Talk:Persian grammar

Object, Subject Marking/ Ergativity

I'd like to see some examples of transitive and intransitive verbs in future, present, and past tenses - For transitive verbs, I hear that in the future and present, objects are marked with the accusative, yet in the past the marker goes on the subject...? If this is indeed true I think a section on 'split ergativity' would be great!

examples:

John will sleep/ John will see the man

John sleeps/ John sees the man

John slept/ John saw the man

Present Tense

I have been studying Persian on my own. One things that I have found to be hard to come by on the Web is the the imperative forms of the common verbs used in Persian. These forms are required in order to know how to form the present tense. I have partially compiled the following table, but it is not good enough yet to put into the article. Would anyone like to clean this up?

Infinitive	Transliteration	Pronunciation	Imperative	Transliteration	Pronunciation	Definition
کردن	KRDN	kardan	کن	KN	kon	to do
بودن	BVDN	budan	باش	BASh	besh	to be
شدن	ShDN	shodan	شو	ShV	?	to become
داشتن	DAShTN	dashtan	دار	DAR	dar	to have
خواستن	KhVASTN	khâstan	خواه	KhVAHe	khovah	to want
گفتن	GFTN	goftan	گوي	GVY	goe?	to say
دادن	DADN	dādan	ده	DHe	doh	to give
گرفتن	GRFTN	gereftan	گير	GYR	ger	to get/take/catch/hold/seize/receive
آمدن	AMDN	āmædæn	آي	AY	ae	to come
توانستن	TVANSTN	tavânestan	توان	TVAN	tovan	to be able; can; may
يافتن	YAFTN	yâftan	ياب	YAB	aeb	to find
آوردن	AVRDN	âvardan	آور	AVR	eaor?	to bring

For instance I am not sure if شو is pronounced like 'show' or 'shaev' or something else altogether.

Technical

We need to explain what SOV vs. SVO and some of the other abbreviations used mean - I know it seems self-explanatory, but not everyone will get it. As it stands, it looks like a mad linguist ran through certain sections of the article tossing jargon grenades.

Cleanup & Wikify

Some of the tables here look sloppy, and we are using specialized transliteration orthography that not everyone will understand (s with caron, etc.) We should probably use IPA, but not everyone will be able to read that either.--Jpbrenna 00:07, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of transliterations and jargon grenades, I'm taking out the case markings table because:

a) It's not necessary to mention Persian prepositions as case markings unless you are a Latin speaker, etc. As this article is written in English, it's quite fitting to describe æz, dær, etc. as prepositions, for which there is a section already, and rā has already been treated.

b) The transliterations are sloppy---eg. Bukhara and Bokharara, using <a> to denote both /æ/ and /ɒ/ . The examples came from an older text, which makes the table feel like it's written by William Jones.

and besides,

c) The examples of the declensions are not in parallel with each other.

d) The glosses are unmarked

e) The ACC entry fails to even mention the rā in the example

Also, the International Phonetic Alphabet is great for discussing phonetics and even phonology, but it gets annoying to read when the subject is something unrelated, like syntax. The transliteration scheme used in this article is fairly normal for linguists working on Persian. --jonsafari 04:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is normal for linguists working on Persian - but Wikipdia isn't for linguists working on Persian, it's for general readers. Not every reader - probably not even most - will be a linguist familiar with Americanist phonetic notation. The only exceptions would be a Czech or a Greek: the former would know š stands for "sh" and the Greek would read x as "kh," but this is after all the English Wikipedia, as you point out. The article will be far more accesible if we write "khoda ro shokur" and not "xoda ro škr." The only reason I suggested IPA is that slightly more users are likely to be familiar with that system, although it would still make the article relatively inaccessible.

Speaking of general readers, I have in my possession a simple 21st-century Persian phrasebook directed toward the broadest-possible English speaking audience which uses the terms "ablative" etc., with explanation of their meaning for the layman. The book was written by a native speaker, a published linguist who lectures in Iran. Although he may have modeled his grammar section on somewhat older English-language sources, I doubt very much that he went all the way back to Sir William. While I followed him in using the Latinate terms, the examples in the case table were entirely my own. I used Bukhara with unadorned a's because that is the transliteration most readers are likely to be familiar with; the -o- version was a mistake. I admit my Persian is so poor as to not even warrant an FA-1 tag, but I was writing out some pretty simple phrases. I asked a native speaker on Wikipedia to check the examples, but apparently he hasn't gotten around to it yet. --Jpbrenna 16:59, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate your input. My only suggestion is that you familiarize yourself more with Persian a little more before making big changes to the article, as Dehghani's Lonely Planet phrasebook and speaking with a few native speakers does not give a complete picture of what's going on in the language. I respectfully disagree with his overcomplication of describing to the general public be as the dative case, dar as locative, and az as ablative. Also, while using <a> for both /æ/ and /ɒ/ is fine for native speakers SMSing each other, it's painfully ambiguous for any description of the language. Also, using <ro> to describe the accusative marker is appropriate to mention in a more phonologically-oriented article, but a grammar-oriented article should try not to make use of allomorphs in examples, as this distracts from the main concept being illustrated. BTW, I like the template, but we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves to break up the grammar article into so many little articles at this point in time (although noun and verb articles are reasonable). --jonsafari 19:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

(More of) my suggestions for expanding & improving the article - please comment

Actually, I think it should become more of an article series, with summaries here - just as it is with other languages on Wikipedia - but maybe we should discuss having just one big article for now (see below).

