There was no common ancestor to Luri. There are instead two distinct languages, Greater Lors (Lor-e bozorg), a.k.a. Southern Luri (including Bakhtiari and Minjai dialects), and Lesser Lors (Lor-e kuček), also known as Northern Luri.[9]
According to the Encyclopædia Iranica, "All Lori dialects closely resemble standard Persian and probably developed from a stage of Persian similar to that represented in Early New Persian texts written in Perso-Arabic script. The sole typical Lori feature not known in early New Persian or derivable from it is the inchoative marker, though even this is found in Judeo-Persian texts".[9] There are transitional dialects between Bakhtiāri Lori and Southern Kurdish, and indeed Bakhtiari itself may be transitional between Lori and Kurdish.[10]
^Gernot Windfuhr, 2009, "Dialectology and Topics", The Iranian Languages, Routledge
^Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Luric". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
^ abErik John Anonby, "Update on Luri: How many languages?" // Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Third Series), volume 13, issue 02, Jul 2003, pp 171–197.
^Don Stillo, "Isfahan-Provincial Dialetcs" in Encyclopædia Iranica. Excerpt: "While the modern SWI languages, for instance, Persian, Lori-Baḵtiāri and others, are derived directly from Old Persian through Middle Persian/Pahlavi".
Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) 2013. Lur. In the World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.