Bibliographia Iranica

A predominantly bibliographic blog for Iranian Studies

Tag: Linguistics

  • Khotanese dīñ- “overthink”

    Khotanese dīñ- “overthink”

    Hitch, Doug & Mehrdad Derafshi. 2025. Khotanese dīñ- “overthink” and Avestan daēnā- “view, vision.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 1–10.

    Two new folios from the Old Khotanese epic Buddhist poem the Book of Zambasta have recently come to light. One folio contains the word dīñu which is thrice attested elsewhere in both Old (dīñi, dīña) and Late Khotanese (dīñä) and has been puzzling. The new attestation provides context which helps to establish the approximate meaning of the word. It also provides a new shape (-u) which establishes the morphology. Most shapes (-u, –i, –ä) attest a second singular imperative middle of dīñ– “to overthink”. This finding improves the translation of several passages. dīñ– appears to be a denominal verb from *dīnā– “thought”, cognate to Avestan daēnā– “view, vision” and related to Vedic dhī– “think, reflect”. The semantic development appears to be “see” → “think” → “overthink”.

    Abstract
  • Dabir (vol. 12)

    Dabir (vol. 12)

    Volume 12 of Dabir (2025) is now available both online and in print, featuring two issues:

    • Salman Aliyari Babolghani: The Imperfect with the t-Type Prefix in New Iranian and Its Connection to the Old Iranian Augmented Imperfect Optative
    • Majid Daneshgar: Reading Ismāʿīlī Islam in Aceh: Shāh Shams Sabziwārī’s Poems Copied in the 15th-Century Indonesia
    • Meysam Mohammadi: Middle Persian, Early New Persian and Fahlawī Quotations in Tārīx-e Qom
    • Salman Aliyari Babolghani: The Verb ‘to Become’ and Its Significance in Western Iranian Historical Dialectology: the Case of Persian and Lori
    • Majid Daneshgar: An Unknown Malay-Javanese Booklet Belonging to Thomas Erpenius: Early Days of the Shaṭṭārī Prayers in Indonesia
    • Pouria Shokri and Ahmad Salehi Kakhki: The Morphology and Classification of Tiles from the Ilkhanid Era until the Timurid Invasion, with Emphasis on Techniques, Forms, and Glazes
    • Hossein Sheikh: Review of Zamāna wa Zindagi-ye wa Kārnāma-ye Mollā Huseyin Wāˁiz-i Kāšifi, written by Mostafa Gohari-ye Fakhrabad
    • Sun Wujun[孫 武軍] and Chen Fan[陳 帆]: Review of Zhonggu Xianjiao Dongchuan Jiqi Huahua Yanjiu 中古祆教東傳及其華化研究 [Studies on the Spread of Zoroastrianism in Medieval China], written by Zhang, Xiaogui [張小貴]
  • Indo-Iranian Journal 68, 3

    Indo-Iranian Journal 68, 3

    Indo-Iranian Journal volume 68, issue 3 (November 2025) has been published (as always h/t @yaleclassicslib.bsky.social‬). Sims-Williams has an open access article on Bactrian:

    Sims-Williams, Nicholas. 2025. Bactrian in two scripts: Greek and Kushan. Indo-Iranian Journal. Brill 68(3). 185–214.

  • Like dust on the Silk Road

    Like dust on the Silk Road

    Bernard, Chams Benoît. 2025. Like dust on the Silk Road: On the earliest Iranian and BMAC loanwords in Tocharian (Leiden Studies in Indo-European 27). Leiden: Brill.

    This volume is open access. Follow the link above.

    “How did the Tocharians reach China?” “Who did they meet on the way?” are some of the most intriguing questions in Indo-European studies. This book is zooming in on a specific part of the question: on their way to China, Tocharians were in contact with an Iranian people living in the south Siberian Steppes, and with a people related to the Oxus Civilization (BMAC). This Iranian people spoke a specific language, called here “Old Steppe Iranian”. They gave Tocharians many words, such as mañiye ‘servant’, etswe ‘burden-carrying horse’ or ‘mule’, pāke ‘portion, share’. The BMAC-related people gave the Tocharians other words such as etre ‘hero’ and kercapo ‘donkey’. This book reconstructs features of the language of both these peoples, and examines how they influenced the Tocharians. Based on the latest archaeological findings, it also suggests a reconstruction of the chronology and the way the Tocharians followed before entering the Tarim Basin.

