Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
This research is a comparative study of the typological parameters of contemporary spoken Persian language and Saravi, a main dialect of the Mazandarani language, using some Greenbergian universals as its theoretical framework in word order correlations. The study aims to determine the common parameters and the variations of specific syntactic constituents among the systems studied here. On this basis it investigates the unmarked word order in declarations, as well as preparing a systematic comparison of phrasal genitive and adjective structures in the systems under investigation, along with examining their self and possessive pronominal orders. Together with revealing the use of differential orderings within the systems in these respects throughout the paper, the findings uphold Greenberg's language universals as a useful tool in classifying language types as well as specifying the variations of the syntactic constituents.
We wish to express our gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on the paper.
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7 Shirin Mehmanchian Saravi.
8 Greenberg, Joseph H., ed., Universals of Language, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1966 [1963])Google Scholar.
9 Ibid., 60.
10 Ibid., 62.
11 Ibid., 77.
12 Throughout this paper ‘a’ examples are spoken Persian and ‘b’ ones are Saravi.
13 The object markers are /-o/ and /–ro/ in Persian and /–re/ in Saravi.
14 Shahidi, A Sociolinguistics Study, 110.
15 This sign is used to represent ill-formed or ungrammatical structures.
16 While Persian includes both dependent and independent possessive pronouns, Saravi only displays the independent forms in its system, exemplified in example 11. Comparisons of self pronouns, possessive pronouns and possessive pronominal adjectives in the two systems are presented in Tables 3, 4 and 5, respectively.
17 Greenberg, Universals of Language, 62.
18 This example is the name of a mountain in Iran.
19 Greenberg, Universals of Language, 71.
20 The presence or absence of Ezafe is not a matter for consideration within the present example, where attention is focused on the order of the head noun and the subordinate (genitive).
21 Greenberg, Universals of Language, 60.
22 Ibid., 75.
23 Ali is genitive in both Persian and Saravi here.
24 Example 28b here is an ungrammatical structure, the concept of which is declared by the following sentence:
25 Greenberg, Universals of Language, 68.
26 Ibid., 68–69.
27 The sign is used to show the un-equivalency of the structures on its two sides.
28 Greenberg, Universals of Language, 71.
29 The lists of possessive adjectives are presented in Table 5.
30 Greenberg, Universals of Language, 68.
31 Greenberg, Universals of Language, 70.
32 The sign ? is used here to show the unusual sentence structure.
33 The word form “which” is not used explicitly in Saravi, but the meaning implies it.
34 In Persian the subject pronoun precedes the preposition, while Saravi uses the object pronoun without /-re/ (the object marker).
35 Though this might cause semantic changes due to the change in the degree of formality (thank you to the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out).