| Middle Persian | |
| Nativename: | Pahlavi: (or) |
| Region: | Sasanian Empire (224–651) |
| Ethnicity: | Persians |
| Era: | Evolved into Early New Persian by the 9th century; thereafter used only by Zoroastrian priests for exegesis and religious instruction |
| Familycolor: | Indo-European |
| Fam2: | Indo-Iranian |
| Fam3: | Iranian |
| Fam4: | Western |
| Fam5: | Southwestern |
| Ancestor: | Old Persian |
| Script: | Pahlavi scripts, Manichaean script, Avestan alphabet, Pazend |
| Iso2: | pal |
| Lc1: | pal |
| Ld1: | Zoroastrian Middle Persian ("Pahlavi") |
| Lc2: | xmn |
| Ld2: | Manichaean Middle Persian (Manichaean script) |
| Glotto: | pahl1241 |
| Lingua: | 58-AAC-ca |
Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg (Pahlavi script: Pahlavi: , Manichaean script: Pahlavi: {{script|Mani|, Avestan script: Pahlavi: {{script|Avst|) in its later form,[1] [2] is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language.[3] It descended from Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian, the official language of Iran (also known as Persia), Afghanistan (Dari) and Tajikistan (Tajik).
"Middle Iranian" is the name given to the middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects.[4] The middle stage of the Iranian languages begins around 450 BCE and ends around 650 CE. One of those Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, i.e. the middle stage of the language of the Persians, an Iranian people of Persia proper, which lies in the south-western highlands on the border with Babylonia. The Persians called their language Parsig, meaning "Persian".
Another Middle Iranian language was Parthian, i.e. the language of the northwestern Iranian peoples of Parthia proper, which lies along the southern/south-eastern edge of the Caspian sea and is adjacent to the boundary between western and eastern Iranian languages. The Parthians called their language Parthawig, meaning "Parthian". Via regular sound changes Parthawig became Pahlawig, from which the word 'Pahlavi' eventually evolved. The -ig in parsig and parthawig was a regular Middle Iranian appurtenant suffix for "pertaining to". The New Persian equivalent of -ig is -i.
When the Arsacids (who were Parthians) came to power in the 3rd-century BCE, they inherited the use of written Greek (from the successors of Alexander the Great) as the language of government. Under the cultural influence of the Greeks (Hellenization), some Middle Iranian languages, such as Bactrian, also had begun to be written in Greek script. But yet other Middle Iranian languages began to be written in a script derived from Aramaic. This occurred primarily because written Aramaic had previously been the written language of government of the former Achaemenids, and the government scribes had carried that practice all over the empire. This practice had led to others adopting Imperial Aramaic as the language of communications, both between Iranians and non-Iranians.[5] The transition from Imperial Aramaic to Middle Iranian took place very slowly, with a slow increase of more and more Iranian words so that Aramaic with Iranian elements gradually changed into Iranian with Aramaic elements.[6] Under Arsacid hegemony, this Aramaic-derived writing system for Iranian languages came to be associated with the Parthians in particular (it may have originated in the Parthian chancellories), and thus the writing system came to be called pahlavi "Parthian" too.
Aside from Parthian, Aramaic-derived writing was adopted for at least four other Middle Iranian languages, one of which was Middle Persian. In the 3rd-century CE, the Parthian Arsacids were overthrown by the Sassanids, who were natives of the south-west and thus spoke Middle Persian as their native language. Under Sassanid hegemony, the Middle Persian language became a prestige dialect and thus also came to be used by non-Persian Iranians. In the 7th-century, the Sassanids were overthrown by the Arabs. Under Arab influence, Iranian languages began to be written in Arabic script (adapted to Iranian phonology), while Middle Persian began to rapidly evolve into New Persian and the name parsik became Arabicized farsi. Not all Iranians were comfortable with these Arabic-influenced developments, in particular, members of the literate elite, which in Sassanid times consisted primarily of Zoroastrian priests. Those former elites vigorously rejected what they perceived as 'Un-Iranian', and continued to use the "old" language (i.e. Middle Persian) and Aramaic-derived writing system. In time, the name of the writing system, pahlavi "Parthian", began to be applied to the "old" Middle Persian language as well, thus distinguishing it from the "new" language, farsi.[7] Consequently, 'pahlavi' came to denote the particularly Zoroastrian, exclusively written, late form of Middle Persian.[8] Since almost all surviving Middle Persian literature is in this particular late form of exclusively written Zoroastrian Middle Persian, in popular imagination the term 'Pahlavi' became synonymous with Middle Persian itself.
