نامه فرهنگستان
سال سیزدهم شماره 1 (بهار 1392)

The present article aims to study two syntactic constructions in the Pahlavi translation of the Avesta (Zand). Firstly, it deals with the Pahlavi rendering of Avestan future passive participle in -iia- which bears the same concept as Avestan and has probably no more remained in Zoroastrian Middle Persian. Thereafter, it discusses the syntactic construction which is the translation of those Avestan verbs that are constructed on intensive stems and exists in Zoroastrian Middle Persian, conveying the same meaning as absolutive object in Arabic.

Yeŋ́hē hātąm is a Zoroastrian prayer. This prayer had been composed originally in young Avestan language, but it was later redressed in old Avestan and was most probably extracted from the 22nd stanza of Yasna 51. Yet it is less complicated and vague and thus is more easily understandable. 4 Iranian Languages and Dialects 2 Summary of ArticlesToday, yeŋ́hē hātąm is included in the 15th stanza of Yasna 27 which is the end of the Yasnas in which the names of several yazatas are addressed. Yeŋ́hē hātąm is also recited after the Yašts in laudation of certain yazatas. Its purpose is to praise all yazatas who belong to the spiritual creation whose worship is lawful for believers. The third fragard of Baγ Nask (from the Ninth Book of Dēnkard) is an interpretation of this religious prayer that is, here, edited, transcribed and translated into Persian according to the MSS J5, D10 and the Pahlavi versions edited by Madan, Sanjana and Dresden.

This paper deals with the etymology of the word tarda ‘termite’ used in at least two classical Persian texts. According to the author, tarda is etymologically connected with Greek τερηδών and Latin tarmes/termes, and all are ultimately derived from the proto-Indo-European root *terh1- ‘to rub; to pierce by rubbing, to bore’. The author then reconstructs *tardaka- ‘a boring insect’ as the Old Iranian form underlying tarda. Northwest Iranian languages retain Old Iranian *-rd- (sometimes in the form of -rδ-), but Southwest Iranian languages change it into -l- and, as a result, lengthen the preceding vowel. Therefore, Old Iranian *tardaka-, and its alternative form *tarda-, can yield a variety of forms in New Iranian languages and dialects which are discussed in details in the present paper. Some of the most important descendants of Old Iranian *tarda(ka)- in New Iranian languages and dialects are: tardak ‘a wheat-eating worm’ (in Persian), tarda/tarde ‘termite’ (in Persian and also in the dialects of Ardakān, Bardsir, Kermān, Sirjān, Šāh-Bābak and Yazd), tarze (from *tarδe) ‘termite’ (in the dialects of Rāvar and Zarand), tāl (‘termite’ in the dialect of Xur, but ‘a black insect eating palm leaves’ in the dialects of Bandar-e Abbās, Bandar-e Lenge, Bušehr, Fin, Jiroft, Kahnuj and Manujān),and tālg ‘termite’ (in Farvi dialect).

The present paper studies the word ‘āγāz’ with its unknown meaning in a verse of the Shahnameh. ‘āγāz’ is probably a variant of ‘āγār’ from the infinitive āγārīdan/āγištan “to soak, moisten”. This word has also been used in a few other Persian texts. Some instances of them are given here.

The former dialect of Shiraz was the direct descendant of a variety of Middle Persian which had been spoken in Fars. This dialect in the later stages of its development was integrated with Dari Persian and finally in the late 10th century AH failed into oblivion.Among the surviving specimens of the dialect, there are five verses in Nasīm al-Rabī‘, translation of Rabī‘ al-Abrār of Zamakhsharī (translated before 781 AH) and also a single verse in the History of Waṣṣāf. One of the five verses recorded in Nasīm al-Rabī‘ is from the Muthallathāt of Sa‘dī and two of them are composed by Rūzbihān Baqlī. In this paper the author examines the language of these specimens.

The Gilaki dialect is one of the new Iranian dialects spoken in Gilan. This dialect belongs to the northwestern branch of the Iranian languages. In the Gilaki dialect the formation of the infinitive is based on past and 6 Iranian Languages and Dialects 2 Summary of Articles present stems as well as some nouns and adjectives. Contrary to the phonological changes of the Gilaki words, it is not difficult to recognize their old forms. The structure of the infinitive in the Gilaki dialect and the etymology of some infinitives are dealt with in the present paper.

