Iranian Linguistics

The Iranian Linguistics Research Team (ILRT) in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona investigates various aspects of Iranian languages. This investigation consists of both descriptive as well as theoretical analyses. ILRT began its work in 2015, supported by an NSF funded grant, and has continued its activities since then. We received an NSF grant for a workshop on Complex Predicates in Iranian Languages in 2019, and a major NSF grant to investigate the syntax, morphology and phonology of five Iranian languages (Balochi, Ossetian, Pashto, Persian, Sorani-Kurdish) in 2019.

The research team has produced:

The Iranian Language Family


According to the Ethnologue, there are 86 attested languages in the Iranian language family. These languages are spoken by 150-200 million people. The oldest attested languages in the Iranian family are Old Persian, known from the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achaemenian emperors, and Avestan, the language of Avesta, a collection of sacred Zoroastrian texts. Old Persian can be clearly associated with the Southwest Iranian group, and must be considered a direct precursor of Middle and Modern Persian (Payne 1990). The three major variants of Persian are: Farsi (Iran), Tajiki (Tajikistan), and Dari (Afghanistan), each exhibiting distinct phonological and syntactic variations. Lori is another member of the Southwest Iranian family spoken in Lorestan and Ilam, two provinces in Western Iran.

There are several languages or sub-families within the Northwestern Iranian languages, including two Kurdish languages: Kurmanji, spoken in the northern part of Kurdistan province in Iran, and in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey; and Sorani, in the Kurdish areas across the border of Iran and Iraq. Each one of them has its own distinct dialects that exhibit phonological and syntactic variations. The other members of the Northwestern group are Laki, in the western part of Iran; Zazaki (or Dimli) in Anatolia (Turkey); Balochi, in Eastern Iran and Pakistan; Taleshi, along the Caspian Sea in Iran; Mazandarani, near the Caspian Sea; and Vafsi, in the central areas in Iran, as well as Gorani, spoken in the southern part of Kurdistan, and Hawrami in the western borders of Iran.

The Southeast Iranian languages include Pashto, spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan; and Pamiri in Central Asia. Finally, the Northeast language is Ossetian, spoken in Russia and Georgia. This language has two distinct dialects, Iron and Digor, that are not mutually understandable by their respective speakers, and therefore, are considered different languages by some.

All Iranian languages exhibit some common characteristics. One such property is that they are all verb-final. Other common properties include (a) the remarkably interesting and complex verbal constructions, (b) the existence of a broad range of derivational and inflectional affixes, (c) a syntax-morphological phenomenon called EZAFE (addition) construction where an EZAFE enclitic links a nominal element to its modifiers and possessor, and (d) various types of clitic positioning.

There are also some differences between these languages. For example, some of these languages have nominative/accusative properties (Persian), while almost all others have retained split-ergativity in transitive constructions based on tense or aspect. Furthermore, while Persian passive construction seems to be overwhelmingly based on light verb alternation (Folli, Harley, Karimi 2005), other Iranian languages exhibit mixed constructions consisting of both morphological and structural patterns. Moreover, another difference between these languages is object marking. While some of them, e.g. Persian, mark specific objects, known as Differential Object Marking (DOM) (Karimi 1990, 1996, Karimi & Smith 2018, Ghomeshi 1997, Jasbi 2018, among others), others lack this property. Additionally, elliptical constructions receive various acceptability levels in these languages. Finally, the phonologies and prosodies of these languages vary widely.