The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is pal, which reflects the post-Sasanian era use of the term Pahlavi to refer to the language and not only the script.
In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from the fall of the Achaemenid Empire in the fourth century BCE up to the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE.
The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period (Old Persian and Avestan) to an analytic form:
The modern-day descendants of Middle Persian are New Persian and Luri. The changes between late Middle and Early New Persian were very gradual, and in the 10th–11th centuries, Middle Persian texts were still intelligible to speakers of Early New Persian. However, there are definite differences that had taken place already by the 10th century:
Texts in Middle Persian are found in remnants of Sasanian inscriptions and Egyptian papyri, coins and seals, fragments of Manichaean writings, and Zoroastrian literature, most of which was written down after the Sasanian era. The language of Zoroastrian literature (and of the Sasanian inscriptions) is sometimes referred to as Pahlavi – a name that originally referred to the Pahlavi scripts,[13] which were also the preferred writing system for several other Middle Iranian languages. Pahlavi Middle Persian is the language of quite a large body of literature which details the traditions and prescriptions of Zoroastrianism, which was the state religion of Sasanian Iran (224 to c. 650) before the Muslim conquest of Persia. The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in late Sasanian times (6th–7th centuries), although they represent the codification of earlier oral tradition.[14] However, most texts date from the ninth to the 11th century, when Middle Persian had long ceased to be a spoken language, so they reflect the state of affairs in living Middle Persian only indirectly. The surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies.[15] Other, less abundantly attested varieties are Manichaean Middle Persian, used for a sizable amount of Manichaean religious writings, including many theological texts, homilies and hymns (3rd–9th, possibly 13th century), and the Middle Persian of the Church of the East, evidenced in the Pahlavi Psalter (7th century); these were used until the beginning of the second millennium in many places in Central Asia, including Turpan and even localities in South India.[16] All three differ minimally from one another and indeed the less ambiguous and archaizing scripts of the latter two have helped to elucidate some aspects of the Sasanian-era pronunciation of the former.[17]
The vowels of Middle Persian were the following:[18]
| Close | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /i/ | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /u/ | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mid | pronounced as /link/, (pronounced as /e/) | pronounced as /link/, (pronounced as /o/) | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /a/ |
It has been doubted whether the Middle Persian short mid vowels pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //o// were phonemic, since they do not appear to have a unique continuation in later forms of Persian and no minimal pairs have been found.[19] [20] The evidence for them is variation between spelling with and without the matres lectionis y and w, as well as etymological considerations.[21] They are thought to have arisen from earlier pronounced as //a// in certain conditions, including, for pronounced as //e//, the presence of a following pronounced as //n//, sibilant or front vowel in the next syllable, and for pronounced as //o//, the presence of a following labial consonant or the vowel pronounced as //u// in the next syllable.[22] Long pronounced as //eː// and pronounced as //oː// had appeared first in Middle Persian, since they had developed from the Old Persian diphthongs pronounced as //ai// and pronounced as //aw//.[23]
The consonant phonemes were the following:[24]
| Labial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||
| pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||
| Fricative | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ (pronounced as /ink/) [early] | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ (pronounced as /ink/pronounced as /ink/) | pronounced as /ink/ | ||
| pronounced as /ink/ | (pronounced as /ink/) | (pronounced as /ink/) | |||||
| Trill | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /ink/ | ||||||
| Semivowel | pronounced as /ink/ | pronounced as /ink/ | |||||
A major distinction between the pronunciation of the early Middle Persian of the Arsacid period (until the 3rd century CE) and the Middle Persian of the Sassanid period (3rd – 7th century CE) is due to a process of consonant lenition after voiced sounds that took place during the transition between the two.[25] Its effects were as follows:[26] [27]
1. Voiced stops, when occurring after vowels, became semivowels:
pronounced as //b// > pronounced as //w//, pronounced as //d// > pronounced as //j//, pronounced as //ɡ// > pronounced as //w// or pronounced as //j// (the latter after pronounced as //i//[28])
This process may have taken place very early, but it is nevertheless often the old pronunciation or a transitional one that is reflected in the Pahlavi spelling.
Old Persian naiba- > Middle Persian nēw (Pahlavi TB or nyw'), but:
Old Persian asabāra- > Middle Persian asvār 'horseman' (Pahlavi PLŠYA, ʾswblʾ).
