The grammaticalization of the morpheme of - at in the construction of the transitive simple past tense

One of the six allomorphs of the singular third person form of Persian “to be” verb, “ast”, is “- at”, which appears as an auxilary verb before an object enclitic pronoun in the construction of the non-compound transitive present perfect tense; e.g., “ɑvorˈdateš”. This morpheme is used not only in this specific context but also apparently in the construction of the non-compound transitive simple past tense (of verbs), as a result of its frequent occurrence in the colloquial language (Tehrani variety) in the position before an object enclitic pronoun. In the latter usage, the stress position is distinct from that of the former one; e.g., “ɑˈvordateš”. In fact, the goal of this article is to analyze and explain the development and usage of “- at” in the construction of (the third person singular form of) transitive simple past tense of verbs from perspective of grammaticalization.