HAVE-progressive in Persian: a case of pattern ...

HAVE-progressive

in Persian: a case of pattern replication?

(published in Diachronica 35:1, 2018, pages:144-156  

https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.17023.nem)

Narges Nematollahi Indiana University, Bloomington 1. Introduction * Modern Persian has recently developed a periphrastic verbal construction with the auxiliary verb dāštan(inf.)/dār- (pres. stem) “have” to express the progressive and prospective aspects. This construction was first reported in colloquial Persian in Zhukovskij (1888), and according to Windfuhr & Perry (2009:461), it has not “yet fully integrated into literary Persian”. This construction in which both the auxiliary and the main verb receive subject agreement is syntactically limited in that it can be used only in the indicative mood and in affirmative sentences. (1) and (2) represent respectively the present and past progressive constructions. In the present progressive, the auxiliary and the main verb use the present tense stem, and in the past progressive, both use the past tense stem. The ungrammatical sentences in (3a-c), which put the progressive construction in (3) in the subjunctive mood by using the subjunctive form of the auxiliary (3a), of the main verb (3b) or of both the auxiliary and the main verb (3c), show that progressive constructions are not available in the subjunctive mood. Similarly, the ungrammatical sentences in (3d-f) show that progressive constructions cannot be negated1. The control sentences where the simple present tense form in (4) takes, respectively, the subjunctive mood and negative polarity are shown in (4a-b). Table 1 provides the full paradigm of present and past progressive forms for the verb kāštan/kār- “to sow”.  

(1)

(3)

ādam-hā dār-and person-PL have.PRS-3PL “People are coming.” Sām dārad Sām have.PRS-3SG “Sām is coming.”

mi-āy-and IPFV-come.PRS-3PL

mi-āy-ad IPFV-come.PRS-3SG

(2)

(4)

dāšt-i mi-mord-i have.PST-2SG IPFV-die.PST-2SG “You were dying.” har ruz Sām kār mi-kon-ad every day Sām work IPFV-do.PRS-3SG “Sām works every day.”

                                                                                                                        *

 For discussion of the material presented in this article, I am grateful to Kevin Rottet, Jamsheed Choksy, Robert Botne, the audience of the 2nd Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics at Indiana University, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Diachronica.   1 It seems the process of negating the progressive forms has just begun: we observe a negative form in one of the most recent pop songs by Banyamin Bahadori: dār-am nafas ne-mi-keš-am “I am not breathing” in which only the main verb receives the negative particle ne, similar to (3e).

1    

a. b. c. d. e. f.

*Sām bāyad dāšt-e bāš-ad mi-āy-ad Sām must have.SBJV-3SG IPFV-come.PRS-3SG *Sām bāyad dārad bi(y)-āy-ad Sām must have.PRS-3SG come.SBJV.3SG *Sām bāyad dāšt-e bāš-ad bi(y)-āy-ad Sām must have.SBJV-3SG come.SBJV.3SG “Sām must be coming.” *Sām na-dār-ad mi-āy-ad Sām NEG-have.PR-3SG IPFV-come.PRS-3SG *Sām dār-ad ne-mi-āy-ad 2 Sām have.PRS-3SG NEG-IPFV-come.PRS-3SG *Sām na-dār-ad ne-mi-āy-ad Sām NEG-have.PRS-3SG NEG-IPFV-come.PRS-3SG “Sām is not coming.”

a.

b.

Sām bāyad har ruz kār bo-kon-ad Sām must every day work do.SBJV-3SG “Sām must work every day.”

Sām har ruz Sām every day

kār ne-mi-kon-ad work NEG-IPFV-do.PRS-3SG “Sām does not work every day.”

Table 1. The paradigm of present and past progressive forms in Modern Persian.

