Ezāfe
Ezāfe (
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
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.
Forms | Example | Devanagari | Transliteration | Meaning | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Urdu script | Devanagari | ||||
ــِ | ए | 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 | rū-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
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 të afërt "In an adjacent office"
- Jashtë zyrës së tij "Outside his office" (The office of his)
Besides the above mentioned languages, ezafe is used in
Çem-ê
river-EZAFE
Dîclê
Tigris
The Tigris River
Etymology
Originally, in
- vašnā Auramazdāha "by the will of Auramazda"
- vašnā "will" (Instrumental case)
- Auramazdāha "Ahura Mazda (God)" (genitive case)[11]
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
Since the ezafe is not typical of the
See also
- Nominative case
- Oblique case
- construct case)
Notes
- ^ ISBN 978-3-11-042338-9.
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).
- ^ ISBN 978-3-11-039315-6.
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).
- ^ a b Bhatia, Tej K.; Ritchie, William C. (2006). The Handbook of Bilingualism. pp. 789–790.
- ^ 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).
- ^ The short vowel "ــِـ" (known as kasra or kasré) is pronounced as e or i depending on the dialect.
- ^ Abrahams 2005, p. 25.
- ^ 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).
- ^ Moshiri 1988, pp. 21–23.
- ^ "Persian Online – Grammar & Resources » Ezāfe 1". Retrieved 2022-07-06.
- ^ Delacy 2003, pp. 99–100.
- ^ Harvey, Lehmann & Slocum 2004.
- ^ Tisdall 1902, pp. 21, 184.
- ^ Haig 2011, p. 365.
- ^ Yakubovich 2020.
References
- Abrahams, Simin (2005). Modern Persian: A Course-Book. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 0-7007-1327-1.
- Delacy, Richard (2003). Beginner's Urdu Script. McGraw-Hill.
- Haig, Geoffrey (2011). "Linker, relativizer, nominalizer, tense-particle: On the Ezafe in West Iranian". In Foong Ha Yap; Karen Grunow-Hårsta; Janick Wrona (eds.). Nominalization in Asian Languages: Diachronic and typological perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. pp. 363–390. ISBN 978-90-272-0677-0.
- Harvey, Scott L.; Lehmann, Winfred P.; Slocum, Jonathan (2004). "Old Persian: excerpts from Darian Inscription DB IV". Old Iranian Online. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin.
- Karimi, Yadgar (2007). "Kurdish Ezafe construction: implications for DP structure". Lingua. 117 (12): 2159–2177. .
- Moshiri, Leila (1988). Colloquial Persian. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-00886-7.
- Tisdall, W. St. Clair (1902). Modern Persian Conversation-Grammar with Reading Lessons, English-Persian Vocabulary and Persian Letters. London: Nutt.
- Yakubovich, Ilya (2020). "Persian ezāfe as a contact-induced feature". Voprosy Jazykoznanija (5): 91–114. S2CID 226493392.