carry yourself based on yourself and carry how do we distinguish between the two sub branches of Indo-Iranian, between Indo-Iranian and Iranian we also use phonological innovations such as A, the loss of aspirated stops in Proto-Iranian and B, the development of Proto-Indo-European S into H were not preceded or followed by a stop here we can see in Sanskrit two series of stops of voiced stops are distinguished plain voiced stops and aspirated voiced stops this contrast is lost in Avestan and Old Persian in the Iranian languages similarly the S when followed by a vowel is preserved in Sanskrit but turned into H in Young Avestan and Old Persian now we have to make a jump for approximately 3 millennia because we don't have old texts from the Indokush region in the region of Indokush we only found languages since late 19th century which means roughly 3 millennia later than Sanskrit and Avestan and so on and this makes the distinction between Iranian and Indo-Iranian a little bit tricky here we see a range of Indo-Iranian languages which means basically descendants of Sanskrit and if we compare the voiced stops in Sanskrit with their reflexes for instance in Pashai we see that it happened but in some of the languages the distinction the contrast is secondarily abundant this must be a very recent development but nevertheless we cannot use this feature for distinguishing Indo-Iranian from Iranian in the Indokush region as far as the situation today is concerned the development of Proto-Indo-Iranian S into H languages can be used we see in the area languages spoken in the descendants of Sanskrit spoken in the region nothing happened to the inherited as I said we also find some clearly Iranian languages in the region and what is nice about them that they have experienced some more innovations which make them easily detectable it is actually an easy task to distinguish Vahi an Iranian language from for instance Pashai which is a descendant of Sanskrit in the Indokush area now what is the position of the Nouristani languages within Indo-Iranian or within Indo-European and before we can talk about this I would like just to give a little more information about what we actually know about the Nouristani languages we don't know very much because it is very difficult to make research into Nouristani for political circumstances at the moment fieldwork is out of the question it is too dangerous there we just have a grammar of one Cati dialect written by a Russian language Trunberg and published in 1980 we have a collection of texts for Prasun and a grammatical sketch written by Butrus and Dagonov and based of fieldwork by Georg Butrus during the 50s and 70s in Afghanistan for Waigali we just have a grammar of just one sub dialect of the Kalashun dialect of Waigali written by Dagonov which is also based on fieldnotes by Butrus and for Ashgun the last Nouristani language we just have a grammatical sketch and some recorded text and also a little bit also a world list by Georg Morganstiania who made research into the Nouristani languages during the 20s and 30s so not very much now what we know for sure about the Nouristani languages is that these languages belong to Indo-European we know this again because of the lexicon and because of the grammar here is just some lexemes from Sanskrit and their counterparts in West Cati, Kalashun Waigali and Prasun as for the grammar it is still possible to detect some very archaic features in the Nouristani languages for instance the well-known Indo-European supplation in the inflection of the demonstrative pronoun it is still found in a dialect of Waigali just approximately in the same form it is found in Sanskrit and in Gothic and in Greek and phrases of this system are found in Prasun which in a different Nouristani language so we know for sure Nouristani languages belong to Indo-European what is our reason to believe that Nouristani languages constitute a unit geographically they look like a unit but we actually don't know this we assume this because of some similarities in grammar and we assume this because of peculiar reflexes of series of Proto-Indo-European stops in Nouristani first for the grammar here is the inflection of just one verb to eat in West Cati you see the inflection is a little bit unusual we have to distinguish between two genders we have different forms for masculine for the masculine gender and feminine in West Cati the distinction is encoded by the palatalization in the feminine form and we have just the same in Cati Waigali where the palatalization in the feminine gender is actually not cannot be directly observed but we see the palatalization of the following vowel so this system is actually the inflected forms of the future tense in West Cati and actually a combination of the verbal noun an agent noun either one who eats or eating in Cati which is preserved in West Cati but has been abandoned in Waigali so between several languages we find very clear several Nouristani languages share very clear inflection of foraging and the other this is a typological parallel for the development of taken from Sanskrit an agent noun combined with included copula yields future tense the other reason to believe that Nouristani languages probably constitute a branch a group of all the related languages is the development of the situation with the palatal tectals in the Nouristani languages Proto-Indo-European possesses a series of stops which are not preserved as such in any language but have to be reconstructed because of their reflexes in the individual languages the so-called palatal tectals ki, gi and gi with aspiration in Waigali these phonemes are reflected just as plain V-Law stops but in many languages they turned secondaryly into