The Complements of the Root dā in Avestan and Old Persian Languages

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD student.Department of Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

2 Associate Professor. Department of Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

3 Professor, Department of Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran

4 Assistant Professor, Department of Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

In ancient Iranian languages (Avestan and Old Persian), in addition to inflectional structure, syntactic relations and semantic roles of the core and local cases would be examined. In these languages, the complements of the verb, which can be nouns, adjectives, or pronouns, are represented through case markers that indicate different roles depending on the verb. The representation of verb complements and the function of cases in the accompaniment of different verbs have not been the attention of researchers in this field, except for brief references- it is better to say that the investigation of this issue has been somewhat neglected in ancient Iranian languages. Therefore, in this article, the complements of one of the commonly used and more frequent roots of the Avestan language- but not of the Old Persian- dā, have been investigated. In the Avestan texts, it is mostly found in the meanings of giving, creating, and setting, and in the Old Persian inscriptions, it means giving and creating. According to the analysis of the sentences containing the root dā, the complements of this root, depending on the meaning and context, are shown by the accusative and dative cases in the Old Persian, and accusative, dative, genitive and locative cases in the Avestan. Either of them has several semantic roles, such as theme/patient, recipient, beneficiary, object complement, goal, and location.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Iranian Dialects & Linguistics
Volume 9, Issue 1
October 2024
Pages 51-73

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History

  • Receive Date: 12 January 2024
  • Revise Date: 09 March 2024
  • Accept Date: 04 March 2024

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