Document Type : Original Article
Author
Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Abstract
The study considers certain peculiarities shared by a number of western Iranian dialects, which are not observed in the three modern literary forms of New Persian: literary Iranian Persian (Farsi), Afghan Persian (Dari) and Tajiki. The present author has previously conducted detailed research on the Herati dialect based on field research in Afghanistan and, after comparing the said dialect with other Horasani dialects (common in Iran), has identified common features of Khorasan Persian dialects. In the course of the present author’s research on these dialects, it became evident that some of these peculiar features go back to Medieval Times and are attested by an 11th century treatise: “Tabaqāt al-Sūfiyyih” consisting of utterances of A. Ansari, the outstanding mystic and commentator of the Qur’an and whose language reflects some traits of the old Herati dialect. The language of the treatise was studied by the famous iranoligist W. A. Ivanow. But until now, no attempt has been made to consider the characteristics of the language of that treatise from the perspective of modern dialectology. The present study, which fills this gap, analyzes some common features of Khorasani Persian dialects, including Herati and Sistani, Tati dialects in the Caucasus, the dialects of Central Iran spoken by the Zoroastrians, and some other dialects in relation to the language of the “Tabakat al-Sufiyyah”. The dialectal features examined in this article include the use of the third person/demonstrative pronoun enclitically, the use of the preposition xod/xode (with different phonetic variants) meaning "with", and the use of the verb suffix -i/-ê, which is considered a "continuous suffix".
Keywords
- Iranian studies
- Persian dialectology
- Iranian dialectology
- Comparative dialectology
- Khorasani dialects
Main Subjects
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