The Development of New First and Second Person Pronouns in New Persian: A grammaticalization Perspective

This paper aims to investigate the development of new first and second person pronouns in New Persian from the perspective of grammaticalization. The data on which this work is based comes from the prose texts of the period. In the course of the paper, the role of metonymic and metaphorical processes involved in the grammaticalization of the pronouns are critically examined. Our findings suggest that metonymic processes, and along the same lines, syntagmatic relations play a significant role in paving the way for the metaphorical extension of the noun in the construction “singular proximal demonstrative + NP” and the functional shift of the construction into a first person pronoun. The slot for head noun of the construction is filled with nouns such as bande ‘slave’, jâneb “side’, etc. or de-adjectival nouns with original meanings of moxles ‘devoted’, haqir ‘humble’, and the like. Other phenomena that play quite some role in the formation of new pronouns are plurification and hypercharacterization. Plurification is responsible for the growth of new first and second singular pronouns, while hypercharaterization is at work forming new first and second person plural pronouns. Politeness is the major motivating factor for the evolution of the most new pronouns discussed, excluding those developed by hypercharacterization.