Pathology of Persian grammar books (Case study: Conditional sentences)

The study of the inadequacies and shortcomings of the Persian grammar books is the first and most important step towards a deep understanding of the structural characteristics of Persian language and writing a comprehensive and efficient grammar book. In Persian grammar books, some grammatical topics such as “conditional sentences”, neither have received adequate attention nor any regular model was developed to describe them. Accordingly, the present study tried to review the discussions of ‎“conditional sentence”‎ in the most important Persian grammar books and analyze their strengths and weaknesses in this regard. This helps grammarians pay attention to the latent dimensions of the structural patterns of the Persian language. Therefore, 10 major Persian grammar books that are often referred to by scholars and grammarians were selected and the topic of “conditional sentences” of each of them was studied based on descriptive-analytical method. The most important results of this research indicated that in the section of the “conditional sentences” of the most Persian grammar books that are based on traditional or linguistic approaches, there are common features such as incomprehensiveness, inconsistent terminology, logical inconsistency in the classification of grammatical categories, imitation of foreign grammars, absence of criticizing and analyzing previous theories and ideas, as well as mixing different varieties of language. This highlights the importance of a careful and meticulous study of each of the issues of Persian grammar.