Proto-Iranian *pād- > Middle Persian pāy 'foot' (Pahlavi LGLE, pʾd, Manichaean pʾy).
Old Persian magu- > Middle Persian mow- 'Magian' (Pahlavi mgw-).
Proto-Iranian *ni-gauš- > Middle Persian niyōš- 'listen' (Pahlavi nydwhš-, also nydwk(h)š-[29]), Manichaean nywš).
2. Voiceless stops and affricates, when occurring after vowels as well as other voiced sounds, became voiced:
pronounced as //p// > pronounced as //b//, pronounced as //t// > pronounced as //d//, pronounced as //k// > pronounced as //ɡ//, pronounced as //t͡ʃ// > pronounced as //d͡ʒ//
This process is thought not to have been taken place before Sassanid Pahlavi, and it generally is not reflected in Pahlavi spelling.
A further stage in this lenition process is expressed in a synchronic alternation: at least at some stage in late Middle Persian (later than the 3rd century), the consonants pronounced as //b//, pronounced as //d//, pronounced as //ɡ// appear to have had, after vowels, the fricative allophones pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /[ɣ]/.[26] [30] [31] [32] This is slightly more controversial for pronounced as //ɡ//, since there appears to have been a separate phoneme pronounced as //ɣ// as well.[33] A parallel development seems to have affected pronounced as //d͡ʒ// in the same position, possibly earlier; not only was it weakened to a fricative pronounced as /[ʒ]/, but it was also depalatalised to pronounced as /[z]/. In fact, old Persian pronounced as /[d͡ʒ]/ and pronounced as /[ʒ]/ in any position also produced pronounced as /[z]/. Unlike the case with the spirantisation of stops, this change is uncontroversially recognised for Sassanid times.[26] [34]
The lenition of voiceless stops and affricates remained largely unexpressed in Pahlavi spelling,[35] which continues to reflect the Arsacid sound values, but is known from the more phonetic Manichaean spelling of texts from Sassanid times.
Arsacid šap > Sassanid šab (late pronounced as /[ʃaβ]/) 'night' (Pahlavi LYLYA, šp'; Manichaean šb)[36]
Arsacid pit > Sassanid pid (late pronounced as /[pið]/) 'father' (Pahlavi AB, p(y)t', Manichaean pyd)[37]
Arsacid pārak > Sassanid pārag (late pronounced as /[paːraɣ]/) 'gift' (Pahlavi pʾlk')[38]
Arsacid hač > Sassanid az 'from' (Pahlavi MN, hc, Manichaean ʾc or ʾz)
As a result of these changes, the voiceless stops and affricates pronounced as //p//, pronounced as //t//, pronounced as //k//, pronounced as //t͡ʃ// rarely occurred after vowels – mostly when geminated, which has protected them from the lenition (e.g. waččag, sp. wck' 'child'), and due to some other sound changes.[39]
Another difference between Arsacid and Sassanid-era pronunciation is that Arsacid word-initial pronounced as //j// produced Sassanid pronounced as //d͡ʒ// (another change that is not reflected in the Pahlavi spelling).[40] The sound probably passed through the phase pronounced as //ʒ//, which may have continued until very late Middle Persian, since Manichaean texts did not identify Indic pronounced as //d͡ʒ// with it and introduced a separate sign for the former instead of using the letter for their native sound.[41] Nonetheless, word-initial pronounced as //j// was retained/reintroduced in learned borrowings from Avestan.[28]
Arsacid yām > Sassanid ǰām 'glass' (Pahlavi yʾm, Manichaean jʾm); but:
Avestan yazata > Middle Persian yazd 'god' (Pahlavi yzdt')
Furthermore, some forms of Middle Persian appear to have preserved ǰ (from Proto-Iranian pronounced as //d͡ʒ// or pronounced as //t͡ʃ//) after n due to Parthian influence, instead of the usual weakening to z. This pronunciation is reflected in Book Pahlavi, but not in Manichaean texts:
Proto-Iranian *panča > panǰ (spelt pnc in Book Pahlavi) or panz (spelt pnz in Manichaean)[42]
Judging from the spelling, the consonant pronounced as //θ// may have been pronounced before pronounced as //r// in certain borrowings from Parthian in Arsacid times (unlike native words, which had pronounced as //h// for earlier *θ in general and pronounced as //s// for the cluster *θr in particular), but it had been replaced by pronounced as //h// by the Sassanid period:
Arsacid miθr > Sassanid mihr 'Mithra, contract' (Pahlavi mtr', Manichaean myhr).[43] [44] [45]