Other languages (say, German) probably need a separate article on adjectives, since declension can be an issue. As long as there's only a couple paragraphs talking about a given item, I see little need to separate it into a separate article. Of course there's alot to say about nouns and verbs, so that's understandable to spin these off into separate articles. But if we keep it a single article while we're resolving, eg. transliteration issues etc., the more consistency we'll have when we do spin them off. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Transliteration

I looked at the Bukhara article, and it transliterates the Persian as Bukhârâ. Maybe we could use marked vowels instead of the ligature, but dispense with the x and s-with-caron for the consonants and just use the expected English digraphs instead? My concern is that a non-specialist consulting this article will be put off by the transliteration system. People should be aware of the system, however - I have seen it used in Ann Lambton's grammar and in some other works on Persian, and your comments seem to suggest it is the de facto standard in Persian studies. Why don't we create an article on transliteration of Persian, or discuss it at the Persian alphabet article and link to the appropriate section from here?

I'm not sure why the Bukhara article would be seen as any sort of reference. While I have a Langenscheidt Persian-German German-Persian dictionary (aimed at regular German speakers) that uses <x>, <š>, and <č> in their transliteration, I'm ok with changing these three to <kh>, <sh>, and <ch>. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Content & Layout - Greek style?

I think Greek grammar does a pretty good job of describing the grammar of modern Greek, without resorting to separate articles for nouns, verbs, etc. - although most other language articles seem to do this. Everything is covered, examples are given, and the tables are neat and attractive. My only complaint is that the overall article is overly-long, in my opinon. Another problem is that the contributors assume one knows the Greek alphabet and the phonetic values in Modern Greek. I happen to be able to read Greek, but not every reader will; I think if we imitate their layout (where appropriate) we might want to have both the original Perso-Arabic and an easily readable transliteration.

In the inline text we could have a format like dær (در) 'door', and possibly for floats too. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Another thing Greek currently lacks, but which I would like to see here, is pronunciation of each written example by a native speaker. The Polish language article used to have at least a few of these in .ogg format; personally, I think it's a great idea. Eventually, if we develop articles on the different dialects we could even have dialect speakers record themselves and maybe crosslink so people could compare & contrast the different sounds instead of just reading "close-front unrounded vowel in Standard Persian, but close-mid unrounded in Dari..." or looking at some symbol.

It seems more applicable to Persian phonology and the 2 persian alphabet articles, but if you'd like to spearhead that effort for this article, by all means. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

And whether we keep the ligatured ae and Czech-looking characters or not, can we at least agree that the format of the ugly verb tables has to be changed? They are very cheap-looking and off-putting in their current form: the dotted lines make me feel like I should print them out, clip them, and take them to the grocery store for 75 cents off a liter of Persian! --Jpbrenna 07:12, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I wrote a majority of this article one saturday afternoon, as you can see by viewing the first post of this article (id 11074942). The verb tables are in the format that they are because I just wanted to get the content up on the internet. I agree that the format of the verb tables is ugly, so if you'd like to change that, be my guest. --jonsafari 19:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Tajik

Looking at the Tajik grammar, it seems to be a rehashing of what's presented in this article, except the Cyrillic alphabet is used instead of the Perso-Arabic. It seems to me redundant, and instead of duplicating content, we should have the article focus on any major differences in the grammar of Tajik compared to the other dialects. In fact, it may not even pay to have a separeate "Tajik grammar" article: We could just discuss any grammatical differences in the "Tajik language" article, as they do for Cypriot Greek. What does everyone else think? --Jpbrenna 01:09, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm ok with either way. It seems to be right on the border between merging the two articles or meriting separate articles. It might be cumbersome to support the differences between Iranian Persian, Dari, and Tajik in one article, but then again there's alot of reduplication of effort. On the other hand, much of the necessary text is already in place for both articles, so why bother? Maybe a compromise could be to just coordinate efforts more, and have us keep an eye on both articles. There does seem to be some important Turkic influences on Tajik grammar. But like I said before, I'm fine with either way as long as things are executed non-sloppily. –jonsafari 20:42, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer for there to be two separate articles, as having more than one script in an article could be cumbersome. I think Jons suggestion of keeping an eye on both articles and co-ordinating would be best. There are books published on Tajik grammar, so I think having two articles would be reasonable. - FrancisTyers · 12:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

