Linguistic Discovery 11.1:129-160 Notes on Kalkoti: A Shina Language with Strong Kohistani Influences Henrik Liljegren Stockholm University This paper presents some novel and hard-to-access data from Kalkoti, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in northern Pakistan. The particular focus is on showing how this Shina variety in a relatively short time span has drifted apart from its closest known genealogical relatives and undergone significant linguistic convergence with a Kohistani variety in whose vicinity Kalkoti is presently spoken. Among other features, we explore what seems like an ongoing process of tonogenesis as well as structural “copying” in the realm of tense and aspect. 1. Introduction Kalkoti [xka], or Goedijaa as it is also locally known as, is spoken by approximately 6,000 people in Kalkot [kʰæɽko৸ʈ] in the upper Panjkora Valley in Dir Kohistan (Pakistan). 1 While most other communities in this valley, from Rajkot (Patrak) upstream, are primarily populated by speakers of various Kohistani language varieties or dialects collectively referred to as Bashkarik, Kalami, Swat-Dir Kohistani or Gawri [gwc], 2 Kalkoti is at its core a Shina language. 3 It forms together with Palula [phl], spoken in adjacent parts of Chitral Valley, and Sawi [sdg], spoken in Sau, a village in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, a Western relatedness cluster within Shina (Liljegren 2009). Even in Kalkot itself, a minority section of the community (estimated at 30 per cent, corresponding to two out of seven clans) are native speakers of a form of Gawri, locally known as Daraaki or Daraagi. In a linguistic survey carried out some 20 years ago, it was pointed out that speakers of Kalkoti understand Gawri as spoken in the same or in neighbouring localities, but that Gawri speakers do not in general understand the Kalkoti language, which was considered by Gawri respondents as “a different language altogether, although obviously a related one” (Rensch 1992, 7–14). Very little field work has been dedicated to Kalkoti, situated as it is in an area with limited access to outsiders (a situation further aggravated in recent years by growing militant radicalism). Neither has any systematic study of Kalkoti ever been published. It was in fact unknown, as a variety in its own right, to the scholarly world before a sociolinguistic survey (referred to above) was carried out by Rensch and his SIL colleagues (1992) in the late 1980s. Based on the word list collected in this survey report (Rensch, Decker, and Hallberg 1992, 159–176), Strand (2001, 1 As no comprehensive survey has been carried out in Dir Kohistan there may be other locations where similar or closely related varieties are spoken, something that has been suggested by several people over the years (Morgenstierne 1941, 7; K. D. Decker 1992, 68) but has never been confirmed by any language-specific data. 2 In this paper, the name Gawri will be used to refer to these particular Kohistani varieties, as that seems a designation acceptable to speakers from Swat as well as from Dir Kohistan who consider it one language community (Muhammad Zaman Sagar, pers. comm.). 3 Kohistani and Shina are both well-established groupings of Indo-Aryan languages, but it is still disputed whether the two also belong in an intermediary grouping often referred to as “Dardic” that wouɽd coɾprise ɾost (but not aɽɽ) of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in the mountainous North of Pakistan as well as in adjoining areas in northeastern Afghanistan and in the disputed areas of Jammu & Kashmir (Bashir 2003, 822 –825; Strand 2001, 258; Zoller 2005, 10–11).