The phoneme pronounced as //ɣ// (as opposed to the late allophone of pronounced as //ɡ//) is rare and occurs almost only in learned borrowings from Avestan and Parthian, e.g. moγ (Pahlavi mgw or mwg 'Magian'), maγ (Pahlavi mγ) 'hole, pit'.[41] [30] [46] [47]
The sound pronounced as //ʒ// may also have functioned as a marginal phoneme in borrowings as well.[39]
The phoneme pronounced as //l// was still relatively rare as well, especially so in Manichaean texts,[41] [39] mostly resulting from Proto-Iranian *rd, *rz and, more rarely, *r.[48] It also occurred in the combination pronounced as //hl//, which was a reflex of Old Persian pronounced as //rθ// and pronounced as //rs// (cf. the words 'Pahlavi' and 'Parthian').[49]
The sound pronounced as //xw// may be viewed as a phoneme[50] [51] or merely as a combination of pronounced as //x// and pronounced as //w//.[20] [30] Usually pronounced as //x//, pronounced as //xw// and pronounced as //ɣ// are considered to have been velar; a less common view is that pronounced as //x// and pronounced as //ɣ// were uvular instead.[52]
Finally, it may be pointed out that most scholars consider the phoneme pronounced as //w// as being still a labial approximant,[51] [20] [30] [21] but a few regard it as a voiced labial fricative pronounced as //v//.[53] [54]
The initial clusters of pronounced as //s// and a stop (pronounced as //sp-//, pronounced as //st-//, pronounced as //sk-//) had acquired a prosthetic vowel pronounced as //i// by the time of the Manichaean Middle Persian texts: istāyišn (ՙst՚yšn) 'praise' vs Pahlavi stāyišn (ՙst՚dšn') 'praise'.
Stress was on the last syllable.[41] [55] That was due to the fact that any Old Persian post-stress syllables had been apocopated:[51]
Old Persian pati 'at' > Middle Persian pad
Old Persian martiya- 'man' > Middle Persian mard
Old Persian martiyā́nām 'man' (genitive-dative plural) > Middle Persian mardān
It has been suggested that words such as anīy 'other' (Pahlavi spelling AHRN, AHRNyd, Manichaean ՚ny) and mahīy 'bigger' (Manichaean mhy) may have been exceptionally stressed on the first syllable, since the last one was apocopated already in the course of the Middle Persian period: the later forms are an (Manichaean ՚n), and meh (Pahlavi ms and Manichaean myh);[56] indeed, some scholars have reconstructed them as monosyllabic any, mahy even for Middle Persian.[57]
See main article: Pahlavi script.
See main article: Manichaean script.
See main article: Pazend.
Middle Persian has been written in a number of different scripts.[58] The corpora in different scripts also exhibit other linguistic differences that are partly due to their different ages, dialects and scribal traditions.
The Pahlavi scripts are abjads derived from the imperial variety of the Aramaic alphabet used in the chancelleries of the Achaemenid Empire. As is typical of abjads, they express primarily the consonants in a word form. What sets them apart from other abjads, however, is the use of Heterograms, and more specifically Aramaeograms, i.e. words written in Aramaic (sometimes, in later periods, with distortions) but pronounced in Middle Persian: e.g. LY (Aramaic 'to me') for man 'me, I'. There were about a thousand of these in the Book Pahlavi variety. In addition, their spelling remained very conservative, expressing the pronunciation of the Arsacid period.[58] The two most important subvarieties are:
Other known Pahlavi varieties are the early Pahlavi found in inscriptions on coins issued in the province of Pars from the 2nd century BC to the 3rd century CE; the relatively conservative Psalter Pahlavi (6th–8th centuries CE), used in a Christian Psalter fragment, which still retains all the letter distinctions that Inscriptional Pahlavi had except the one between t and ṭ;[59] and the Pahlavi found in papyri from the early 7th century CE, which displays even more letter coincidences than Book Pahlavi.[58]
