Inherent Intelligibility among Guragina Varieties

Abstract

This article examines the inherent intelligibility among six Guragina varieties, which are systematically selected to represent the major linguistic variation within this cluster of closely related dialects or languages. Three types of comparisons, lexical, phonological and morphological are used. The lexical comparison was based on 255 lexical items of frequent use and the Swadish wordlist, which is said to be change resistant. The phonological variation was established through 38 sound correspondences found in 122 words selected from the lexical comparison. The morphological comparison was based on 44 inflectional and derivational affixes. The morphemes were first described in sets and then the numbers of shared and non-shared morphemes were statistically computed. The lexical comparison provided the following result (from the Guragina variety with the highest to the lowest amount of shared vocabulary): Mesqan, Muhir, Cheha, Kistane, Welene and Inor. According to the phonological comparision, the following grouping was established: Mesqan, Muhir, Kistane, Cheha, Welene and Inor. The morphological comparision resulted in: Mesqan, Muhir, Welene, (Cheha, Kistane) and Inor. If the three groupings are combined, the following hierarchy occurs from the variety with most shared items to the variety with the least shared ones: Mesqan, Muhir, Cheha, Kistane, Welene, and Inor.