Expression of Possession in New Persian

This paper aims to investigate the expression of the core meanings of possession in New Persian. Using data from selected extant prose texts of this long period of some ten centuries, the constructions related to nominal and predicative possessions are identified and described in detail. In nominal possession constructions, the general and widespread tendency in New Persian is to mark the possessum with an izâfe linker or a pronominal clitic; however, marginally, the marking of possessor with analytic markers, like prepositions and the postposition of râ, is also attested. While the marking of possessum with synthetic markers remains almost unchanged in the whole period, adpositions as the marker of Possessor were subject to significant changes. The usage of the postposition râ both in nominal possession and alongside copula verb in predicative possession constructions became totally obsolete. The simple prepositions of az ‘from’ in nominal possession construction, and bar ‘on’, bâ ‘with’ in predicative possession constructions gradually fell into disuse and were replaced by mâl-e ‘property of’, vase-y-e ‘property of’, barây-e ‘for’ in Modern Persian, especially in copula verb predicative possession construction. The interesting point is that all recent alternative prepositions marking the possessors are themselves marked with an ezâfe linker. As far as the predicative possession is concerned, the widely used copula verb construction with râ in Early New Persian was replaced by once infrequent possessive verb of dâštan, in Modern Persian.