affricates and subsequently into fricatives such as in Sanskrit and Avestan we see the palatal q in Sanskrit the reflex is sh in Avestan s for the palatal q the reflex is in Sanskrit the affricate j and in Avestan the fricative z and so on in detail we can see what we have to reconstruct for the immediate prehistory of Sanskrit we have to reconstruct a series of affricates as a q, j and j and for the Iranian languages for Proto-Iranian we have to reconstruct similar affricates now what is so interesting about the Nuristani languages is the following as it seems Nuristani cannot descend from Sanskrit and cannot descend from Iranian but they preserve the affricates roughly in the same way they are reconstructed for the Proto-Iranian so the Proto in the European palatal q is reflected as an affricate z in Khati and Waigali spelled differently but the pronunciation is the same the Proto-Indo-European palatalized j is reflected as affricate z in West Khati and subsequently developed into z in Waigali and so on we see a clear contrast to Sanskrit and also to languages descending from Sanskrit such as Shina and Pashai the so-called Dadic languages descendants of Sanskrit spoken in the Hindu-Push region Strangely enough we also find other reflexes of Proto-Indo-European palatal tectiles in Nuristani such as sh which is more similar to Sanskrit sh and nearly the same we find for instance in Pashai reflexes of Sanskrit words such as Shala but these words might easily be recent borrowings from the so-called Dadic languages which means descendants of Sanskrit. Now what does it tell us about the position of Nuristani within the Iranian? We now understand that Nuristani languages cannot belong to the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of Indo-Iranian they also cannot descend from Proto-Iranian because as is preserved in them but if Nuristani is neither Indo-Aryan nor Iranian it must constitute a separate sub-branch of Iranian. This is a conclusion which is usually drawn in the literature but we now for sure that Nuristani is Indo-European because of the evidence provided by the inflection but do we actually know that Nuristani languages participated in the Proto-Indo-Iranian innovations such as the merger of Ur and Ur and the merger of RAE or INTO-R. If we don't know this why not to assume that we are dealing with a different branch of Indo-European. The Indo-Iranian languages are not the only languages which turned the Proto-Indo not only languages in which the Proto-Indo-European palatal tectos turned into africates. We also have languages as Lithuanian, as Baltic languages and also Russian Slavic languages and so on. It is even possible to play with this idea and to try to compare the Nuristani languages for instance with Slavonic. We already had a look at the future tense in West Karate and Kalashunvaikali. Now we have a very similar construction in some Slavonic language in all of Slavonic. The semantics is a little bit different. We have a resultative perfect but it is made out of a noun with the same or nearly the same suffix and so on. The difference in the semantics can be bridged if we pay attention to the lexicalized formations in Slavonic. So why don't we assume that the Nuristani languages are actually a sub-dialect of Slavonic? I don't know. I certainly don't believe that. But I think the task for the future would be first to extend our knowledge of Nuristani languages and dialects by systematically collecting and describing the evidence, especially for those dialects which have not been yet systematically investigated. And the second point we would like to start at the University of Kolovan is to develop a Nuristani historical phonology and morphology step by step by comparing dialects of Nuristani languages with other dialects of Nuristani languages and so on. And this seems to be very promising because of, first, why do we need more information about Nuristani? Have a look at the present tense affliction of to-do in Kati, in Western Kati kunum kunish kuni, in Eastern Kati kunum kunish kuni. We don't know very much about Eastern Kati. What is it? Is it a difference of fix? Is it a sound change during and into term? It's very difficult to believe this. Within one and the same Nuristani language. So we have to collect more information. And if this is done then we can learn more about the immediate pro-history, about the more recent sound changes which must have been operative in the Nuristani languages and to understand a little bit more about them and about the configuration of the Nuristani language group. For instance, we already know that the in Kati and Kalashan Waigali has a counterpart in Ashkun. This helps to understand a very strange situation with sound like themes. In Kati and Waigali we have a retroflex affliction. It is corresponding to Ashkun's story. What is it? But if we consider that in Ashkun the africate Tsur preserved in Protanuristani turned into S, we understand the situation. Protanuristani Tsur seemed to have developed into a retroflex affliction in Kati, Waigali and Protoprasun but not in Ashkun. In Ashkun we have an intrusive term between sound and word. This means that we have a sound change shared by Western Kati, Kati Waigali and Prasun but not shared by Ashkun. It's spectacular because until very recently everybody believed that Prasun constitutes some sub-branch of Nuristani where all the other Nuristani languages have to be grouped together. So we are going to do it step by step and collect information about the most recent prehistory of the languages to be able to make informed guesses about their more and more prehistory and some they understand more about their position within into Iranian and in New York. Thank you.