Present 1st 2nd 3rd

Singular dār-am mi-kcr-am dār-i mi-kār-i dār-ad mi-kār-ad

Past Plural dār-im dār-id dār-and

mi-kār-im mi-kār-id mi-kār-and

Singular dāšt-am mi-kāšt-im dāšt-i mi-kāšt-i dāšt mi-kāšt

Plural dāšt-im dāšt-id dāšt-and

mi-kāšt-im mi-kāšt-id mi-kāšt-and

Regarding the first attestations of HAVE-progressive forms, Keshavarz (1962) and Dehghan (1972) assert that their examination of a substantial amount of classical and early Modern Persian texts, predating the 19th century shows no case of HAVE-progressives, and that in these texts, the imperfective form of the verb (e.g., mi-āy-and in (1)) is used to express both habitual and progressive aspects. Zhukovskij (1888) provides the first report on HAVE-progressive forms, and records two cases: dār-e mi-raqs-e “(he) is dancing” in a satirical song popular at that time in Tehran, the capital of Iran, and dāru yue “(he) is coming” in the vernacular version of a Classical Persian poem, compiled in a village near Isfahan in central Iran. Some years later, Mihrabān & Browne (1897) record two more cases of HAVE-progressives: dor-en o čar-en “(they are) grazing” in the Gabri dialect, which was spoken by Zoroastrians of Iran in the central and southeastern cities of Yazd and Kerman, and its corresponding form in standard Persian, dār-and mi-čar-and “(they are) grazing”. Therefore, it is observed that already by the time of Zhukovskij’s report in 1888, HAVE-progressive forms could be found in at least three varieties of Iranian dialects, i.e., Tehrani dialect/standard Persian, a dialect spoken near Isfahan in central Iran, and the Gabri dialect spoken by Zoroastrians in central and southeastern cities of Yazd and Kerman. The first attestation of HAVE-progressives in a literary text comes in Čarand parand, the collection of satirical essays by A.A. Dehkhoda, published in the years 1907-08. Since then, as Nematollahi (2014) shows, the forms have been

2    

used ever-increasingly in literary texts, particularly in the genres that reflect the spoken Persian, i.e., plays, short stories, and satirical essays. Bybee et al.’s (1994:128) study of the progressive in various language families shows no case of possessive HAVE as the auxiliary verb for progressive constructions, and therefore, the source of HAVEprogressives in Persian has been the topic of a few studies (Pistoso 1974, Jeremiás 1993, Nematollahi 2014, Shokri 2015). Pistoso (1974) and Shokri (2015) propose an external source, namely, the LOCATIVE BE-progressive

construction in Mazandarani, a northern Iranian language spoken by the Caspian Sea.

Jeremiás (1993) and Nematollahi (2014), on the other hand, propose internally motivated scenarios; Jeremiás traces the progressive construction in Modern Persian back to a periphrastic construction in classical Persian which uses the same auxiliary but expresses the perfect aspect. Nematollahi (2014) identifies HAVE-progressives as a Serial Verb Construction, and suggests that the SVC with bar dāštan “to set off” is the source of the progressive construction in Modern Persian. This paper examines the external source proposal, which we call the Northern Influence Hypothesis, in more detail. In section 2, we present the hypothesis and provide the full paradigm of progressive constructions in Mazandarani. In section 3, we put the hypothesis in the context of current theories of pattern replication, particularly the framework of ‘pivot-matching’, as described in Matras & Sakel (2007). In section 4, we evaluate the hypothesis against some diachronic data from Mazandarani, and argue that both the social status of the two languages and Mazandarani’s admittedly limited diachronic data suggest an influence in the other direction, i.e., from Persian to Mazandarani.

2. The progressive construction in Mazandarani As mentioned above, Pistoso (1974) and Shokri (2015) propose an external source for Persian HAVEprogressives, namely, the progressive construction in Mazandarani, an Iranian language which is spoken in northern Iran on the southeast shores of the Caspian Sea. Pistoso lists different languages of Iran, including Mazandarani, which feature HAVE-progressives. He notes that in all these languages except for Mazandarani, the simple present form has a durative prefix, the same mi- prefix glossed as IPFV in (1) and (2) above, which suggests that in these languages the simple present form could have originally denoted both habitual and progressive meanings, and therefore, periphrastic progressive constructions in these languages are presumably the result of later developments. Mazandarani, on the other hand, is the only language that does not have a durative prefix in its simple present form, and therefore, the HAVEprogressive construction, he argues, can be considered original to Mazandarani. Pistoso then postulates that Mazandarani HAVE-progressives were first introduced into the Tehrani dialect of Persian, which was 3    

