Study of four dialects of Kashan (AbuZaydAbadi, Barzoki, Totmachi, Qohrudi)

There are almost lots of dialects in mountainous and desert regions of Kashan. Based on the linguists’ classification, all of these dialects are segments of central region dialects of Iran. Central dialects of Kashan, like the other Persian dialects, have appropriately maintained numerous properties of Dari, Pahlavi, and even old Persian language. Even now, the vav e ma’dule (altered letter “vav”; the letter “vav” which is now written but not pronounced) is used in some words of these dialects. Beginning vowels have also been maintained in some words. Grammatical gender is indicated in some nouns by the signs “ā” (masculine) and “e” (feminine). In AbuZaydAbadi, in addition to masculine and feminine nouns with signs, the nouns without signs also reflect grammatical gender indicated by the adjectives and verbs. In other dialects, grammatical gender rules are not followed thoroughly. Moreover, some of verbal structures have influence on making masculinity and femininity. Prepositions in these dialects reveal in positions of prefixes or suffixes, or both. The preposition “rā” often means “for” and functions as direct object indicator. Grammatical indirect objects in these dialects are usually without any indicator. The arrangement of sentence parts is the same as present speaking Persian one and occasionally looks like dari Persian sentence arrangement. Four forms of personal enclitic with different positions and functions are recognizable in these dialects. These enclitics, besides their main role, do the actions of transitive past verbs. Some of the enclitics are subjective and appear, like in the usual Persian, at the end of verbs. These enclitics can demonstrate also objective or complementary functions in informative or subjunctive present tense verbs. The past continuous tense verbs are made by special identifiers placed such as prefixes at the beginning of verbs. The ergative structure is particularly used in AbuZaydAbadi.