Yazghulami is a South-East Iranian language spoken in the Pamir area of Tajikistan by about 9000 people. This study gives an account of the phonology of the language by describing contrastive segments and their distribution and realizations, as well as describing suprasegmental features such as syllable structure and stress patterns. Field research was carried out in a community of Yazghulami speakers in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, by recording, transcribing and annotating spoken language. Yazghulami is analyzed as having 8 vowel phonemes of which one pair contrasts in length, and 36 consonant phonemes with a considerable display of palatal, velar and uvular phonemes, of which a set of three labialized plosives and three labialized fricatives is found. The syllable structure of Yazghulami allows for clusters of no more than two consonants in the onset and two in the coda; clusters in both positions do not occur in one and the same syllable. The stress generally falls on the last syllable of a word, although when nouns are inflected with suffixes, the stress instead falls on the last syllable of the stem. With these results, a foundation for further efforts to develop and increase the status of this endangered language is laid. / Yazghulami är ett sydöst-iranskt språk som talas i Pamirområdet i Tadzjikistan av cirka 9000 personer. Studien redogör för språkets fonologi genom beskrivning av dess kontrastiva segment och hur dessa distribueras och realiseras, samt en beskrivning av dess suprasegmentella drag så som stavelsestruktur och betoningsmönster. Fältstudier bedrevs bland yazghulami-talare i Dusjanbe, Tadzjikistans huvudstad, genom inspelning, transkribering och annotering av talat språk. Analysen visar på att yazghulami har 8 vokalfonem, där ett par kontrasterar i längd, och 36 konsonantfonem med en nämnvärd uppsättning av palatala, velara och uvulara fonem, varav ett set med tre labialiserade klusiler och tre labialiserade frikativor. Stavelsestrukturen i yazghulami tillåter kluster med upp till två konsonanter i ansatsen och två i kodan, men kluster förekommer inte i båda positioner inom en och samma stavelse. Betoningen faller generellt på den sista stavelsen av ett ord, men för substantiv böjda med suffix faller betoningen istället på den sista stavelsen i stammen. Dessa resultat kommer ligga till grund för vidare arbete med att utveckla och öka statusen av detta hotade språk.

Problem of Archaism and Innovation in the Eastern Iranian Languages The presented dissertation aims to bring new information concerning the classification of the Eastern Iranian languages. Instead of commonly accepted two branches of Eastern Iranian (Northern and Southern) it seems that there can be classified at least five branches of Eastern Iranian languages, moreover, Avestan can form its own branch, which possibly may include also Khwārezmian. The main issue of the presented thesis was to show archaisms and innovations of the language group in focus. Such task is an issue for numerous studies so the main attention was paid to historical development of Sogdian and Yaghnōbī - two closely related Eastern Iranian languages. Linguistic proximity of Sogdian and Yaghnōbī has been observed shortly after discoveries of the first Sogdian documents in Chinese Turkestan on the beginning of the 20 th century, for a long time it has been supposed that Yaghnōbī is a modern descendent of Sogdian. By analysis of phonology, grammar and vocabulary of both languages I tried to find clues that may answer this question. From diachronic view there is no much difference between Sogdian and Yaghnōbī, individual changes may be interpreted as "dialectal", but there is one phenomenon that influenced different...