THE LINGUISTIC ATLAS OF THE EAST OF GUILAN AND THE NATIONAL PROJECT OF THE DIALECTOLOGY OF IRAN

1. M.A in General linguistics, Islamic Azad University, CentralTehran Branch, Tehran, Iran. 2. PH.D, Professor of Islamic Azad University, CentralTehran Branch and Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies,Tehran,Iran. ...................................................................................................................... Manuscript Info Abstract ......................... ........................................................................ Manuscript History

Thesignificance of theresearch on Iranian dialects is clear for everyone. According to this goal, "The National Project oftheDialectology of Iran" has been started in 1999. Up to now in relatedto this project, 18theses in Iranian universities, especially in Islamic Azad University Central Tehran Branch,has been fulfilledon the dialects of some provinces of Iran.This article is based on this project and it is about the dialects of the Eastof Guilan province. The purpose of this research is to find the similarities and differences of the dialect or accent in 20 villages in this region in terms of phonetic, grammatical and lexical analysis that will be carried out by questionnaire and finally provided as a linguistic atlas.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:-
Identity and authenticity of every culture and nation are rooted in its language. In other words, native language of every nation is the authenticand valuable treasure of the antiquity and history of that nation. Therefore,every effort on preserving and saving thisprecious wealth is admirable and important. Iran is a land with many language diversities, dialects and accents; thus in the linguistic studies, the study of(New)Iranian dialectsas a branch of the Old Iranian language, and Iranian languages as a branch of Indo-Iranian languages, is very important. Extinction of each language and its dialect and accent will lead to decline and extinction of a culture and civilization, that it would be irremediable. So put theindividual and collective scientific efforts into the recording of thelanguages and dialects of different ethnic groups can pave the way for studying and doing a research on the humanitiessuch as sociology, psychology, anthropology,etc. In this global effort, Persian language with thousands of years of history and richness can be a great contribution to protect thecultural andsocial history of the world.In this regard, preparing a linguistic atlas for each language and country is very important and useful in collecting different dialects of that country in aform of a linguistic encyclopedia. Providing the linguistic atlas of the Eastof Guilan is a scientific research in achieving the efforts of the great linguistics masters of our country -Dr. YadollahSamareh and Dr. Iran Kalbassiand other researchers who have taken steps in realization of "The National Project of the Dialectology of Iran".Other researchers in different majors and even non-Persian language researchers could use the result of that and it will be useful in promoting Persian language structure, theancient human language, whether in education or making new words.

Review of literature:-
The researchers of the dialects of theSouthern coast of the Caspian Sea, including theIranian and non-Iranian researcherswill be cited briefly:  Gmelin is the biological and ethnological scientist that we owe him for the first awareness of Guilaki dialect in the second half of the eighteenth century, published the book "ReiseDurchRusslandZurUntersuchung Der DreyNaturreiche" in Saint Petersburg in 1775. He mentioned some Guilaki words in the third part of his book.

Purpose of the Study:-
The presence of Guilak nationandthe dialects of Guilan, whether in the East orin the West, cause the area to be linguistically important forthe numbers ofspeakers and the variety of different dialects and accents in a similar geographical situation.Providingthelinguistic atlas that shows and presents various dialects of this region, can be an important step for facilitating social, historical, indigenous and cultural studies.Moreover,it is possible for linguists and who are interested in the culture to have access to acomprehensive source on the study of a dialect with variousaccents, which are different in phonetics, morphology, syntax and lexicon with the standard Persian.

Methodology:-
This study was the library and field study, and the data collection was based on a questionnaire consisting of 100 words, by sampling of 20 villages in the East of Guilan province from AstanehAshrafieh to the end of the Eastern region of Guilan, Chaboksar. The data collected from each village analyses in descriptive-analytic method and the findings added tothe table, which is related to each word.
After comparing the differences and similarities in phonetics, morphology, syntaxand lexiconof each word with the standard Persian, the result was marked with signs on the map of the region. Finally, the linguistic atlas has been prepared.
To achieve the authentic accents, the middle-aged speakers who spent most of their life in that region have participated in the research,and villages with more phonetic differences in accent have been considered. Morphological studyareasfollows: 1.The plural sign; 2.The deletion of genitive sign; 3.The progressive sign with the intransitive verb; 4.The progressive sign with the transitive verb; 5.The independent subject pronouns; 6.The dependentsubject pronouns with the intransitive verb; 7.The dependentsubject pronounswith the transitiveverb; 8.The verbal prefix in the simple past tense with theintransitive verb; 9.The verbal prefix in the simple past tense with the transitive verb.
The plural sign:-Sometimesthe plural suffix [an] in Guilaki is theequivalentto [hâ] in the standard Persian: dâran "Trees" deraxthâ The independent subject pronouns:amo / amə / amu /âmu / mâ "We" mâ The verbal prefix in the simple past tense with the intransitive verb:baništim / beništim / bəništim "We sat down" nešastim Syntacticstudy areas follows: 1.The order of the demonstrative adjective and noun; 2.The order of the number and noun; 3.The order of the adjective and noun; 4.The order of the pronoun and noun; 5.The orderof the preposition and noun; 6.The orderof the genitive and noun; 7.The indefinite sign; 8.The definite sign.