The Development of Aspect and Mood Morphology in Modern Persian

The investigation of linguistic devices for encoding the grammatical concepts, in a diachronic perspective, shows considerable patterns of grammaticalization and language change. These changes are very slow and gradual, while extremely systematic and teleological. The present research studies the devices used in Persian aspect and mood systems throughout a period of approximately 1800 years (since the early Sasanid period to the present time) and shows that every grammatical change can trigger a new chain of related changes. The decline of the rich morphology of Old Persian in the process of changing into Middle Persian motivated a compensatory and substituting reaction in the language system. Therefore, the system started a very long process of developing two new morphological devices, and the task was fulfilled. The result of this process is the inflectional suffixes mi- and be- in today’s Persian: the former, having an aspectual and a mood function, has become obligatory in almost all of related environments; and the latter with a mood function has not become obligatory in some environments yet, and it is on its way to spread. This article studies the behavior of the two mentioned morphemes in their process of grammaticalization in Middle and Modern periods as well as the way they competed with the alternative mechanisms in Classical Modern Persian, and the development of some intermediate structures (simultaneous occurrence of grammatical morphemes) in the transition period.