Word Order Typology of Behbahani

Behbahani belongs to the southwest Iranian languages the word order of which has rarely been studied from a typological viewpoint. This paper examines the typological status of word order in Behbahani based on Dryer’s 1992 paper on  twenty four word order criteria concerning VO versus OV typological language dichotomy in Eurasia, that is, Behbahani’s language area and all the language areas of the world. The results show that although Behbahani does have word order typological criteria of VO versus OV languages, it tends to have more of VO typological properties. Although Behbahani is similar to modern Persian in many of its word order criteria, it lacks a case marker for the direct object and independent auxiliaries for future tense as well as the progressive aspect. Based on the questionnaire method of data collection, the data description and analysis was done using the speakers' linguistic intuitions and linguistic criteria.