نامه فرهنگستان
سال پانزدهم شماره 4 (پاییز و زمستان 1395)

The investigation of linguistic devices for encoding the grammatical concepts, in a diachronic perspective, shows considerable patterns of grammaticalization and language change. These changes are very slow and gradual, while extremely systematic and teleological. The present research studies the devices used in Persian aspect and mood systems throughout a period of approximately 1800 years (since the early Sasanid period to the present time) and shows that every grammatical change can trigger a new chain of related changes. The decline of the rich morphology of Old Persian in the process of changing into Middle Persian motivated a compensatory and substituting reaction in the language system. Therefore, the system started a very long process of developing two new morphological devices, and the task was fulfilled. The result of this process is the inflectional suffixes mi- and be- in today’s Persian: the former, having an aspectual and a mood function, has become obligatory in almost all of related environments; and the latter with a mood function has not become obligatory in some environments yet, and it is on its way to spread. This article studies the behavior of the two mentioned morphemes in their process of grammaticalization in Middle and Modern periods as well as the way they competed with the alternative mechanisms in Classical Modern Persian, and the development of some intermediate structures (simultaneous occurrence of grammatical morphemes) in the transition period.

The term “reflexive” has been used throughout the history of linguistics in the sense of referring to the function of marking two arguments of a verb as coreferential. In a wide variety of languages, however, including Turkic, Caucasian languages,Persian, and English(X-self),intensifiers and reflexive pronouns are completely identical in form,though not in distribution. Such wide-spread polysemy cannot be completely fortuitous. Based on diachronic studies on reflexives, body part terms, are overwhelmingly the main source of reflexives in the languages of the world. In this survey, we try to show the emergence path and the sources from which the reflexives and intensifier reflexives in Persian have developed. Based upon the extant data on reflexives and reflexive intensifiers from Old to New Persian, it is argued that a set of grammaticalization strategies, namely, metaphoric extension (in the development of body term) and layering are involved. We demonstrate that the most important sources in this historical path are possessive adjectives and adverb of emphasis.

The well-known structures of a vocative sentence in Persian are composed of “ey + noun”, “yā + noun”, “ayā + noun” and “noun + ā” which are discussed by most grammarians. However, there has been another common form in the past, “ey + noun + ī”, which has not been discussed to date. This structure belonged to the fifth and sixth centuries and has been used in some common Khorasanate dialects, but was distorted in several famous texts. Moreover, since vocatives are definite nouns, it seems that the suffix “ī” in this structure “ey + noun+ ī” is a definite marker that adds new meanings of punishment, denial, ridicule, guidance and affection to the noun. This paper intends to introduce and discuss this structure.

In this study, all the verbs used in Qabusnameh are investigated with regard to their structure and grammatical categories such as tense, voice, mood, and aspect. Qabusnameh is one of the important literary works in the fifth century A.H. (11th century A.D.). As the text belongs to nearly one thousand years ago, this research also sheds light on the properties of the verb which have changed, or disappeared over time.

This paper aims to investigate the expression of the core meanings of possession in New Persian. Using data from selected extant prose texts of this long period of some ten centuries, the constructions related to nominal and predicative possessions are identified and described in detail. In nominal possession constructions, the general and widespread tendency in New Persian is to mark the possessum with an izâfe linker or a pronominal clitic; however, marginally, the marking of possessor with analytic markers, like prepositions and the postposition of râ, is also attested. While the marking of possessum with synthetic markers remains almost unchanged in the whole period, adpositions as the marker of Possessor were subject to significant changes. The usage of the postposition râ both in nominal possession and alongside copula verb in predicative possession constructions became totally obsolete. The simple prepositions of az ‘from’ in nominal possession construction, and bar ‘on’, bâ ‘with’ in predicative possession constructions gradually fell into disuse and were replaced by mâl-e ‘property of’, vase-y-e ‘property of’, barây-e ‘for’ in Modern Persian, especially in copula verb predicative possession construction. The interesting point is that all recent alternative prepositions marking the possessors are themselves marked with an ezâfe linker. As far as the predicative possession is concerned, the widely used copula verb construction with râ in Early New Persian was replaced by once infrequent possessive verb of dâštan, in Modern Persian.

This paper presents a diachronic investigation of restrictive relative clauses in Persian. On the basis of the theoretical frameworks of Grammaticalization and Discourse Grammmar, the paper analyzes how relative clauses as thetical elements were inserted paratactically as nonrestrictive relative clause by a relative marker, namely hya, in Old Persian. The purpose of this discourse process was to present some information about a nominal constituent in the main clause while the relative marker hya was accompanying it. In Middle Persian, the relativizer ī, as phonologically reduced form of hya, however, underwent some transitional ambiguity in which its prior function as a relativizer was gradually changed to a restrictive relative marker via grammaticalization. In late medieval texts and at the beginning of new Persian, ī relative clauses were transferred to the sentence grammar in the form of an embedded constituent. Furthermore, this study shows that beside the explanation of synchronic process of discourse organization, Discourse Grammar can also justify the diachronic changes of the category under the investigation.

The relative accessibility to relativization of NP position is the first evidence for defining the Accessibility Hierarchy. According to this Hierarchy the subject is the most accessible and if a language can relativize just one position this is subject. The next accessible position to relativization is direct object, indirect object, oblique, genitive and object of comparison. This corpus-based study provides some evidence that show Persian language can also relativize the position of the nonverbal element of compound verbs but it cannot relativize the subject and object complement positions. Moreover this study shows that the pronoun retention or deletion in the direct object position relativized is not optional in some cases and even the pronoun retention or deletion in these cases makes the sentence ungrammatical. As another novelty in this study it can be mentioned that the pronoun deletion in the indirect object position is possible under specific conditions. Also we concluded that the relative particle ‘ke’ is not, contrary to the common assumption, obligatory.

This article is a review of the Rastakhiz-e-Kalemat (The Resurrection of the Word), a book by Mohammad Reza Shafiee Kadkani. It mostly examines the author's claim that Russian Formalists (specially Roman Jakobson) and Muslim rhetoricians (specially Al-Jurjani) have the same view of “Grammatical Meanings”. In order to show the inadequacy of this conjecture, concepts such as grammatical oppositions, markedness of one of the opposites, invariant meanings, and the role of context and situation in poetry has been examined drawing upon Jakobson’s work. Then, grammatical meanings according to Al-Jurjani have been examined. The article concludes that there is no similarity between these two view points and any claims of similarity is not justified.