The Manichaean script was an abjad introduced for the writing of Middle Persian by the prophet Mani (216–274 CE), who based it on his native variety of the Aramaic script of Palmyrene origin. Mani used this script to write the known book Šābuhrāgān and it continued to be used by Manichaeans until the 9th century to write in Middle Persian, and in various other Iranian languages for even longer.[58] Specifically the Middle Persian Manichaean texts are numerous and thought to reflect mostly the period from the 3rd to the 7th centuries CE.[60] In contrast to the Pahlavi scripts, it is a regular and unambiguous phonetic script that expresses clearly the pronunciation of 3rd century Middle Persian and distinguishes clearly between different letters and sounds, so it provides valuable evidence to modern linguists.[58] Not only did it not display any of the Pahlavi coalescences mentioned above, it also had special letters that enabled it to distinguish pronounced as /[p]/ and pronounced as /[f]/ (although it didn't always do so), as well as pronounced as /[j]/ and pronounced as /[d͡ʒ]/, unique designations for pronounced as /[β]/, pronounced as /[ð]/, and pronounced as /[ɣ]/, and consistent distinctions between the pairs pronounced as /[x]/ – pronounced as /[h]/ and pronounced as /[r]/ – pronounced as /[l]/.[62] [63]
Since knowledge of Pahlavi decreased after the Muslim conquest of Iran, the Zoroastrians occasionally transcribed their religious texts into other, more accessible or unambiguous scripts. One approach was to use the Avestan alphabet, a practice known as Pazand; another was to resort to the same Perso-Arabic script that was already being used for New Persian, and that was referred to as Pārsī. Since these methods were used at a relatively late linguistic stage, these transcriptions often reflect a very late pronunciation close to New Persian.[58]
In general, Inscriptional Pahlavi texts have the most archaic linguistic features, Manichaean texts and the Psalter exhibit slightly later, but still relatively early language stages, and while the Pahlavi translations of the Avesta also retain some old features, most other Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi texts (which form the overwhelming majority of the Middle Persian corpus as a whole) are linguistically more innovative.
In view of the many ambiguities of the Pahlavi script, even its transliteration does not usually limit itself to rendering merely the letters as written; rather, letters are usually transliterated in accordance with their origin regardless of the coinciding forms: thus, even though Book Pahlavi has the same letter shapes for original n, w and r, for original ʾ and ḥ and for original d, g and y, besides having some ligatures that coincide in shape with certain individual letters, these are all transliterated differently.[64] [65] For instance, the spelling of gōspand 'domestic animal' is transliterated gwspnd in spite of the fact that the w and n have the same graphic appearance.[66]
Furthermore, letters used as part of Aramaic heterograms and not intended to be interpreted phonetically are written in capitals: thus the heterogram for the word ān is rendered ZK, whereas its phonetic spelling is transliterated as ʾn' (the final vertical line reflects the so-called 'otiose' stroke, see below[67]). Finally, there is a convention of representing 'distorted/corrupt' letters, which 'should' have appeared in a different shape from a historical point of view, by under- or overlining them: e.g. the heterogram for andar 'in' is transliterated BYN, since it corresponds to Aramaic byn, but the sign that 'should' have been b actually looks like a g.[64] [65]
Within Arameograms, scholars have traditionally used the standard Semitological designations of the Aramaic (and generally Semitic) letters, and these include a large number of diacritics and special signs expressing the different Semitic phonemes, which were not distinguished in Middle Persian. In order to reduce the need for these, a different system was introduced by D. N. MacKenzie, which dispenses with diacritics as much as possible, often replacing them with vowel letters: A for ʾ, O for ʿ, E for H, H for Ḥ, C for Ṣ, for example ORHYA for ʿRḤYʾ (bay 'god, majesty, lord').[68] [65] [44] For ''ṭ'', which still occurs in heterograms in Inscriptional Pahlavi, Θ may be used. Within Iranian words, however, both systems use c for original Aramaic ṣ and h for original Aramaic ḥ, in accordance with their Iranian pronunciation (see below). The letter l, when modified with a special horizontal stroke that shows that the pronunciation is /l/ and not /r/, is rendered in the MacKenzie system as ɫ. The traditional system continues to be used by many, especially European scholars.[69] The MacKenzie system is the one used in this article.
