Southern Luri, an Indo-European language in the Southwestern Group of Iranian languages, counts almost one million speakers. Still, while brief linguistic sketches have been written in Farsi, the existence of Southern Luri as a distinct language group has until recently been unknown to Western scholarship. In a recent comparative work, ‘Update on Luri: How Many Languages?’ (2003), Anonby established the existence of three separate languages in the Luri continuum: Lurist?ni, Bakhti?ri and Southern Luri.

In the present study, the author provides a window into the phonological system of Southern Luri. Although closely related to both Bakhti?ri and Farsi, the language is nonetheless distinguished by a number of particular - and at times striking - phonological characteristics. The vowel system is marked by a rich inventory of diphthongs, several of which exhibit historical /h/ as a lengthening element. Among the numerous phonological processes, pervasive short vowel reduction and a series of consonant softenings are most prominent. Rigorous restrictions in the composition of syllables drive most of the morphophonemic processes. The study addresses the impact of borrowing on the language and concludes with a précis on speech style, stress and intonation processes.

2nd printing 2007.