the standard variety, and were diffused into many other languages of Iran under the influence of the standard variety afterwards. Contrary to Pistoso’s claim about the existence of HAVE-progressives in Mazandarani, in this language which makes a distinction between the copula and LOCATIVE BE, it is LOCATIVE BE, and not the possessive verb which functions as the auxiliary for the progressive construction. Jeremiás (1993:104) notes that the phonological resemblance in the present stems of Persian dāštan/dār- “to have” and Mazandarani daviyen/dar- “locative be”, i.e., dār- vs. dar-2, has led some linguists, including Pistoso to misidentify the auxiliary in Mazandarani progressive as dāštan “have”, and therefore to wrongly consider the construction as HAVE-progressive. A brief overview of the Mazandarani verbal system is in order. According to Shokri (1990), verbs in Mazandarani have two stems, i.e., present and past stems, and there are three sets of endings, i.e., endings for the present tense, for the past tenses (simple past and imperfect) and for subjunctive forms. In total, the verbal system features five simple forms and four periphrastic forms, which are shown in table 2 for the verb yār- (present stem)/ yārd- (past stem)/ biyārd (past participle) “to bring”. Table 2. The verbal system in Mazandarani.

Simple forms Present Indicative Simple Past Imperfect Present Subjunctive Imperative

Periphrastic forms

yār-nene

Past Perfect

biyārd bi-ne

‘they (will) bring’

(participle of main verb + simple past of copula)

‘they had brought’

bi-yārd-ene

Past Subjunctive

biyārd buʔ-en

‘they brought’

(participle of main verb+ subjunctive of copula)

‘they must have brought’

yārd -ene

Present Progressive

dar-ene yār-nene

‘they used to bring’

(present tense of locative-be + present tense of main verb)

‘they are bringing’

bi-yār-en

Past Progressive

day-ne yārd-ene

‘they should bring’

(simple past of locative-be + imperfect of main verb)

‘they were bringing’

bi-yār! ‘bring!’

The progressive construction in Mazandarani consists of the auxiliary verb LOCATIVE BE plus the main verb, and both verbs receive subject agreement. Sentence (5) shows the distinction between the copula (5a) and LOCATIVE BE (5b) in this language, and (6) represents an example of the present progressive construction in a dialect of Mazandarani. Table 3 provides the full paradigm of present and past progressive forms for the same verb kāštan/kār- “sow” in Mazandarani. Comparing the progressive forms in Persian and Mazandarani, shown in tables 1 and 3 respectively, we note that the past stem of HAVE(=dāšt-)

and LOCATIVE BE (=davi-) are phonologically distinct, but their present stems, i.e., dār- and

                                                                                                                        2

 The symbol ā represents the low back vowel [ɑ], and the symbol a represents the low front vowel [æ].  

4    

dar-, are phonologically quite similar. Therefore, phonological similarity between Mazandarani and Persian forms occurs only in the present progressive paradigm. (5) a.

b.

(6)

yek mardi bā yek sarbāz hem-rā bi-ne a man with a soldier comrade be.PST-3PL “A man and a soldier were comrades.” (Kalbāsi 2009:179) sarbāz yek tēle dāšt-e ke ve-n dele māst davi-ye soldier a bowl have.PST-3SG that that in yogurt loc be.PST-3SG “The soldier had a bowl in which there was yogurt.” (Kalbāsi 2009:179) vačer men maččed dele davi-me. davi (-me) xāš mosque in I loc be.PST-1SG loc be.PST-1SG oneself child “I was in the mosque. I was telling my child that ….” (Kalbāsi 2009:181)

gut-eme say.PST-1SG

ge that …

  Table 3. Present and past progressive forms in Mazandarani (data adopted from Shokri 1990).

Present st

1 2nd 3rd

Singular dar-eme kār-me dar-i kār-ni dar-e kār-ne

Past Plural dar-emi dar-eni dar-ene

Singular day-me kāšt-eme day kāšti day-ye kāšt-e

kār-me kār-neni kār-nene

Plural day-mi day-ni day-ne

kāšt-emi kāšt-eni kāšt-ene

3. The Northern Influence Hypothesis: pattern replication in Persian The process of replication of Mazandarani progressive forms in Persian, which neither Pistoso nor Skokri describe in any detail, can be hypothesized as follows: some bilinguals of Persian and Mazandarani, perhaps some Tehrani people, considering the geographical proximity of the Mazandaran region and Tehran, started to replicate the Mazandarani progressive forms in Persian, because the latter was lacking a distinct morphology to mark the progressive. In so doing, the present stem of the progressive auxiliary in Mazandarani, i.e., dar-, which did not have a semantic equivalent in Persian3, was reanalyzed, on the basis of phonological similarity, as dār-, the present stem of HAVE in Persian. As the result, the Mazandarani progressive construction which involves the auxiliary LOCATIVE BE was replicated in Persian in the form of a construction which involves the auxiliary HAVE. This HAVE-progressive in the present tense was then taken on by monolingual speakers of Persian, who extended the construction to past tense by using the past tense form of HAVE and the past imperfective form of the main verb. The two consecutive processes of (1) replication of the Mazandarani form in Persian, and (2) extension of the Persian present progressive to past tense are shown in Table 4.                                                                                                                         3

