Ezāfe

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Ezāfe (

romanized: izofa), is a grammatical particle found in some Iranian languages, as well as Persian-influenced languages such as Ottoman Turkish and Hindi-Urdu, that links two words together.[1][2][3][4] In the Persian language, it consists of the unstressed short vowel -e or -i (-ye or -yi after vowels)[5] between the words it connects and often approximately corresponds in usage to the English preposition of. It is generally not indicated in writing in the Persian script,[6][7] which is normally written without short vowels, but it is indicated in Tajiki, which is written in the Cyrillic
script, as without a hyphen.

Ezafe in Persian

Common uses of the Persian ezafe are:[8]

  • Possessive: برادرِ مریم barâdar-e Maryam "Maryam's brother" (it can also apply to pronominal possession, برادرِ من barâdar-e man "my brother", but in speech it is much more common to use possessive suffixes: برادرم barâdar-am).
  • Adjective-noun: برادرِ بزرگ barâdar-e bozorg "the big brother".
  • Given name/title-family name: محمد مصدق
    Mohammad-e Mosaddeq
    , آقای مصدق âghâ-ye Mosaddeq "Mr. Mosaddeq"
  • Linking two nouns: خیابانِ تهران khiâbân-e Tehrân "Tehran Street" or "Road to Tehran"

After final long vowels (â ا or u و) in words, the ezâfe is marked by a ye (ی) intervening before the ezâfe ending. If a word ends in the short vowel (designated by a he ه), the ezâfe may be marked either by placing a hamze diacritic over the he (ـهٔ) or a non-connecting ye after it (ـه‌ی).[9] The ye is prevented from joining by placing a zero-width non-joiner, known in Persian as nim-fâsele (نیم‌فاصله), after the he.

Form Example Transliteration Meaning
ـهٔ خانهٔ مجلّل khâne-ye mojallal Luxurious House
ـه‌ی خانه‌ی مجلّل

The Persian grammatical term ezâfe is borrowed from the

case endings.[citation needed][dubious ] However, whereas the Iranian ezâfe denotes a grammatical particle (or even a pronoun), in Arabic, the word iḍāfa actually denotes the relationship between the two words.[citation needed][clarification needed] In Arabic, two words in an iḍāfa construction are said in English to be in possessed-possessor construction (where the possessed is in the construct state
and any case, and the possessor is in the genitive case and any state).

In Urdu-Hindi

Iẓāfat in Urdu-Hindi is a syntactical construction of two nouns, where the first component is a determined noun, and the second is a determiner. This construction was borrowed from Persian.

Hindi-Urdu, a short vowel "i" is used to connect these two words, and when pronouncing the newly formed word the short vowel is connected to the first word. If the first word ends in a consonant or an ʿain (ع), it may be written as zer ( ــِـ ) at the end of the first word, but usually is not written at all. If the first word ends in choṭī he (ہ) or ye (ی or ے) then hamzā (ء) is used above the last letter (ۂ or ئ or ۓ). If the first word ends in a long vowel (ا or و), then a different variation of baṛī ye (ے) with hamzā on top (ئے, obtained by adding ے to ئ) is added at the end of the first word. In Devanagari, these characters are written as .[10]

Forms Example Devanagari Transliteration Meaning
Urdu script Devanagari
ــِ شیرِ پنجاب शेर-ए-पंजाब sher-e-Panjāb the lion of Punjab
ۂ ملکۂ دنیا मलिका-ए-दुनिया malika-ye-duniyā the queen of the world
ئ ولئ کامل वली-ए-कामिल walī-ye-kāmil perfect saint
ۓ مۓ عشق मय-ए-इश्क़ may-e-'ishq the wine of love
روئے زمین रू-ए-ज़मीन -ye-zamīn the surface of the Earth
صدائے بلند सदा-ए-बुलंद sadā-ye-buland a high voice

In other languages

Besides Persian, ezafe is found in other

Sher-e-Bangla (Tiger of Bengal), Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamic assembly) and Mah-e-Romzan (Month of Ramadan
).

