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KABUL PERSIAN VERB MORPHOLOGY1 MICHAEL M. T. HENDERSON UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS The

KABUL PERSIAN VERB MORPHOLOGY1 MICHAEL M. T. HENDERSON UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS The morphological structure of the Modern Persian verb can be described as a six-slot string of constituents, with each slot rewritten as a pair of features or as a phonological matrix. Some of the features, all of which are necessary for semantic and syntactic rules, are not interpreted as phonolog- ical matrices, and emerge as phonetically null. Inflectional affixes are spelled directly as phonologi- cal matrices. Regular morphophonemic alternations in verb stems are described by general rules which operate on phonological and/or morphological features. Irregular alternations are described by minor rules for which formatives must be marked, their unmarked values being ³minus;´ the unmarked value of general rules is, of course, ³plus.´ Minor rules describe suppletive as well as unique but non-suppletive ones; verbs which undergo both minor and general rules are so marked. 0. THE DIVISION OF THE LEXICON of Modern Persian into morphological subclasses or ³parts of speech´ is rather fuzzy. Verbs, however, are clearly marked by the inflections peculiar to them, and by certain morphophonemic alternations exhibited nowhere else in the language. There are remarkably few verbs in Persian: excluding derived causatives, only 234 verbs appear in Haïm¶s Shorter Persian-English Dictionary (Tehran, 1963). In Tehran Persian (TP) new verbs are added to the î-class (see section 2.3); in Kabul Persian (KP), the variety of which this paper is a partial description, new verbs usually take the form of a substantive plus an empty verb kardán µto do¶ or, for intransitives, ãudán µto become.¶ Thus in TP µpuncture¶ would be panþarîdán (transitive or intransitive), while in KP it would be panþar kardán µto puncture¶ vs. panþar ãudán µto be punc- tured.¶ KP differs from TP in several other ways, chiefly in the conservatism of its vowel system. The symbols that I use for the phonemes and the distinctive features that µspell¶ them appear in Table (1) below. (1) p b f w M t d s z l r n þ ۥ ã y k q x ¥ ¨ î i e a â o u û Cons + + + ± + + + + + + + + + + + ± + + + + + ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± Syll ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± + + + + + + + + Son ± ± ± + + ± ± ± ± + + + ± ± ± + ± ± ± ± ± ± + + + + + + + + Nasal ± ± ± ± + ± ± ± ± ± ± + ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± High ± ± ± + ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± + + + + + + ± ± ± + + ± ± ± ± + + Low ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± + + ± ± ± Back ± ± ± + ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± + + + + + ± ± ± ± + + + + PLACE2 L L L L C C C C C C C A A A V V U U U Round ± ± ± + ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± + + + + Voice ± + ± + + ± + ± + + + + ± + ± + ± + ± ± + ± Tense + ± + ± + + ± + Cont ± ± + + + ± ± + + + + + ± ± + + ± ± ± + + ± In Table 2, blanks represent inapplicable features rather than redundancies. Reference will often be made below to three styles of speech: Formal (F), Deliberate (D), and Colloquial (C). These 1 An earlier version of this article appeared in the Journal of the American Oriental Society 98.4 (1978), pp 375-388. 2 In the earlier version of this paper, referred to in fn. 4, the point of articulation of vowels and semivowels was de- scribed with the features [±coronal] and [±anterior], necessitating the use of [-minus] to mean different things, de- pending on the major class of the segment described. Using PLACE with unitary features avoids this messy mode and phonetically meaningless mode of description. HENDERSON: Kabul Persian Verb Morphology 2 three styles, which are part of the competence of any educated native speaker of KP, are integral parts of a description of the phonology and morphology of the language.3 The most exhaustive study of Persian verb stem alternations is that of Hodge 1958, in which six classes (and many subclasses) of verbs are distinguished, ranging from invariant to suppletive stems. While Hodge correctly observes that this classification can best be made on the basis of the present stems, he also states that ³there is no predictability in the absolute sense.´ This is rather extreme: it is absolutely predictable, for instance, that no Persian verb stem will be found whose past stem ends in a voiced obstruent, and that no alternation between a vowel and an obstruent will be found. In general, though, the regularities are few, and many can be contradicted by one or two exceptions. The first section of this paper is a description of the morphological structure of the KP verb, and the second is an attempt to account for stem alternations, with suggestions for the treatment of suppletions. 1.0 Structure of the verb The complex Old Iranian tense system has been almost completely replaced by periphrastic constructions (Darmesteter 1883). What is of interest in this morphological study is the six-slot constituent of those constructions which contains the verb stem and is separated from other consti- tuents of the verb phrase by word boundaries. It is arranged as follows: (2) (NEG) ASPECT + STEM + (PART) AFFIX A causative morpheme whose phonological shape is ân is inserted before TENSE in some verbs and after it in others. This is unpredictable, and verbs must be marked for the placement of this infix (Farhâdi). The causative is of little morphophonemic interest, and will not be discussed fur- ther here. The remainder of this section is a discussion of the six slots shown in (2) above. 1.1 NEGATIVE The first slot is ³NEG,´ which has the phonemic shape n if the next segment begins with a low vo- wel in style C, and na everywhere else including before low vowels in styles D and F. F and D náâmad µdidn¶t come¶ is nâmad in C, but nabud µwasn¶t¶ is the same in all three styles, as is náistâd µdidn¶t stand.¶ The underlying form of NEG, which will be µspelt¶ by a rule triggered by the syntactic-semantic feature [+negative], can be represented as |na|, the |a| being deleted by rule DKP (7) which deletes one |a| next to another low vowel in just the way described here.4 1.2 ASPECT The two overt aspect markers in KP are the nonperfective and the optative (called the µimpera- tive¶ in many, if not most, grammars, but its use in KP includes nonimperative as well as impera- tive meanings). Rather than saying that the perfective aspect, which is not represented phonologi- cally, is realized as zero, it seems better to include in the grammar rules such as (2): 3 For a description of the phonological correlates of these three styles, see Henderson 1975. In the text, I refer to this article as DKP, and to the various rules in it as, e.g., DKP(2), meaning the second rule given in that article. For a dis- cussion of inapplicable features, see Henderson 1976. 4 I cite underlying forms between vertical bars and surface phonemic forms in italics. When necessary, phonetic dif- ferences are shown using IPA symbols between square brackets [ ]. HENDERSON: Kabul Persian Verb Morphology 3 (2) [± perfective] ASPECT ĺ [± optative] The brace notation indicates that the two aspects are mutually exclusive. Spelling rules are trig- gered by the features as follows: (3) (a) [±perfective] ĺ |mE| (b) [+optative] ĺ |bV| Since [+perfective] and [±optative] are not mentioned in (3), they have no phonetic manifestation. See Harris 1969 for a discussion of this approach to verb morphology, which allows syntactic fea- tures to operate in the ways required by the syntactic features while allowing the phonological component¶s rules simply not to mention the spelling of non-overt categories. The cumbersome use of zeroes surrounded by formative boundaries is thus avoided. It is interesting to note that nonpast forms rarely occur without the nonperfective marker. Per- sian grammars list forms such as bâfam µI weave,¶ but remark that forms uploads/s3/ modern-persian-verb-morphology.pdf