Persian does not distinguish between LOCATIVE BE and the copula. It has only one general copula, i.e., budan/hast-.

5    

Table 4. The hypothesized process of pattern replication in Persian.                                                          Mazandarani Persian Present dar(-i) xör-en-i (1) dār-i loc be.PRS (-2SG) eat.PRS-IPFV-2SG have.PRS-2SG Past

dav-i loc be.PST-2SG

mö-xörd-i IPFV-eat.PST-2SG

dāšt-i have.PST-2SG

mi-xor-i IPFV-eat.PRS-2SG (2) mi-xord-i IPFV-eat.PST-2SG

Using the terminology developed in Matras & Sakel (2007) to describe the mechanisms involved in language convergence, the process of replication hypothesized above represents a pattern replication (PAT) since it assumes that the speakers of Persian employed their language-internal resources in replicating an external model. The process of pattern replication, according to Matras & Sakel (2007), consists of the bilingual speaker “identifying a pivotal feature of the model construction, then searching for an appropriate matching pivot, and replicating the features of the model” (Matras & Sakel 2007:852). In identifying potential matching pivots in the replica language, Matras & Sakel find three forces active: the most powerful force is “the semantic potential of a structure in the replica language to cover the (lexical and grammatical) semantics presented by the model” (e.g., when the bilingual of German-Hebrew replicates in Hebrew the pivotal feature of German in using 3PL pronoun as the polite form by using the Hebrew form of 3PL pronoun as a polite form of pronoun) (Matras & Sakel 2007:852). The second most powerful force active in pivot-matching is “the morphosyntactic potential of structures in the replica language to take over functions that are covered by the model” (e.g., when the bilingual of RussianHebrew replicates in Hebrew the pivotal feature of Russian in using locative possessor to express direct objects by using the Hebrew preposition of locative possession to mark the direct object) (Matras & Sakel 2007:853). Finally, the third force, which is described as “marginal” is phonological similarity (e.g., when the English word than as used in comparative constructions is replicated in German by the phonologically similar German word denn in the same constructions). We can reformulate the Northern Influence Hypothesis in the framework of pivot-matching as follows: the bilingual speakers of Mazandarani (Model Language) and Persian (Replica Language) identify the use of the auxiliary dar- in the Mazandarani progressive construction as the pivotal feature of the model construction, and select a phonologically similar verb, i.e., dār as an appropriate matching pivot in the replica language. As noted above, according to Matras & Sakel (2007), the semantic and/or morphosyntactic similarity between the model and the replicated construction, which would probably give rise to the use of native Persian copula as the auxiliary for the replicated progressive form, are more frequently attested in other cases of pattern replication than phonological similarity, but the fact that 6    

Persian does not have a distinct LOCATVE BE form might justify the speakers’ recourse to use phonological similarity.

