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This dissertation is a synchronic description of the Balochi language as spoken in Turkmenistan. The dissertation consists of three main parts: sound structure, word and phraselevel morphosyntax and clause structure. The purpose of the present study is to describe the basic phonological, morphological and syntactic structure of the Balochi dialect of Turkmenistan in accordance with the principles of descriptive linguistics. This method has been chosen in order to present synchronic data on various language levels and to lay the basis for further studies of this variety of the Balochi language, as well as for comparative studies in Iranian linguistics. The language data are presented in the book in such a way as to make it accessible also to non-specialists in Iranian languages.

The oral texts used as language data have been written down or recorded during seven trips to Turkmenistan in the period between 1989 and 2000. The main part of the material consists of folktales, recordings of common speech and ethnographic texts. Folktales written down in the Latin and Cyrillic scripts by the Baloch themselves have also been used as linguistic data for the dissertation.

During the last twenty years the Baloch have started to leave their national settlements and actively migrate within the territory of Turkmenistan because of lack of water and the soil salination. In the future this migration is likely to bring about diverging Balochi geolects in the territory of Turkmenistan. The majority of migrants from the Baloch settlements, however, seem to switch fromBalochi to Turkmen in all linguistic domains, including the home.

In this context the recording of speech samples of the Balochi language in Turkmenistan and linguistic descriptions of the language seem to be of special importance.