Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/339

 PERSIA (LANGUAGE AND LITEBATUEE) 325 and in the two elder dialects is not an accu- sative termination, but adds to the noun the idea, "by way of, by reason of;" if an adjec- tive follows the noun, the syllable is appended to it instead of to the noun (asp-i-bad-rd, the bad horse). Between a genitive and the noun which governs it is inserted the so-called izd- fet, or the vowel i, as asp-i-merd, the horse of the man ; the same is also interposed between the substantive and the adjective which agrees with it, as asp-i-murdeh, dead horse. The be- ginning of this usage is to be traced even in the Avestan ; the inserted syllable is a relic of the relative pronoun ya, which has come to assume the office of indicating alone a relation originally expressed also by the termination of the following word. Thus, the former expres- sion would have been in Avestan acpo yo mas- yehe, the horse which (is that) of the man ; the latter, afpo yo mereto, the horse which (is) dead. In the Parsee and Huzvaresh, this i also stands in other connections, as an ordinary relative pronoun. Some philologists, without sufficient reason, have chosen to see in the use of the izdfet an imitation of the construct state of the Semitic noun, and so a proof of Semitic influence. Singularity or individuality is in- dicated by an appended e, as asp-e, a single horse ; this e is a remnant of the older aeva, one, and by the two next earlier idioms is used also as an independent numeral. The language possesses neither definite nor indefinite article. The suffixes of comparison of adjectives are ter for the comparative, term for the superlative ; the latter is a peculiar Persian development ; the two elder dialects have turn, corresponding to Av. tema (Sans, tama, Lat. timus). The Persian and Parsee pronouns are pure Iranian, modern representatives throughout of those presented by the ancient dialects ; the Huzva- resh employs as often, or yet oftener, Semitic forms. The three later idioms have a complete set of suffix pronouns, which are, for the three persons, singular em, et, esJi, plural emdn, etdn, eshdn; in the Persian they are attached espe- cially to nouns and verbs, to express the geni- tive, dative, or accusative relation, as asp-em, my horse, guftem-esTi, I spoke to him ; in the elder idioms they are appended only to con- junctions, prepositions, and other pronouns, as ez-et, from thee. They are a perfectly organic growth of the Iranian language, and are not to be attributed, any more than the izdfet, to Semitic influence. The Persian verb has pre- served hardly more of its original structure than the noun. It has indeed a complete and invariable set of personal endings, viz. : em, *, ed, em, ed, end; but its tenses are mostly formed periphrastically. The infinitive ends in ten or den (Parsee usually, Huzvaresh al- ways, tan), which corresponds to the Achse- menian tanaiy ; the past participle in ten or deh (Ach., Av., and Sans. to). From this par- ticiple is formed a preterite, by striking off the th, and appending the forms of the present tense of the auxiliary "to be, 1 ' which, except in the third person, est, agree precisely with the personal ending just given ; thus, from Icerden, to do, part. Jcerdeh, pret. Icerdem. This be- comes an imperfect by prefixing ml or Jiemi, which in Parsee and Huzvaresh is an indepen- dent word, meaning always, continually. From the unabbreviated participle, with the present and preterite of the same auxiliary, come a perfect and pluperfect, kerdeh em and Jcerdeh rudem. A future is formed by prefixing to the apocopated infinitive the present of the verb to will, to wish, qdJiem herd. The imperative of this verb is Tcun; the irregular verbs, which are numerous, and as usual the oldest and the most used of all, present always a discordance between the forms of the root as they appear in the infinitive and imperative respectively, and in this consists their irregularity; these two forms being given, the rest of the verb follows as a matter of course. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other, shows the root in a purer and more original form ; in Icun we have it as affected by the conjugational peculiarity of the ancient present and imperfect ; compare Ach. a-lcun-usli (imp.), Av. Iceren-aoimi, Sans. Tcrn-omi. By adding to the imperative the personal endings, we obtain the only original and simple tense of the Persian verb, corre- sponding to the ancient present and imperfect, and having the value of both present and aorist; it is made distinctively the former by prefixing mi or Jiemi, already spoken of. Of the ancient subjunctive we have a single trace, in an optative third person singular; Jcundd, may he do! The passive is formed by the auxiliary shuden, meaning originally to go. The facility of composition in the Persian is very great ; epithets formed of a noun and a verbal, of an adjective and a noun, and of two nouns, are of the most frequent occurrence. A very characteristic feature of Persian style, too, is the formation of a compound or deriva- tive verb by combining an adjective or noun with some one of a large class of half auxilia- ries, of which the most frequent are to do, to make, to bring, to have, to show, to come, to become, to take, and to find. It is partly by the favoring influence of such processes of composition that the Persian has become in later times so impregnated with Arabic. The earliest Persian writers, as Firdusi and the translator of Tabari's Arabic history, wrote in a nearly pure Iranian dialect, with no greater infusion of Arabic words than was natural and unavoidable, considering the position and influ- ence in Iran of the Arab religion and culture. But a less legitimate mixture soon began to prevail ; every highly cultivated Persian was as familiar with Arabic as with his own mother tongue, and a depraved and servile taste in- troduced the practice of drawing upon the Arabic lexicon not only to fill out felt deficien- cies of the Persian vocabulary, but, from affec- tation and pedantry, to such an extent as to half convert the language into Arabic. Often the merest necessary cement of a sentence or