Re: [tied] Indo-Iranian plurals [was: Germanic nominal declensions]

And a colleague of mine assures me he's never _heard_ the Arabic plurals in
_educated_ Farsi, thouh he has heard tenses that aren't in the the text
books he's read. (He spends a coupleof weeks with his Iranian in-laws, who
live in the north of Tehran, most years.)

Richard.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Indo-Iranian plurals [was: Germanic nominal declensions]


> 19-07-03 11:01, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > Across the board?
>
> Yes. And in Middle Persian (Pahlavi) as well as in Parthian the
> characteristically West Iranian plural ending <-a:n> was generalised.
> Modern Persian has either <-a:n> or <-ha:> (from the old collective
> *-iya-þva-) in non-Arabic nouns. At the far eastern end of Middle
> Iranian, the Khotanese plural endings were <-a> (m.) and <-e> (f.). In
> some of the modern languages (e.g. Pashto) a reflex of *-a:(h) < IIr.
> *-a:s survives, but I know of no traces of extended *-a:sas in languages
> other than Avestan and Old Persian.
>
> Piotr