4. An alternative hypothesis: pattern replication in Mazandarani In Pistoso’s hypothesis, the bilingual Mazandarani-Persian speakers of Tehran replicated Mazandarani progressive forms in the Tehrani dialect of Persian, which was and still is the standard variety, and the forms were diffused therefrom into other Iranian dialects. Considering the fact that HAVE-progressives are attested in other Iranian dialects already at the end of 19th century, as mentioned above in the introduction, the Tehrani bilinguals of Mazandarani-Persian must have initiated the replication no later than the 19th century. However, the ethnographic information available for Tehran in the 19th century does not support a strong Mazandarani presence in Tehran at that time: the first census carried out in the capital in 1868, published and discussed in (Pākdāman 1975), puts the population of Tehran into five ethno-regional groups: Qajar, Tehrani4, Isfahani, Azerbaijani and others, where Qajar is a tribe name, and Isfahan and Azerbaijan are two provinces of Iran. We observe that Isfahani and Azerbaijani speakers have been considered significant enough to form a regional group in Tehran’s population, but Mazandarani speakers have not. On the other hand, 19th century travel notes to Mazandaran indicate that due to the absence of safe and reliable dirt roads between the two regions at the time when mules and horses were the major means of transportation, the commute between Tehran and Mazandaran, which passes through the Alborz range and numerous big rivers of Mazandaran region, had not been easy and supposedly infrequent at that time (Fraser 1838 Vol.II:426-428, Orsolle 1885:342-350). In the absence of sources to support an intense contact situation between Mazandarani and Tehrani Persian, and considering the social status of Persian, which is the widespread and dominant national language, vs. Mazandarani, which is a smaller, local language, it is linguistically possible to assume an alternative scenario in which Persian influenced Mazandarani, just as it influenced other Iranian dialects. One version of this scenario can be formulated as follows: the auxiliary dār- in Persian was replicated as dar- in Mazandarani, based on phonological similarity, and then the new form was extended to past tense in the replica language. This process, which is the exact reverse of the process shown in Table 4, is shown in Table 5. Table 5. The hypothesized process of pattern replication in Mazandarani.

Persian

Mazandarani

                                                                                                                       

There are some speculations about the Tehrani dialect before Tehran was appointed as the capital in the 1ate 18th century and thereby started to host large groups of immigrants from around the country (see Mahmoudi Bakhtiyari 2008 and the sources therein). However, the actual data is limited to a couple of lines of poetry and some isolated words, none of which contains any progressive constructions. 4

7    

Present

Past

dār-i have.PRS-2SG

mi-xor-i IPFV-eat.PRS-2SG

(1)

dar(-i) loc be.PRS (-2SG)

xör-en-i eat.PRS-IPFV-2SG (2)

dāšt-i mi-xord-i dav-i mö-xörd-i have.PST-2SG IPFV-eat.PST-2SG loc be.PST-2SG IPFV-eat.PST-2SG An examination of diachronic data from Mazandarani seems to favor this alternative scenario.

Thanks to the efforts of European travelers and diplomats in documenting the language, there is a series of Mazandarani texts from the 19th century, which are briefly described below: -  

a collection of verses attributed to the semi-legendary Mazandarani poet, Amir Pazvari published under the title of Kanz al-Asrār in (Dorn 1860-1866),

-  

Seventeen folk songs in Mazandarani collected by the Polish scholar and diplomat, Aleksander Chodźko during his 1830-1841 travels in Iran, which are published in his Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia as found in the Adventures and Improvisations of Kurroglou, …; and in the songs of the people inhabiting the shores of the Caspian, and discussed in Borjian (2006a).

-  

a grammatical sketch of Mazandarani and some other languages/dialects of Iran presented by the Russian orientalist, Il’ya Nikolaevich Berezin who traveled to Iran in 1842-1845. The Mazandarani materials in his Recherches sur les dialects persans include a grammatical sketch, a list of French sentences with their translations into Mazandarani, and a combined glossary of Persian and Mazandarani. Borjian (2006b) discusses the Mazandarani materials in Berezin’s work.

-  

a few works of prose, most notably an account of a historical event documented by Dorn and published in (Borjian 2006c), and two texts on history and geography of two cities in Mazandaran written in 1889 and published in (Borjian 2008).

Concerning the progressive constructions in these texts, Pistoso (1974:161) asserts that no case of periphrastic progressive forms can be found in Kanz al-Asrār, the style of which, he argues, tends to imitate literary Persian especially as far as grammatical structures are concerned, which explains the lack of such forms therein. We observe, however, that Chodźko and Berezin’s collection of folk songs, grammar sketches and individual sentences, which by nature reflect the spoken language, also lack cases of periphrastic progressive forms. The verbal system of Chodźko and Berezin’s Mazandarani materials, as examined by Borjian (2006a) and Borjian (2006b), features two stems, i.e., present and past stems, and three sets of endings, i.e., endings for the present tense, for the past tenses and for subjunctive forms. In total, we find five simple forms and one periphrastic form: the simple forms are 1) present indicative, 2) simple past, 3) imperfect 4) present subjunctive, and 5) imperative, and the periphrastic form is past 8    

