Verb conjugation in Rudani Dialect

Rudani (= Rūdāni) Dialect is spoken in Rudan county of Hormozgan province. The center of this county is Rudan city, located 90 kms away from BandarAbbas, the capital of Hormozgan province. Rudan is restricted to Hajiabad from north, to Faryab from the northeast, to Kerman province from the east, and to Minab from the southeast and south. Rudani dialect has several varieties, including Jaghini, Pakuhi, Rudkhanei, Berentini, Abnemayi and Khuraji.
Rudani is a sub-branch of Bashakardi (Baškardi) dialect group, and hence, genealogically belongs to the new south-west Iranian dialects. Gershevitch divides Bashkardi dialects into 3 subdivisions: 1. Dialects outside of Baškard proper; 2. North Bashkardi 3. South Baškardi. According to him, Rudani as well as Minabi, Bandari and Rudbari, belongs to the first subdivision. (quoted by Skjærvø, 1988: 846)
This research aims at describing the verb conjugation system in this dialect.

This study is based on the descriptive analysis method with a synchronic approach. The data, that is the linguistic corpus of Rudani, was mainly collected through interviewing with informants. These informants were male and female native speakers living in the area, chosen from different age and education status. Analyzing the data, the verb conjugation system of verb was described, including verb components (stem and inflectional affixes), types of verb according to tense, mode, aspect, voice as well as word formation. Modal verbs were also discussed.

3-1. verb components 3-1-1. stem: verb has 3 stems: present stem (also denominative and causative), past stem (also secondary) and perfect stem (past active participle and past passive participle). Causative affix is -on, attaching to the non-causative present stem. Secondary past stem is made by adding -id and rarely -(e)st or -âd to the present stem. 3-1-2. Inflectional affixes of the verb: be- and its allomorphs bo- and bi- are used for subjunctive and imperative modes. The continuity prefix is a-. In present perfect continuous, -ē comes after the personal endings. Na- and its other allomorph, ne-, are used for negation. The negation prefix for the imperative is ma- and me-. Personal endings are -om, -ī and -t(e) for singular, and -eng, -ē and -end for plural. 3-2. verbal derivatives The suffix for infinitive is -en which attaches to the past stem. Past active participle and past passive participle that are also the perfect stem, are formed by adding -a, respectively to the past stem of intransitive and transitive verbs. 3-3. tense, mode and aspect Present indicative and present subjunctive are made respectively by a- and be- + present stem + personal endings. Present progressive is made by a- + the infinitive + present enclitic forms of hasten, ‘to be’. Imperative is only for 2nd person, and is made by present stem and the personal endings, -Ø (singular) and -ē (plural). Past conjugation for transitive verbs is different from that of the intransitive; Transitive verbs have the ergative structure somehow. The enclitic personal pronouns have the function of the personal endings, and come at the end of the past stem as the personal endings do. They can also attach to some words before the verb, such as the subject, object, adverb, negation prefix. Simple past is made by past stem + personal endings (intransitive) or the enclitic personal pronouns (transitive). In continuous aspect, a- comes before the simple past. In present perfect of intransitive verbs, present enclitic forms of hasten, ‘to be’ follow the perfect stem but in the case of the transitive verbs, present perfect is made by the perfect stem + the enclitic personal pronouns + -e, present 3rd person singular of hasten, ‘to be’. In the continuous aspect, a- precedes the stem and -ē comes after the personal endings. In past perfect of intransitive verbs, past enclitic forms of hasten, ‘to be’ follow the perfect stem but in the case of the transitive verbs, past perfect is made by the perfect stem + the enclitic personal pronouns + -a, past 3rd person singular of hasten, ‘to be’. Past subjunctive is only for the intransitive verbs, which is made by perfect stem + present subjunctive of the auxiliary verb, buden, ‘to be’. Passive voice is made by perfect stem + the auxiliary verb buden, ‘to become’ appropriate to the tense, mode and aspect. hasten, ‘to be’ in present indicative has enclitic forms, composed of present stem, h-, and personal endings. Personal endings attach to hast- and make the free forms. In past tense, hasten also has enclitic forms, composed of past stem, ar-, and personal endings. These enclitic forms attach to hast- and make the free forms. The conjugation of xâsten, ‘to want’ and butesten, ‘can, to be able’ in present tense is similar to that of the transitive verbs in past tense; Personal pronouns are used instead of personal endings. 3-4. Modal verbs xâsten, ‘to want’ and butesten, ‘can, to be able’ are personal modal verbs. The main verb is present subjunctive. Bāya, ‘must’ is impersonal. The main verb is either present subjunctive, past perfect or past continuous. 3-5. types of verbs according to word formation There are 4 types: simple, derivative, compound and phrasal. Verb derivational prefixes are dar-, fer-, vor-, vâ- and vo-. The most frequently used verbs in making compound verbs are respectively kerden, ‘to do’, zaden, ‘to beat’, buden, ‘to be, to become’, dâden, ‘to give’, vā geten, ‘to take’ and gesten, ‘to throw’.

According to the description given, on the conjugation system of verb, the most important features of Rudani can be summarized as follows. verb stems are similar to those of Persian, regarding the type and formation. Rudani has the prefix of continuity a- instead of mi-. Using -ē as the suffix of continuity in present perfect, is one of the characteristics of Rudani. In Rudani hasten, ‘to be’ has two form, both in present and past: enclitic foms and free forms.Rudani lacks future verbs; present tense is used for future either.The construction of present progressive by means of the infinitive is a charactristic of Rudani and other Bashkardi dialects. This verb which is made in Persian with the auxiliary verb dâštan ‘to have’ is a newly borrowed construction.The main feature in the conjugation system of the verb is the use of ergative construction in the past tense of the transitive verbs. In this construction, enclitic personal pronouns have the function of the personal endings and are an integral part of the verb; Even when the subject is mentioned, they are not deleted. There are only 3 modal verbs. Unlike Persian, the main verb does not appear as infinitive. Rudani and Persian have the same types of the verb according the word formation.