Phonological sketch of Ganderbal Kohistani

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the phonotactics of the phonological segments of Ganderbal Kohistani. An effort is made to describe the quintessential phonological processes that operate in Ganderbal Kohistani. The aim of this paper is to find out the relation of Ganderbal Kohistani with other Dardic languages, especially Kashmiri. In addition, we try to analyze whether multilingualism affects the basic phonology of Ganderbal Kohistani. We also explore different sound changes that take place with Urdu loanwords in Ganderbal Kohistani.Data and Methodology: The study of this paper make us of the sociolinguistic framework utilized by William Labov(1963,1972,1984), Wolfram and Fasold (1974), Trudgill (1974), Milroy (1980,1987), Satyanath (1991), Eckert (2000), Satyanath and Laskar (2008,2009), Laskar (2003,2012) and khushboo (2018,2021). Kohistani speakers of two villages of District Ganderbal are approached for data collection. Speech of Kohistani speakers were recorded in natural settings without making them conscious. Data were collected from speakers of different ages ranging from 10-80 years. The main source of data was “Sociolinguistic Interviews” and “Participant Observations”. The corpus used for analysis comprises of 60 hours of speech.