Modern Pashto – linguistic situation and the extent of study: Theoretical review

Abstract

The paper aims to present a review of modern linguistic situation with Pashto and the progress in examining the Ghilji dialect phonetic level based on previous studies of the researchers from different countries. The focus is on problematic aspects and contradictions related to the manifestation of the nine factors of language viability proposed by UNESCO. This is the first attempt to perform the assessment based on these factors. As a result, a number of tendencies working in opposite directions were demonstrated: increased status, successful implementation of standards, wide use in computer and Internet technologies vs huge dialect variance and the possibility of attrition of the mother language and the native dialect; long history of the writing system vs its dialect and even individual variance accompanied by complicated relations between orthography and phonology. High dialect fragmentation was found to result in variance of phonemic models of words including differences in vowels, consonants and the number of phonemes in one word used in different dialects. Phonetic data on the Alsatian dialect are practically not presented, which makes it imperative to accumulate and systematize acoustic information on this dialect.