The Aspectual System of Luri of Doroud - PDF document

1 The Aspectual System of Luri of Doroud
The Aspectual System of Luri of Doroud Leila Ziamajidi 1 Memorial University of Newfoundland Aspects are different ways of viewi ng the internal temporal constituency o f a situation (Comrie, 1976:4). Aspect is one of the characteristics of the verb which is discussed in many languages in r elation to tense and mood. In this paper , we are going to analy ze the aspectual system of one of the dialects of Lu ri, a west Iranian language which is spoken in south western Iran. The dialect which is discussed here is Luri of Doroud, one of the cities in Lorestan Province of Iran. Despite their similarities to standard Persian, the Lu ri dialects share features that set them apart as a group from the standard language (M a cKi n non, 2011). In this dialect, we see some influences of Persian, the standard language of the country. The a spec tual system in Luri of Doroud can be described by the ternary division between Perfective, Imperfective and Perfect aspect, like many other Indo European languages (see Hewson & Bubenik, 1997). Verbal constructions are based on two stems: past/ perfective stem (in the past tense, and perfect constructions), and present/ imperfective stem (in non - past tenses). Perfective Imperfective Perfect ema - m - æ past emæm dašt - æm mi - m - æm ema - m bi y - æm Non - past bi - ya - m dar - em y - æm Table 1: The Aspectual system for the verb “to come” in Lu ri of Doroud The perfective aspect is made by the perfective stem plus the personal suffix : (1) diruz de mædresæ emæ - m yesterday from school come: P 1SG I came from the school yesterday. The Imperfective aspect in this dialect is compara ble to the innovative Imperfective aspect in Persian. The auxiliary verb “d

2 aštæn” (to have) which is grammatica
aštæn” (to have) which is grammaticalized as the progressive marker is used in this dialect, the same as in Persian. It is worth mentioning that this is formed by the combination of the auxiliary and the Imperfect form which is used with “mi” in Persian whereas the Imperfect form with “mi” itself is not common in Luri: (2) dašt - æm mi - m - æm di - m - eš have:P 1SG IMPF - come: P1SG see: P1SG - him/ her I was coming that I saw him/her. Lu ri dialects have a perfect construction which is a “be Perfect” and made by perfective stem+ personal suffix+ Aux (æ). This auxiliary is the conjugated form of the verb “to be” in 3rd SG, 1 . lziamajidi@mun.ca Present. Unlike Modern Persian the auxiliary (be) is gram mati calized and it isn’t conjugated for all the persons: (3) ema - m - æ honæ come: PP 1SG - be PRES 3SG home I have come home. The past perfect is formed in the same way, the only difference is that the auxiliar y here is the verb “to be” conjugated in Past 3rd SG: (4) ema - m bi bein - em - et come: PP - 1SG be:P 3SG see:SBJ - 1SG - you I had come to see you. In the Imperfective present, we have the imperfective stem and the agreement ma rker with the subject. The difference w ith Persian is clear in that we don’ t have the “mi” prefix as the imperfective marker. (5) So yæ - m tomorrow go: PRES 1SG I come tomorrow. W e see however the similar progressive form in this dialect wh ich is formed by the auxiliary “daštæn” conjugated in Present: (6) dar - em y - æm honæ hav

3 e: PRES 1SG come:PRES 1SG home I am
e: PRES 1SG come:PRES 1SG home I am coming home. We can talk about the Subjunctive as the Perfective form in Present. Usually we tal k about aspect in indicative mood, but if we want to generalize the theory of aspect in different tenses and moods, we can say that subjunctive present mood is perfective. Analyzing data from this dialect, as well as a lot of other dialects of Iranian lang uages, proves some of the changes in language; as a result of the language contact. The existence of the innovative progressive form both in Persian and Luri can be looked as one of its evidences. References Anonbay. E & A. Asadi (2014) Ba ḵ tiāri; Phonol ogy, text, lexicon , Studia Iranica Upsaliensia, Upsala Universitet, Sweden. Comrie, B (1976 ), Aspect , Cambridge University Press. Dabirmoghadam, M (2013), The typology of Iranian Languages, Tehran: SAMT. Drinka, B. (2017). Sources of the Perfect in Indo - E uropean. In Language Contact in Europe: The Periphrastic Perfect through History (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact, pp. 73 - 93). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hewson, J & V. Bubenik (1997) Tense and Aspect in IndoEuropean Languages , John B enjamin. Lecoq, P. “Les dialectes du sud - ouest de l’Iran,” in Rüdiger Schmitt, ed., Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum , Wiesbaden, 1989, pp. 341 - 49. MacKinnon, Colin. 2011. “Lori dialects”. Encyclopædia Iranica 18. New York: Center for Iranian Studies, Columbia University. Online address: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/lori - dialects . Taheri, E (2006) “The verb in Ba ḵ tiāri”, Name ye Farhang estan , No2, pp. 86 - 108, Farhangestan e Zaban: Tehran. Windfuhr, Gernot. 2009. “Dialectology and topics”. The Iranian languages , ed. Gernot Windfuhr, 5 – 42. London / New York: Routledge.