subjunctive which is formed by the past participle of the main verb plus the subjunctive form of the copula (Borjian 2006a:165 bei bum “if I were”). Comparing this system with the verbal system of Mazandarani today, discussed in section 2 above, the only forms missing in the 19th century Mazandarani texts are past perfect, which might be due to accident because the similar, yet more complicated form of past subjunctive is attested in these texts, and more importantly for our discussion, the progressive forms. These texts do not show any case of periphrastic progressive forms, neither LOCATIVE BE- nor HAVEprogressives. It is only in the later document written in 1889 that we find two cases of progressive forms, interestingly one present progressive form with LOCATIVE BE and one past progressive form with HAVE: dar-əә mir-nəә “he is dying” and dāšt-əә ši-əә “he was going” (Borjian 2008:41). This piece of diachronic data in Mazandarani, which coincides with the emergence of HAVE-progressives in other Iranian languages and dialects (see the introduction above) favors the alternative scenario, because it reflects the state of Mazandarani after it has undergone process (1) in Table 5 , i.e., replication of HAVE-progressives in the form of LOCATIVE BE-progressives in the present tense, but before the application of process (2), i.e., extension of LOCATIVE BE-progressive to the past tense. We note that the alternative hypothesis, which assumes the influence of Persian on Mazandarani, also relies on phonological similarity between the two forms, which according to Matras and Sakel (2007), is a “marginal” driving force in the process of pattern replication, especially when we consider that Mazandarani does have the same possessive verb dāštan/dār- as Persian. However, the presence of LOCATIVE-BE progressive

forms in Gilaki, a northern Iranian language which is spoken on the southwest

shores of the Caspian Sea and is in close contact with Mazandarani, could have influenced the process of replication in Mazandarani to the effect that Mazandarani replicated Persian dār- “have” as Mazandarani/Gilaki dar- “locative be”, and not Mazandarani dār “have”. Gilaki LOCATIVE-BE progressive forms are attested as early as the 19th century (7) and consist of the infinitive of the main verb plus the finite form of LOCATIVE-BE in the present tense for present progressive (8a) and in the past tense for past progressive (8b). Gilaki progressive constructions, we note, display a different morphosyntactic structure than Mazandarani LOCATIVE BE- and Persian HAVE-progressives, both in terms of morphology (infinitive of the main verb in Gilaki vs. finite form of the main verb in Mazandarani and Persian) and word order (main verb + auxiliary in Gilaki vs. auxiliary + main verb in Mazandarani and Persian). Therefore, it would be difficult to assume a direct replication of Gilaki LOCATIVE BE-progressives in Mazandarani, but the use of the auxiliary LOCATIVE-BE in Gilaki progressive forms could have had an influence on the replication of Persian HAVE-progressives in Mazandarani. 7

kour, koue schouon dor-i girl, where go.INF loc be.PRS-2SG O girl, where are you going? (Melgounof 1868:203) 9  

 

8a

giftǝn dǝr-ǝm say.INF loc be.PRS-1SG I am talking (Stilo 2001:665)

8b

giftǝn dubu-m say.INF loc be.PST-1SG I was talking (Stilo 2001:665)

5. Conclusion In conclusion, what we have labelled the Northern Influence Hypothesis provides a typologically sound solution for the source of HAVE-progressives in Persian, because it takes LOCATIVE BE as the original auxiliary, which is cross-linguistically well-attested, according to Bybee et al.’s (1994:128) study of progressive in various language families, whereas progressive auxiliary HAVE, to the best of our knowledge, has not been reported for any language. However, this hypothesis assumes that the phonological similarity between the two constructions was the driving force in pattern replication, which is considered “marginal” in Matras & Sakel (2007), and furthermore, it is not supported by diachronic data from Mazandarani, which in fact suggests an influence on the other direction, i.e., from Persian to Mazandarani.