About the books on Tajik grammar mentionned elsewhere by Francis. The first one is undoubtly Valentina S. Ratorgueva, A Short Sketch of Tajik Grammar [translated and edited by Herbert H. Paper], Bloomington: Indiana University, 1963, 110 p., originaly published in Russian as an addenda to the Tadžiksko-russkij slovar' [Tajik Russian Dictionary], Moskva, 1954, 529-570. The textbook should be Azim Baizoyev, John Hayward, The Official Beginners' Guide to Tajiki, Dushanbe: Star Publications, 2001, 448 p. – a good book indeed, many of my students have been using it very successfuly. To me John Perry's A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar, 2005, a pretty good reference book, fails to assess throughoutfully for the spoken varieties but is fairly good at the philological description. On the modern history of the language, the reference is whithout any doubt Lutz Rzehak, Vom Persischen zum Tadschikischen: sprachliches Handeln und Sprachplanung in Transoaxanien zwischen Tradition, Moderne und Sowjetmacht (1900-1956), Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2001, 456 S. (it is in German). Thought it might be useful. –FOA 00:53, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

This situation is similar to that of Hindi-Urdu grammar. The decision there was to have one article with both scripts: Devanagari and Perseo-Arabic. If Tajik and Persian are mutually intelligible (as Hindi and Urdu are), it might be a good idea to merge the two. Thanks, Anupam^Talk 05:57, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Tenses

I added more tenses and presented them in 3rd person singular instead of 1st person (it's better especially for passive voice). We have more tenses in Persian and I could add them but since we have to resort to technical names, I decided to first talk about it and then decide what to do. I know here is not a forum but I didn't like to edit further without having had discussed about it. If I want to summarize Persian tenses of indicative mood (š = sh):

preterite: raft
l— imperfective: miraft
l— progressive: dâšt miraft
l— perfective: rafteast (#1)
l—— imperfective: mirafteast (#2)
l—— progressive: dâšte[ast] mirafteast (#3)

pluperfect: rafte bud
l— imperfective: mirafte bud
l— progressive: dâšt mirafte bud
l— perfective: rafte budeast
l—— imperfective: mirafte budeast (#4)
l—— progressive: dâšteast mirafte budeast (#5)

(#1) the enclitic -ast has been reduced to -e in spoken Iranian Persian and we say: rafte (stress is on the last syllable). Please note that -ast is not a word to be written apart. Although we normally do so in Perso-Arabic and separated with a "space" but it should be separated by a zero-width non-joiner character. Its HTML entity code is #8204.
(#2) for the same reason, we say mirafte
(#3) for the same reason, we say dâšte mirafte
(#4) for the same reason, we say mirafte bude
(#5) for the same reason, we say dâšte mirafte bude

Progressive tenses presented here, belong to spoken Iranian Persian. In Tajiki Persian, they have a different way for expressing the progressive aspect.

The tenses that I want to add are:

• dâšte[ast] mirafteast (progressive perfective preterite i.e. progressive aspect of perfective aspect of the preterite tense)
• dâšt mirafte bud (progressive pluperfect)
• rafte budeast (perfective pluperfect i.e. perfective aspect of pluperfect)
• mirafte budeast (imperfective perfective pluperfect)
• dâšteast mirafte budeast (progressive perfective pluperfect)

Additionally, under this naming, rafteast is called "perfective preterite" because as I have shown above, it's perfective aspect of preterite. This name conforms with other names (e.g. progressive aspect of perfective preterite: dâšte[ast] mirafteast)

My opinion: Persian has these tenses and we should include them in Wiki page even if we have to resort to using technical names. Perhaps, we can present them as the chart I have used above. --Alijsh 04:53, 4 November 2007 (UTC), --Alijsh 07:41, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

The reason I originally put the first person singular, instead of the third person singular, is that it clearly shows where the person and number agreement should appear on a verb or verbal complex. The third person singular form does not show this in many forms. This is very beneficial to those not familiar with Persian. Your other contributions are welcome additions. –jonsafari 01:20, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The article is too difficult

I am a university-trained language teacher. My degree included lingiistics. Yet I understand many parts of this article only very vaguely. I think Wikipedia articles should be comprehensible to any moderately well-educated reader. This one isn't. I suspect the only peope who will really understand it are those who know all about it anyway. APW (talk) 18:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

What specifically was too difficult for you? Is there another language grammar article that is not as difficult, that might serve as an example? –jonsafari (talk) 02:25, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Almost the entire section on verbs is packed with difficult and unexplained technical terms. APW (talk) 17:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Influence by Arabic

Can anyone add a section to the article where influence from Arabian is discussed? A lot of people think (probably reasonably) that all modern languages that belong to the Indo-Aryan group have diverged tremendously from the Indo-European structure. It would be very useful if there were some info on what new constructs appeared in modern Persian and how they supplanted the original Indo-European ones due to influence by different languages, mainly by Arabic. --78.60.136.180 (talk) 13:01, 15 February 2009 (UTC)