As for Pahlavi, c is used for the transliteration of original Aramaic ṣ and h for the transliteration of original ḥ. Original Aramaic h, on the other hand, is sometimes rendered as ẖ. For original ṭ, the sign ṯ is used. The special Manichaean letters for pronounced as //x//, pronounced as //f//, pronounced as /[β]/, pronounced as //ɣ// and pronounced as /[ð]/ are transcribed in accordance with their pronunciation as x, f, β, γ and δ.Unlike Pahlavi, the Manichaean script uses the letter Ayin also in Iranian words (see below) and it is transliterated in the usual Semitological way as ՙ.[70] [62] [63]
Since, like most abjads, even the Manichaean script and a maximally disambiguated transliterated form of Pahlavi do not provide exhaustive information about the phonemic structure of Middle Persian words, a system of transcription is also necessary. There are two traditions of transcription of Pahlavi Middle Persian texts: one closer to the spelling and reflecting the Arsacid-era pronunciation, as used by Ch. Bartholomae and H. S. Nyberg (1964)[71] and a currently more popular one reflecting the Sassanid-era pronunciation, as used by C. Saleman, W. B. Henning and, in a somewhat revised form, by D. N. MacKenzie (1986).[72] [73]
The less obvious features of the usual transcription[30] [47] [20] are:
A common feature of Pahlavi as well as Manichaean spelling was that the Aramaic letters ṣ and ḥ were adapted to express the sounds pronounced as //t͡ʃ// and pronounced as //h//, respectively. In addition, both could use the letter p to express pronounced as //f//, and ṣ to express z after a vowel.
The widespread use of Aramaeograms in Pahlavi, often existing in parallel with 'phonetic' spellings, has already been mentioned: thus, the same word hašt 'eight' can be spelt hšt[74] or TWMNYA.[75] A curious feature of the system is that simple word stems sometimes have spellings derived from Aramaic inflected forms: the spellings of verb stems include Aramaic inflectional affixes such as -WN, -TWN or -N and Y-;[76] the spellings of pronouns are often derived from Aramaic prepositional phrases (tо̄ 'you' is LK, originally Aramaic lk 'to you', о̄y 'he' is OLE, originally Aramaic ʿlh 'onto him'); and inalienable nouns are often noun phrases with pronominal modifiers (pidar 'father' is ABYtl, originally Aramaic ʾby 'my father', pāy 'foot' is LGLE, originally Aramaic rglh 'his foot').[77] Furthermore, the Aramaic distinctions between ḥ and h and between k and q were not always maintained, with the first often replacing the second, and the one between t and ṭ was lost in all but Inscriptional Pahlavi: thus YKTLWN (pronounced о̄zadan) for Aramaic yqṭlwn 'kill', and YHWWN (pronounced būdan) for Aramaic yhwwn 'be', even though Aramaic h is elsewhere rendered E.[78] In the rest of this article, the Pahlavi spellings will be indicated due to their unpredictability, and the Aramaeograms will be given priority over the 'phonetic' alternatives for the same reason.
If a word expressed by an Arameogram has a grammatical ending or, in many cases, a word-formation suffix, these are generally expressed by phonetic elements: LYLYAʾn for šabʾn 'nights'. However, verbs in Inscriptional Pahlavi are sometimes written as 'bare ideograms', whose interpretation is a major difficulty for scholars.[79]
It has also been pointed out that the Pahlavi spelling does not express the 3rd century lenitions, so the letters p, t, k and c express pronounced as //b//, pronounced as //d//, pronounced as //ɡ// and pronounced as //z// after vowels, e.g. šp' for šab 'night' and hc for az 'from'. The rare phoneme pronounced as //ɣ// was also expressed by the same letter shape as k (however, this sound value is usually expressed in the transliteration).[80] Similarly, the letter d may stand for pronounced as //j// after a vowel, e.g. pʾd for pāy 'foot' – this is no longer apparent in Book Pahlavi due to the coincidence of the shapes of the original letters y, d and g, but is already clearly seen in Inscriptional and Psalter Pahlavi. Indeed, it even appears to have been the general rule word-finally, regardless of the word's origins,[81] although modern transliterations of words like xwadāy (xwtʾd) and mēnōy (mynwd) do not always reflect this analogical / pseudo-historical spelling.[82] Final īy was regularly written yd.[83] In the same way, (w)b may also correspond to a w in the pronunciation after a vowel.[84] The fortition of initial pronounced as //j// to pronounced as //d͡ʒ// (or pronounced as //ʒ//) is not reflected either, so y can express initial pronounced as //d͡ʒ//, e.g. yʾm for ǰām 'glass' (while it still expresses pronounced as //j// in the learned word yzdt' for yazd 'god').