Abbreviations 1   2 3 INF IPFV LOC

first person second person third person infinitive imperfective locative

NEG PL PRS PST SG

negative plural present past singular

References Borjian, Habib. 2006a. The Oldest Known Texts in New Tabari: Collection of Aleksander Chodźko. Archiv Orientální 74(3). 153-171. Borjian, Habib. 2006b. Tabari language materials from Il’ya Berezin’s Recherches sur les dialectes persans. Iran and the Caucasus 10(2). 243-258. Borjian, Habib. 2006c. A Mazandarani Account of the Babi Incident at Sheikh Tabarsi. Iranian Studies 39(3). 381-400. Borjian, Habib. 2008. Two Mazandarani texts from the nineteenth century. Studia Iranica 37. 7-49.   Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins & William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dehghān, Iraj. 1972. Dāshtan as an auxiliary in contemporary Persian. Archiv Orientälni (Praha) 40. 198-205. 10    

Dorn, Boris Andreevich. 1860-66. Kanz al-Asrār: Beiträge zur Kenntniss der iranischen Sprachen, Theil I,II Masanderanische Sprache. St. Petersburg: Commissionäre der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Fraser, James Baillie. 1838. A Winter’s Journey (From Constantinople to Tehran, with travels through various parts of Persia in two volumes). London: Richard Bentley. Jeremiás, Eva. 1993. On the genesis of the periphrastic progressive in Iranian languages. In Skalmowski Wojciech & Alois Van Tongerloo (eds.), Medioiranica: Proceedings of the International Colloquium organized by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 21st – 23rd May 1990, 99-116. Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Orientalistiek. Kalbāsi, Irān. 1388 Š/2009. Farhang-i tawṣīfī-i gūnahʹhā-yi zabānī-i Īrān [Descriptive dictionary of linguistic varieties in Iran]. Tehran: Pizhūhishgāh-i ʻUlūm-i Insānī va Muṭālaʻāt-i Farhangī. Keshāvarz, Karim. 1962. mozāreʿ va māzi-ye malmus [The progressive present and past]. Rāhnemā-ye Ketāb 5. 687-94. Mahmoudi Bakhtiyari, Behruz. 1387 Š/2008. Guyesh-e Tehrāni [Tehrani dialect]. In Musavi Bojnordi Kāzem (ed.) The Great Islamic Encyclopaedia XVI. 575-579. Tehran. Matras, Yaron & Jeanette Sakel. 2007. Investigating the mechanisms of pattern replication in language convergence. Studies in Language 31(4). 829-65. Melgounof, Grigori. 1868. Essai sur les dialects de Mazanderan et de Ghilan. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 22(1/2). 195-224. Mihrabān, Ardashir & Edward Browne. 1897. A Specimen of the Gabri Dialect of Persia. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Jan. 1897). 103-110. Nematollahi, Narges. 2014. Development of the Progressive Construction in Modern Persian. In Özçelik Öner and Amber Kent (eds.), Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Central Eurasian Languages and Linguistics, 102-114. Bloomington: Center for the languages of Central Asian Region. Orsolle, Ernest. 1885. Le Caucase et La Perse. Paris Pākdāman, Nāser. 1353 Š/1975. Mirzā Abd ul-Ghaffār-e Najm ul-dule va tashkhis-e nofus-e dār ulkhelāfe [Mirzā Abd ul-Ghaffār Najm ul-dule and (his work:) the census of the capital]. Farhang-e Iran Zamin 20. 324-395. Pistoso, Maurizio. 1974. L’ausiliare dāštan in neo-persiano: un costrutto linguistico nord-iranico?. Oriente Moderno 54. 298-303. Stilo, Donald. 2001. Gilān: languages. In Yarshater Ehsan (ed.) Encyclopedia Iranica X. 660-668. New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press Shokri, Guiti. 1990. Sākht-e feʿl dar guyesh-e Māzandarāni-ye Sāri [Verb system in the Māzandarāni dialect of Sāri]. Farhang 6. 217–231. Shokri, Guiti. 2015. Progressive Constructions in Mazandarani and Gilaki. Paper presented at the 6th 11    

International Conference on Iranian Linguistics, Ilia State University, Georgia, June 23 – 26, 2015. Windfuhr, Gernot & John Perry. 2009. Persian and Tajik. In Windfuhr Gernot (ed.), The Iranian languages, 416-544. London; New York: Routledge. Zhukovskij, Valentin. 1888. Osobennoe znacenie glagola dästän ν persidskom razgovornom yazyke [Special meaning of the verb dāshtan in spoken Persian]. Zapiski Otdeleniya Imperatorskago russkago arkheologicheskago obshchestva Vostochnago 3. 376-77.   Author’s  address   Narges  Nematollahi   Indiana  University,  Bloomington   Department  of  Linguistics,   Ballantine  Hall  844,     1020  E.  Kirkwood  Avenue,  Bloomington,  IN  47405     [email protected]  

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