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Persian nouns
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Persian language |
|---|
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History Writing systems |
Persian nouns have no grammatical gender, and the case markers have been greatly reduced since Old Persian—both characteristics of contact languages. Persian nouns now mark with a postpositive only for the specific accusative case; the other oblique cases are marked by prepositions. Possession is expressed by special markers: if the possessor appears in the sentence after the thing possessed, the ezafe may be used; otherwise, alternatively, a pronomial genitive enclitic is employed.
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | æm | emān |
| 2nd | æt | etān |
| 3rd | æš | ešān |
Ezafe is name for the short vowel e, with the same sign which signifies consonantal h or he (ه) in Persian. Ezafe is used as an enclicitc to denote possession: ketab-e man means "my book." When ezafe follows a noun ending in a vowel, it becomes a glide known as hey ye and represented by the character ﮥ, pronounced -ye; e.g. khane-ye man for "my house."
The most common and productive form of pluralization for Persian nouns is with the suffix hā (ها). This is typically used for non-human nouns. Another productive plural suffix is ān (ان), used for human nouns. Many nouns borrowed from Arabic feminine forms pluralize using the āt (ات) suffix. Nouns borrowed from Arabic human forms often pluralize using the in (ین).
The most challenging type of nominal pluralization is for the so-called Arabic broken plurals. These nouns pluralize like their Arabic language counterparts: the internal vowels change in unpredictable ways.