Some even earlier sound changes are not consistently reflected either, such as the transition of pronounced as //θ// to pronounced as //h// in some words (in front of pronounced as //r// this reflex is due to Parthian influence, since the Middle Persian reflex should have been pronounced as //s//). In such words, the spelling may have s[83] or, in front of r – t. For example, gāh 'place, time' is spelt gʾs (cf. Old Persian gāθu) and nigāh '(a) look' is spelt nkʾs;[85] šahr 'country, town' is spelt štr' (cf. Avestan xsaθra) and mihr 'Mithra, contract, friendship' is spelt mtr'. In contrast, the Manichaean spellings are gʾh, ngʾh, šhr, myhr. Some other words with earlier pronounced as //θ// are spelt phonetically in Pahlavi, too: e.g. gēhān, spelt gyhʾn 'material world', and čihr, spelt cyhl 'face'.[86] There are also some other cases where pronounced as //h// is spelt pronounced as //t// after p: ptkʾl for pahikār 'strife', and pronounced as //t// may also stand for pronounced as //j// in that position: ptwnd for paywand 'connection'.[87]
There are some other phoneme pairs besides pronounced as //j// and pronounced as //d͡ʒ// that are not distinguished: h (the original Aramaic ḥ) may stand either for pronounced as //h// or for pronounced as //x// (hm for ham 'also' as well as hl for xar 'donkey'), whereas the use of original Aramaic h is restricted to heterograms (transliterated E in MacKenzie's system, e.g. LGLE for pāy 'foot'). Not only pronounced as //p//, but also the frequent sound pronounced as //f// is expressed by the letter p, e.g. plhw' for farrox 'fortunate'.[88] While the original letter r is retained in some words as an expression of the sound pronounced as //r//, especially in older frequent words and Aramaeograms (e.g. štr' for šahr 'country, town', BRTE for duxt 'daughter'),[56] it is far more common for the letter l to have that function, as in the example plhw' for farrox. In the relatively rare cases where l does express pronounced as //l//, it can be marked as ɫ.[89]
Like many abjads, the system may express not only consonants, but also some vowels by means of certain consonant signs, the so-called matres lectionis. This is usually limited to long vowels:[88] thus, original ʾ can stand for the vowel pronounced as //aː// (e.g. in pʾd for pād), y can stand for pronounced as //iː// and pronounced as //eː// (e.g.pym for pīm 'pain' and nym for nēm 'half'), and w can stand for pronounced as //uː// or pronounced as //oː// (swt' for sūd 'profit' and swl for sōr 'salty'). However, short pronounced as //u// is also typically expressed like long pronounced as //uː// (e.g. swd for suy 'hunger'), whereas short pronounced as //i// and the assumed pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //o// vary between being expressed like their long counterparts or remaining unexpressed: p(y)t for pid 'father', sl(y)šk for srešk 'tear', nhwm for nohom 'ninth'.[90] Due to elision of pronounced as //w//, written yw can also correspond to pronounced as //eː//: nywk' 'good'.[83] Gemination of consonants was not expressed, e.g. waččag, sp. wck' 'child').[39]
In Inscriptional and Psalter Pahlavi, a -y that was not pronounced appears word-finally, e.g. šhpwhry for Šahpuhr. Its origin and function are disputed. In Book Pahlavi, it developed into a peculiar convention, the so-called 'otiose' stroke, which resembles w/n/r and is added to demarcate the end of the word after those letters that never connect to the left: mān' 'house'.[67] [83] [91] [60] [70]
Like many abjads, Pahlavi ʾ can express simply the fact that a word begins in a vowel, e.g. ʾp̄ʾyt' for abāyēd 'it is necessary' (though two alephs usually aren't written in a row to express an initial long vowel).
In contrast to the historical and ideographic features of Pahlavi, Manichaean spelling is relatively straightforward.[21] [92] Like Pahlavi, the Manichaean script designates vowel-initial words with ʾ, but a further spelling convention in it is that it is the letter ՙ, rather than ʾ, that is written before initial front vowels, e.g. ՙym for im 'this' (in contrast to Pahlavi ʾm (or LZNE). Vowels are marked by matres lectionis in the Manichaean script in the usual way, and long vowels are more likely to be marked.
