Persian Ezafe (was Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names)

Thanks, I didn't know where '-i' came from in Ossetic, but
I read somewhere, and don't remember where, that the Persian
ezafe developed from a relative pronoun. Phrases like:
"Ahmed's horse", "The black horse", and "Ahmed the carpenter"
came to be phrased literally as "the horse which (is) Ahmed's"
(with 'Ahmed' originally in the genitive case), "The horse
which (is) red", and "Ahmed who (is) the carpenter". With the
loss of the connective verb and case endings, and the reduction
of the relative pronoun, which if I remember correctly, was
something like 'yah', to '-e', we get: "Ahmad -e asb", "Asb -e
seya:h", and "Ahmad -e najja:r".
-David

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> It's quite likely that Ossetic (and Yaghnobi) oblique <-i->
developed through the falling together and generalisation of several
Old Iranian case endings containing *-aya(:) > *-ya- > -i-.
>
> Piotr
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: liberty@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2001 11:36 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian tribal names
>
>
> > [George:] I'm interested in the use of this linkage particle "I"
(of) which is apparently identical in Iranic and Turkic.
>
> ... The '-i' in Ossetic is an agglutinating case particle and
follows the noun or string of nouns in the genitive. When you write
of an Iranian "linkage particle" are you basing this on the
similarity in form and function of the Ossetic genit. marker and the
Persian particle '-e', called "ezafe"? I've always thought that this
was just a coincidental similarity, though I personally don't know
enough about it to say for sure. In any case the word order differs
in Ossetic and Persian. "Ahmed's horse, the horse of Ahmed" is
> 'Asb-e Ahmad' in Farsi, but 'Axmæt-i æfs' in Digor. The
ezafe also
joins a noun to its adjective or appositive as in 'Asb-e
seya:h', "The black horse" and 'Ahmad-e najja:r', "Ahmed the
carpenter". Ossetic's '-i' particle doesn't share these last two
functions. I can't tell you anything about the Turkish. I hope that
this helps (and is accurate this time! ;-)