The Grammaticalization of the Indefinite Article in Old Persian:A Construction Grammar Account

This paper identifies the grammatical constructions expressing indefiniteness in Old Persian. Based on the extant data from this stage of Persian language, There had been no indefinite article before Old Persian era and its grammaticalization is the result of the bridging context chr('39')There is only one X, the X represents a human beingchr('39'). In fact, the metonymic relations triggered reanalysis of "aiva" chr('39')onechr('39') to an chr('39')indefinite articlechr('39') which in turn paved the way for its metaphoric extension. To explain this path of development, a Construction Grammar model is adopted. This research is based on the corpus of OP gathered by Kent (1953). The investigation illustrates that the token frequency of the aforementioned indefinite article in the total NPs (4130) amounts to 0.5%. This percentage is not much high; however, it implies that it is a newly formed grammatical construction in Old Persian. In other words, it illustrates the early stages of the indefinite article grammaticalization.