Strategies for Expressing Possession in Some Iranian Linguistic Varieties

The present study aims at reviewing the strategies employed in some Iranian linguistic varieties in order to express possession. To do so, first the type of possessive strategy used in each variety was described based upon the categorization made by Croft (2003). Then the features considered by Croft (1990) to analyze the possessive constructions and the variables like the order of possessor and possessum, the category of possessor (noun or pronoun), the importance of animate or inanimate being in expressing the relation of possessive, the presence or absence of discrimination in alienable or inalienable possession in each variety have been addressed. The findings show that in the varieties studied in this research, mostly only one strategy from the three forms of case marking, juxtaposition, and linker is used; but in some cases two strategies from the three are used to show possessive as a syntactic phrase. Case marking strategy dates back to Ancient Iranian languages while juxtaposition and linker ones reach to Middle West Iranian languages. In terms of the features characterized by Croft, the possessor and the possessum are adjacent without any fusion except for some varieties that use the clitic possessors. The additional morpheme in such varieties mostly follows the first constituent and rarely the second in affix (or clitic) form.