The Role of Postpositions in Case Assignment (A Case Study on Taleshi)

Taleshi is a member of Northwest Iranian Languages. It is spoken in some parts of Guilan Province of Iran and in the Northeastern region of the Republic of Azarbaijan. The corpus for the present study is gathered from the residences of Tāskuh, a village located in ten kilometer distance from the town of Māsāl. Taleshi has a rich system of inflection including different types of case markers. It follows the accusative case system in the present tense and double oblique case system in the past tense. The inability of double oblique case system to distinguish different grammatical relations of transitive verbs paves the way for grammaticalization of word order in the past tense. This cannot be taken as an indication of the disappearance of case markers, whereas they are quite functional in the accusative system of present tense. There is also a class of case markers that, along with their governing postpositions, assume other grammatical and semantic functions. As one of the main sources of morphological case markers, postpositions, with their mere availability and a wide range of functions, guarantee the continued use of morphological/syntactic case markers. In fact, even at the present state of this variety, two instances of change from postpositions to case markers are detected.