This paper provides a sociolinguistic and grammatical synopsis of Bavadi Bakhtiari, spoken in Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari Province, Iran. The results presented here are based on the collection of linguistic and cultural data through field research, including ethnographic research, recording of oral texts, elicitation of a language data questionnaire, and follow-up interviews with speakers of the language. In addition to providing a linguistic snapshot of the Bavadi variety of Bakhtiari in its social context, this study offers a novel contribution to the documentation of Iran’s linguistic heritage through the presentation and analysis of culturally important oral texts of various genres. While one text belongs to the controlled and formulaic genre of the folktale, two other texts are based on free conversation among groups of speakers.

This article, the third in a series, focuses on the “living” preverbs used in the verbal system of contemporary Pashto. The verbs treated here belong to the “compound verbs with preverb” class or to the “mixed verbs with preverb” class: verbs that replace the wə́- of the simple verbs with another preverb. This class of verbs represents a closed set, and a complete list of these verbs can be investigated systematically and exhaustively. This subject is as yet unexamined and its implications for the interpretation of contemporary Pashto verbal morphology are particularly stimulating.

This article investigates definiteness and its interactions with demonstratives and number in Laki (Northwestern Iranian). By the examination of demonstratives and building upon previous proposals, I argue for two types of definite DPs in Laki, namely anaphoric and deictic. I show that the patterns of definite and number marking are sensitive to the type of the DP. In particular, I argue that double definiteness, resulting from an Agree relation between D and N, and head movement of Num to D both are obtained only in anaphoric definite DPs for feature-checking requirements. Overall, this study highlights the contributions of anaphoricity to the DP internal structure. The present proposal can account for similar phenomena in other Iranian languages (i.e., Sorani and Kermanshahi Kurdish). The divergence of Laki definiteness from similar attested patterns (i.e., Scandinavian double definiteness) contributes to our cross-linguistic understanding of definiteness and its interactions with other nominal elements.

This paper describes and analyzes data from a number of Modern Iranian dialects spoken in Khorasan in the east of Iran which are unusual among the other Western Iranian languages in that they have grammaticalized a split tense-sensitive alignment in indexation, compared to other Iranian languages whose indexation splitness is sensitive to both tense and transitivity. These dialects are the former dialect of Birjand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the present-day dialect of Ferdows, Khanik, and Se-Ghal’e. The findings are put in the context of the available data from the Classical Persian texts to show that the tense-sensitive splitness mentioned above is traceable in those texts. A number of external factors are discussed which seem to have been influential in the restructuring of the split-alignment of the former dialect of Birjand into a uniformly nominative-accusative alignment in terms of indexation as observed in the present-day dialect of Birjand. It is proposed that this restructuring is an instance of simplification. The three other dialects cited above are endangered in the sense that they can undergo the same kind of restructuring as happened to the dialect of Birjand.

Located in the Caspian forest south of the capital city of Sāri in Mazandaran, the rural district of Kalijān Rostāq is home to a number of close-knit villages which share a local Mazandarani dialect. The vernacular offers some authentic features in phonology, morphology, and lexis that are otherwise lost in the urban variety spoken in Sāri due to contact with Persian. In an attempt to elucidate on the loosely-known aspects of the Mazandarani language, this study offers a sketch grammar of the dialect of Kalijān Rostāq with a view to typological features. The glossary that follows includes many Caspian cultural items that are already moribund in the language.

Phonology is one of several aspects of a natural language and it is the study of sound systems of languages. The purpose of this article is to study and describe the phonemic system of the dialect of Marvdashti. Marvdashti dialect belongs to the southwestern branch of New Iranian languages. The article deals with an inventory of Marvdashti dialect sounds and their features and it covers the phonological rules which specify how sounds interact with each other. This study first introduces and examines the consonants and vowels of Marvdashti dialect, and then explores phoneme arrangement, syllable structure and phonological processes such as assimilation, dissimilation, alteration, epenthesis, deletion and methathesis.