Tāti is one of the Northwestern Iranian languages spoken in different areas in Iran (called Southern Tāti and sometimes Āzari) and abroad (Northern Tāti). It has retained many of its archaic grammatical features. Southern Tāti is widespread in the southwest areas of Qazvin, Eshtehārd in Karaj province, the two districts of Shāhrud and Khoresh-Rostam in Khalkhāl, Tārom-e Olyā and Kho’in in Zanjān province, Dizmār, Karingān, Kaleybar, Kalāsur in East Āzarbāijān province, and Jirande and Fārāb in Rudbār. The distinction of gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) is one of the most important subjects in linguistics. Gender is generally indicated in different languages in two forms of grammatical and non-grammatical or natural. There has been no research on the distinction of gender in the Tāti dialect of Khalkhāl, although this dialect has retained grammatical gender distinction in nouns, pronouns (personal, demonstrative and possessive pronouns) and verbs. Thegrammatical and natural gender in the Tāti dialect of Khalkhāl has been studied in this paper. In this dialect the feminine nouns are distinct from the corresponding masculine nouns in singular nominative form using a stressless suffix -a, possessive pronouns having -ə and verbs using -â. Natural gender in Tāti has been also studied in one part of the paper. In this dialect, in addition to the words which denote the feminine or masculinegender, there exist morphemes which appear at the beginning of the word and determine its grammatical gender. A list of some feminine and masculine nouns in Tāti has been provided at the end of the paper.

Providing the linguistic data to compile a dictionary that includes all of the words and collocations of the Persian language has been considered by cultural organizations and research institutions and some researchers since several years ago. To continue this cultural tradition and to eliminate the existing dictionaries’ shortcomings requires a careful study of both manuscripts and printed Persian texts and collecting different dialects ofthis language. For this purpose, this paper tries to determine the identity of some rare and ambiguous words used in classical Persian texts by using the words found in the dialect of Ardakul village, Zirkuh district of Qā’en. These words are sometimes not recorded in the existing dictionaries and sometimes the forms and meanings recorded are incomplete and questionable.

This paper deals with a description of the verb system in Delvāri dialect. The required data are gathered by one of the authors as a native speaker of this dialect. The research purpose is to identify different morphological properties of the verb and to achieve such an objective, verb stems, past participles, infinitive forms, verbal inflectional and derivational prefixes are introduced, their behavior is explained and different examples aredemonstrated. Agreement markers are divided into two categories of pronominal enclitics in past transitive sentences and verbal affixes in other sentences.

An investigation of Iranian languages and dialects can clarify some hidden cultural characteristics of the speakers. This study has been conducted to show how speakers of the Khāvarāni dialect, a Persian dialect in Fārs province in the south of Iran, have divided time into some classifications. The classifications of day and night in the dialect are almost as numerous as standard time classifications. The classifications of time in the dialect are 24 sections, like standard classifications. In spite of an equal classification in number, theamount of time in each two sections is not equal. Early in the morning and evening when job starts or ends, each section is about 20 minutes; while in some other sections it may get to one and a half hour. The study shows that the speakers have managed time both in day and night properly. More than half of the words and expressions belong to evening, night and early morning in the dialect. This study indicates that the people have been active in using their hours and managing their time. The study also shows that the bases of the time classifications in the dialect are the times when Muslims say their prayers in the morning, at noon or in the evening. Regarding the calendar of the dialect, they have used Now-Ruz (the first day of Farvardin, i.e. March 21st) as the base. They have divided the calendar into two main sections: the days after Now-Ruz, and the days before that. They have also used some natural times like when a proper star appears in the sky or a fruit can be picked as some sub-classifications of the year.

Stories, anecdotes, lullabies and proverbs are part of the oral literature reflecting the purest, deepest and the most elegant feelings as well as Iranian Languages and Dialects 2 9 Summary of Articles thoughts, ideas and realities of a society. Due to this, oral literature is supposed to be a rich and reliable source in the study of culture, tendencies,capabilities and faculties of a society. Proverbs are simple in structure but deep in meaning. They are brief representations of a full event or a complete story. Another characteristic is the use of usual and frequent words such as animal names, plants, fruits, body part terms and also colours in their connotational and metaphoric meanings for the purpose of emphasizing a positive or a negative semantic feature, shared with human beings. The aim of the present paper is to study the function of animal names in Lāri proverbs relying on “signification”, “subjectivity” and “social function”. After extracting 110 proverbs out of a collection of 435 items containing one or more animal names, they were analyzed based on the above criteria. The results show that the dominant subjects in the use of animal terms in the proverbs are ethical and didactic ones. Their functions are mostly educational and their signification, unlike the real world, is of semireferentialtype. In addition, the results compared with a similar study on Kermāni dialect showed significant similarities.