A Historical Analysis of Past Stems in Balochi (Western Dialects)

The past stem with its varied forms in different dialects of Balochi, like other Iranian languages which are inflected languages, has special value in morphology, grammar, and standardization etc. In this article the authors describe the morphological structures of past stems in Balochi using a diachronic-synchronic method. The basic sources for gathering data are the collection of 201 simple verbs of Bampuri dialect which is a western dialect of Baluchi. The verbs are arranged according to the morphemes used for representing past stems. The findings show that past stem in the Bampuri dialect of Balochi, with its varied uses, is represented in ten distinguished forms. Among them, five are regular and five others irregular. In addition, the structural differences are due to the four following factors: 1- historical remnants from Iranian languages, 2- morphological contexts, 3-dialectical differences, 4- analogy with other verbs.