New developments in Persian nominal plural markers

In new Persian nominal morphology, two strategies of suffixation and transfixation are employed to form plurals. Suffixation by–ân and –hâ is native to this language, while transfixation patterns which form the so-called BROKEN PLURALS are borrowed from Arabic. Both native and foreign suffixes as well as transfixation patterns demonstrate some deviations from their original functions. The aim of this article is to investigate these deviations and new developments in the Persian nominal morphology in terms of grammaticalization and degrammaticalization processes. The findings of this study demonstrate, a) introduction of new plural making suffixes, sometimes, exhibiting both inflectional and derivational characteristics, b) deinflectionalization of affixes along with subsequent hypercharacterization of the base to which they are attached c) degrammaticalization of inflectional affixes into derivational ones, amongst others.