The Albanian language also has an ezafe-like construction, as for example in Partia e Punës e Shqipërisë, Party of Labour of Albania (the Albanian communist party). The linking particle declines in accordance to the gender, definiteness, and number of the noun that precedes it. It is used in adjectival declension and forming the genitive:

  • Zyra e Shefit "The Boss' office" (The office of the boss)
  • Në një zyrë afërt "In an adjacent office"
  • Jashtë zyrës tij "Outside his office" (The office of his)

Besides the above mentioned languages, ezafe is used in

Kurdish
in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran:

Çem-ê

river-EZAFE‍

Dîclê

Tigris

Çem-ê Dîclê

river-EZAFE‍ Tigris

The Tigris River

Etymology

Originally, in

iḍāfa
construct, with the first noun being in any case, and the second being in the genitive case, as in Arabic or Latin.

However, over time, a relative pronoun such as tya or hya (meaning "which") began to be interposed between the first element and its genitive attribute.

  • by the will which (is) of Auramazdah

William St. Clair Tisdall states that the modern Persian ezafe stems from the relative pronoun which, which in Eastern Iranian languages (Avestan) was yo or yat. Pahlavi (Middle Persian) shortened it to ī (spelled with the letter Y in Pahlavi scripts), and after noun case endings passed out of usage, this relative pronoun which (pronounced /e/ in New Persian), became a genitive "construct" marker. Thus the phrase

  • mard-e xub مردِ خوب

historically means "man which (is) good" rather than "good man."[12]

In other modern Iranian languages, such as

Northern Kurdish, the ezafe particle is still a relative pronoun, which declines for gender and number.[13]
However, rather than translating it as "which," as its etymological origin suggests, a more accurate translation for the New Persian use of ezafe would be a linking genitive/attributive "of" or, in the case of adjectives, not translating it.

Since the ezafe is not typical of the

Elamite influence on Old Persian, which followed the Iranian migration to the territories previously inhabited by the Elamites.[14]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ . Persian not only spread its lexical and some morphological influences into the indigenous languages with which it came into contact, but also was itself influenced by its Indian environment, developing a new literary variety, Sabk-e-Hindi. Abidi & Gargesh 2008 discusses this "Indianization of Persian", citing both the borrowing of words from Indian languages and the use of expressions which are semantically and emotionally Indian. Code mixing with Indian languages is found at the levels of morpheme, phrase, and clause. Compound words include one item from Persian and the other from Hindi; and the ezafe construction and conjunctive -o- are found joining Hindi words (Abidi & Gargesh 2008: 112).
  2. ^ . There are also Persian prepositions, such as baa- 'with' and bee- 'without', which form Hindi-Urdu compound words (Schmidt 1999: 20-252): (52) a. baa-iimaan 'with faith, faithful' b. bee-sharm 'without shame, shameless' Another interesting construction borrowed from Persian is theezafe construction, which in Hindi-Urdu, especially in Urdu, contrasts with the genitive =kaa postposition (Schmidt 1999: 246-247).
  3. ^ a b Bhatia, Tej K.; Ritchie, William C. (2006). The Handbook of Bilingualism. pp. 789–790.
  4. ^ a b Calendar of Persian Correspondence. Superintendent Government Printing. 1911. p. xxxv. Not only the vocabulary but the very structure of the Persian language had undergone some modifications in the hands of the Hindu munshis. They used Hindi words with Persian izafat (case - endin) viz , jatra i Prayag (pilgrimage to Prayag), purohit i tirtha (priest of the place of the place of pilgrimage), ishnan i Kashi (sacred bath at Benares), dak i harkarah (courier's dawk), darshan i sri Jagannath (visit to Jagannath), kothi i mahajani (merchant's firm).
  5. ^ The short vowel "ــِـ" (known as kasra or kasré) is pronounced as e or i depending on the dialect.
  6. ^ Abrahams 2005, p. 25.
  7. ^ Calendar of Persian Correspondence. India Imperial Record Department. 1959. p. xxiv. Sometimes Hindi words were used with Persian izafat as in ray-i-rayan (1255), jatra-i-Kashi (820), chitthi-i-huzur (820). But the more interesting aspect of the jargon is the combination of Hindi and Persian words in order to make an idiom, e.g. loot u taraj sakhtan (466) and swargvas shudan (1139).
  8. ^ Moshiri 1988, pp. 21–23.
  9. ^ "Persian Online – Grammar & Resources » Ezāfe 1". Retrieved 2022-07-06.
  10. ^ Delacy 2003, pp. 99–100.
  11. ^ Harvey, Lehmann & Slocum 2004.
  12. ^ Tisdall 1902, pp. 21, 184.
  13. ^ Haig 2011, p. 365.
  14. ^ Yakubovich 2020.

References

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