The Analysis of Obsolete and Unique Heravi Words and Their Appearance in Modern Variety of Harati

Introduction Modern Persian language is not a unified totality represented in all Persian texts, but with some slight lexical, morphological, phonological, and syntactic differences in some regions has found new forms which are referred to as "Persian Language varieties". In other words, in some texts, certain features of Persian can be detected which make them somehow different from other works. The main reason is that they belong to different geographical areas and eras. That is why some of the linguistic elements of the texts such as structure, vocabulary, pronunciation, and lexical features are different. Understanding these specific usages and highlighting themin the contemporary language varieties of the same area is necessary for language researches. This article attempts to achieve this goal by studying Herati ancient dialect and comparing it to the contemporary form of this language variety. Tabaqat al-Sufiyya by Abdullâh Ansârî is the oldest, the most complete and probably the most spoken Persian text which is left from Herat area. Its specific linguistic features can represent the characteristics of ancient Heravi. The aim of this study is to find and analyze the strange words in Tabaghātand compare them with the modern language variety which is currently used in Herat and its neighboring cities, so analyzed them.
Theoretical framework Looking for the meaning of strange words in ancient Persian texts which are also used today in the contemporary language and dialects of the same area may be useful especially for understanding meaning of the strange words in early centuries and finding out the history of the development of Persian language. Additionally, we can recognize the historical roots of the unknown Persian words, prepare scientific lexicons and historical dictionaries, and finally find the meaning of the unclear archaic words based on the meaning of the words which are left in different modern dialects.
This article is an attempt to study the language variety which is currently spoken in Herat and the ancient Heravi dialect. The data of the study was culled from Tabaqate al-Sufiyyawhich is the oldest, the most spoken and excellent text found in Herat region.
Methodology The study was conducted by using content analysis method. We used written materials and print sources such as books and essays, especially the dictionary of archaic words and Herat contemporary dictionary. In some cases, the field method was used to gather the data based on the knowledge of the native speakers.
Results & Discussion 47 obsolete words and terms were found in Tabaqat al-Sufiyyawhich had rarely been used in other ancient Persian texts. The meaning of these words were searched in the Persian variety of Herat. The result of this study was that the meaning if these words were almost clarified.
Conclusions & Suggestions Some words and expressions such as "aftāb-e-zard" (the yellow sun) meaning "nearsunset", "shamidan" meaning "drinking", and ''khošk šodane zabān'' meaning to "to go dump" are still used in the Herat area without any noticeable changes. Some of the other words such as "bayqār" which is the old form of today’s "payqūr" and means "to blame" and "to taunt", and "bar pā" which is currently used as "var pā" are used with a slight change in one or more phonemes with almost the same meaning. Conducting similar studies with other Persian varieties are suggested.