  • A Military Origin for New Persian?

    Vaissière, Étienne de La. 2025. A military origin for New Persian? Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae. Akadémiai Kiadó 78(3). 471–489.

    The question of the transition from Middle Persian to New Persian has been hotly debated. This article attempts to answer two questions: who spoke New Persian before it was put into writing in the middle of the 9th c.? This social group is identified with the soldiers of the armies of Abū Muslim, i.e. peasants from Marw
    and their descendants. They came during one century to the forefront of Abbasid political and administrative life and imposed their specific dialect as a political language, in the shadow of Arabic. The second question is: what could have been the origins of the spoken language in the Marw oasis of the first half of the 8th c.? The article tries to demonstrate, on a much more tentative basis, that the demographic history of an oasis twice manned by soldiers from the South, first Middle Persian-speaking ones and then Arabic ones, both groups added to the local, Parthian-speaking population, is well reflected in the unique combination of
    Middle Persian, Arabic and Parthian characteristic of Early New Persian. Early New Persian is the language of 8th c. Marw, or more generally Outer Khurāsān. This Marw hypothesis, based on the presence of Parthian vocabulary, is however very cautious, as nothing is known of the grammar of spoken late Middle Persian and many of the linguistic differences between Middle and New Persian might have evolved separately in different historical processes.

    Abstract
  • Recent publications by Maria Carmela Benvenuto

    Recent publications by Maria Carmela Benvenuto

    We would like to bring a number of recent publications by Maria Carmela Benvenuto and her collaborators to the attention of our readers. Her publications are listed on her departmental page, but also on her academia account.

  • Iranian Syntax in Classical Armenian

    Meyer, Robin. 2023. Iranian syntax in classical Armenian: The Armenian perfect and other cases of pattern replication (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 53). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    A corollary of this linguistic analysis are new insights into the historical social dynamics between Armenian and Parthian speakers: the latter disappear from the region almost without any documentary trace after the fall of the Parthian Empire in 224 CE. This fact and a study of the historical data from surrounding cultures strongly suggest that the Parthians, who made up the ruling class in the Armenian Kingdom for almost four centuries, over the course of time identified with the Armenians and gave up their native tongue.

    Abstract

  • Ricerche Linguistiche

    Ricerche Linguistiche is a new journal, giving new life to an older version of itself. It is published annually and aims to provide ‘a venue for contributions in the fields of diachronic and historical linguistics concerning all levels of linguistic analysis, with a special focus on ancient Indo-European and Semitic languages, as well as Romance languages and varieties’. You can read more about the journal, its history and goals here. Sadly, the journal does not seem to be open access.

    It’s first issue has two articles of interest:

  • The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian

    Gentile, Simone. 2024. The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian: A reassessment. Ricerche Linguistiche 1.

    This paper addresses the origins of the (proto-)ezāfe in Old Iranian, challenging traditional analyses that have classified the ‘ezāfe’-like structures in Avestan and Old Persian as adjectival formations. This hypothesis is primarily based on the case agreement between the relative pronoun and the head noun. This paper presents
    an alternative interpretation, proposing that these constructions should be viewed as relative clauses (RCs) with omitted copulas. From this perspective, the omission of the copula triggers the so-called attractio relativi, a phenomenon observed in various Indo-European languages, thus challenging prior claims. The idea that
    RCs may have served as precursors to the Persian ezāfe and potentially contributed to the formation of definite articles in some Middle Eastern Iranian languages remains compelling. However, in earlier stages, these structures are best understood as reduced RCs, lacking an explicit copula.

    Abstract

  • On the Etymology of pourušaspa-

    Volume 28, Issue 1, of Iran and the Caucasus has been published. We would like to point out Mehrbod Khanizadeh’s contribution in the issue:

    Khanizadeh, Mehrbod. 2024. On the etymology of the Avestan personal name pourušaspa-. Iran and the Caucasus 28(1). 72–86.

    This article discusses the formation and meaning of the Avestan personal name of Zarathuštra’s father, pourušaspa-. Taking side with the current scholarly view on the etymology and meaning of the word, i.e., *pourušāspa– → pourušaspa– ‘one who has grey horses’, it is argued here that the shortening of the vowel can be explained by an analogical model in Wištāsp Yašt 1.2, where pourušaspa– m. is described as pouru.aspa– ‘having many horses’. The article also challenges the view that Wištāsp Yašt 1.2 is a recent text.

    Abstract