Language Research

Historical Development of Comparative and Superlative Adjectives in Old Iranian and West Middle Iranian Languages and New Persian Authors

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Saryeh Sahaby

M.A, Department of Ancient Languages and Cultures, University of Tehran

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2014.52659
Abstract
Adjective in its natural or "positive" state may be made comparative or superlative by the addition of suffixes. In this article the development of these suffixes from Indo-European to New Persian is discussed in five sections. The first section explains these suffixes in Indo-European. In the second section due to many similarities between the two languages of Avetan and Sanskrit, these suffixes have been presented together. This section is based upon the work of Wackernagel who has analyzed these suffixes in Sanskrit; however studying the function of these suffixes in the ancient Iranian languages and comparing them to Sanskrit following Wackernagel's method is novel to this article. The third section addresses the function of these suffixes in Old Persian.

Keywords

historical grammar
Indo-European
Iranian languages
positive
comparative
superlative
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Language Research
Volume 5, Issue 1 - Serial Number 1
September 2014
Pages 41-56

  • Receive Date 11 January 2014
  • Revise Date 02 March 2014
  • Accept Date 06 May 2014

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