Descriptive Grammar of New Persian

Navid Fazel, info@dastur.info

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Introduction

„And what about the Persian language?
Being so gentle and delicate,
that all those meanings and subtleties,
having come down to us in Persian,
cannot be expressed in Arabian!”
 Schams Tabrizi (13th century AD)

This work constitutes a further development of the treatise „Grammatical Discourses” (written in 1995), which could not be published in Teheran as a print medium.

The present work is an academic grammar. It can be considered as a reference book requiring basic knowledge of New Persian. Having no didactic structure, quite in contrast to students’ grammars, it is neither suited for one’s private study nor for language instruction for beginners, moreover so, as the succession of its sections - following its systematic structure - is strictly subject-oriented.

This descriptive grammar does not merely focus on modern Persian, but is dealing with the entire epoch of the New Persian language as the successor of Middle Persian. The description of the New Persian grammar is being carried out in the context of the Iranian languages, however, it concentrates on written sources and - as far as the modern language is concerned - on the official languages of Iran and Afghanistan, taking into special account the extensions in the official language of Tajikistan. Oral sources as well as dialects were only dealt with in passing.

Phonetic-grammatical aspects of the language also have been disregarded in this work, but the transcription occurs regarding to the rules of the „International Phonetic Association“= IPA, with the Persian part delivered by Prof. Dr. Elmar Tendes and Dr. Mohammad Reza Majidi from the “Institut für Phonetic, Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaften und Indogermanistik der Universität Hamburg”:

Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (1991), 96-98. (Wiederabdruck in: Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge:University Press 1999, S. 124-125).

This analysis refers only to the educated Persian speakers in the area Tehran. Therefore, our work uses some additional characters of the „International Phonetic Alphabet“, to reflect the official languages of Afghanistan Tajikistan and the archaic idioms of New Persian as well.

This browser-based treatise was conceived in accordance with the following criteria:

  1. Only pure HTML-code was used. Neither do scripts occur in the main text, nor are there links to images, which is why:
    1. No components will have to be installed on the client (computer), i.e. no administrator rights are required.
    2. In order to facilitate retrieval from the Internet, the documents feature only those options which are absolutely necessary.
  2. The New Persian texts do not require a separate conversion of the character set (or coding respectively).
  3. A minimum screen resolution of 640 x 480 pixels is required for representing it on a display
  4. The documents can be printed directly out of the browser in optimal quality.
  5. The header of each document displays links to the other language versions of the same document.
  6. In order to facilitate both orientation and changing over to another document, this header does also contain the path plus links to the superordinate subjects.

One of the pioneers of Iranian linguistics, Dr. Mohammad Moin, set out in the preface to his valuable series „Basics of Persian Grammar” (1961):

A number of scholars is of the opinion: „The time has not yet come to write and publish the Persian grammar/. They can be subdivided into several groups:

The members of the first group do not give any reasons for this statement, besides, they are basically opposed to undertaking anything. It goes without saying that these cannot be considered to be a possible reference.

Still others say: „This grammar cannot be written by a single person/. This is quite correct and generally accepted. …

There are, however, adherents of a third theory: „A grammar must not be published until all Persian texts (both poetry and prose) have been printed.” This opinion sounds strange, besides, it is also being upheld as concerns Persian dictionaries, namely: „A Persian dictionary must not be drawn up before all Persian texts have been corrected and printed”.

However, one cannot but acknowledge that no correction of texts is possible without consulting dictionaries and without knowing the grammatical rules. This is why we find ourselves in a vicious circle: Neither dictionaries nor a grammar should be written, before all texts have been printed, the text, on the other hand, should not be corrected, as neither dictionaries nor a grammar have been drawn up!

… It is a matter of common sense to write a grammar and draw up a dictionary having regard to both contemporary research and older studies in the field of Middle Eastern as well as Western philologists. They should be based on prose and poetry already available in printed form as well as on manuscripts. Finally, this selfsame dictionary and this grammar will have to be relied upon for correcting the corresponding texts. Texts, which are both corrected and printed subsequently, will inevitably serve to clarify a number of obscure lexical and grammatical items and will thus bring about a revision of certain grammatical rules …

A comprehensive grammatical work of these dimensions will necessarily have to rely upon the dynamic cooperation of readers interested in linguistics. Therefore, your kind remarks, corrections and additions are always welcome, via email to info@dastur.info, in order to take these into consideration in the process of ongoing revisions.

This treatise constitutes the result of a long process, although I would not have been able to finish it without the selfless support of my wife, Mrs. Tannaz Fazel, as well as of that of my parents, Mr. Manouchehr Fazel and Mrs. Parivash Nowrooz, which is why I am deeply indebted to them all. Last but not least I would also like to express my thanks to Messrs. Djafar Shahidi, PhD, Khosrow Farshidvard, PhD, Hasan Anvari, PhD, Hasan Ahmadi Givi, PhD, and Mahdi Mahuzi, PhD.

Bonn
Navid Fazel