In spite of the availability of signs for each sound, Manichaean spelling did not always make perfectly phonetic use of them. In particular, not only in Pahlavi but even in Manichaean, the letter p was often used to express pronounced as //f//, and pronounced as //z// after vowels was written etymologically as c: thus, frāz 'forth' was spelt prʾc, just as in Pahlavi.[21] If the voiced fricatives really occurred as allopohones of pronounced as //b//, pronounced as //ɡ//, pronounced as //d// in Middle Persian, the special Manichaean signs for fricatives β, γ and δ usually were not used to express this either. Conversely, the Semitic letters for the consonants q, ṭ and h (transliterated ẖ in Manichaean) were retained and used, occasionally, even though they only expressed the same Middle Persian sounds as k and t, and ḥ (transliterated h in Manichaean). The Manichaean script also has abbreviation marking double dots for the forms ʾwd 'and', ʾw-š 'and he' and ʾw-šʾn 'and they', which may be transcribed as ẅ, š̈ and š̈ʾn. Elisions and plural may also be marked with double dots.[70]
The elision of unstressed word-final syllables during the transition from Old to Middle Persian has eliminated many grammatical endings. As a result, compared to the synthetic grammar of Old Persian, Middle Persian belongs to a much more analytic language type, with relatively little inflection and widespread expression of grammatical meanings through syntactic means instead (specifically, use of prepositions and periphrases).[93]
Early Middle Persian inflection as found in the Sassanid rock inscriptions (3rd–4th centuries CE) still retained a minimal case system for the nominal parts of speech, i.e. nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals. It included a direct or subject case (originating from the old nominative) used for the subject and the predicative nominal and an oblique case used for other functions (indirect object, genitive possessor, complement of a preposition, subject/'agent' of the ergative construction).[94] [95] [91] [96] The case distinction was only present in the plural of nouns, in nouns of relationship (family terms) that end in -tar or -dar in the oblique, and in the first person singular pronoun az/an (ANE). The attested system is shown in the table below, using the words mard (GBRA) 'man' and pid (AB') 'father' as examples.
| regular nominals (singular) | mard-∅ (GBRA) | mard-∅ (GBRA) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| regular nominals (plural) | mard-∅ (GBRA) | mard-ān (GBRAʾn)(in some exceptional words -īn, -ūn) | |
| family terms (singular) | pid-∅ (AB) | pidar-∅(ABYtl) | |
| family terms (plural) | pidar-∅(ABYtl) | pidar-ān(ABYtlʾn) | |
| 1st person singular pronoun | az / an[97] (ANE) | man(L) |
The endings -īn and -ūn occur in the place of -ān in a decreasing number of exceptions. In Inscriptional Pahlavi, forms such as frazendīn (przndyn') 'of the children' and dušmenūn (dwšm(y)nwn') 'of the enemies' are still found. In Manichaean Middle Persian, likewise, forms such as zanīn (spelt znyn), 'women', ruwānīn 'souls' and dušmenūn (dwšmynwn) are preserved.[98] It also has the form awīn as an equivalent of awēšān 'they, those'.[99] In Book Pahlavi, the generalisation of -ān has advanced to the point where only -īn is preserved, namely in the inflections of the words harw (KRA) and harwisp (hlwsp̄') 'every, all' – plural harwīn and harwisp-īn or harwistīn, respectively, as well as optionally of dō (2, TLYN'), 'two' – plural dōwīn or dōnīn.[100]
There is some disagreement and uncertainty about whether the case of the direct object in this early inflectional system was direct or oblique. Originally, it should have been direct in the ergative-absolutive constructions, but possibly oblique in the nominative-accusative ones. It has been claimed that 'the direct object could stand in both cases'[60] or that it is unclear which case specifically the plural direct object took, with a suggested distinction between indefinite and definite direct object taking the direct and the oblique cases, respectively.[101]
For an even more archaic stage, some have claimed that the singular of regular nominals had its own oblique case form, too, and that it was marked by the ending -ē (spelt -y), which still occurs on nouns in Inscriptional and Psalter Pahlavi, albeit somewhat unsystematically. This would have been expected, assuming that both oblique forms continue the Old Iranian genitives in *-ahya and *-ānam, respectively. However, this theory has been disputed and rejected by many scholars.[91] [60]
The case system broke down in the course of the Middle Persian period, as the oblique case forms were gradually generalised and displaced the direct ones. First, the oblique plural form in -ān (-īn and -ūn) was generalised as a general plural form; a few instances of this usage are found as early as in the 6th–8th century Pahlavi Psalter, and while the preserved parts of the 3rd century Shābuhragān may retain it,[60] most other Manichaean texts use -ān as a general plural form and only retain the case distinction in the family terms and the 1st singular pronoun. Finally, even though the Middle Persian translations of the Avesta still retain the old system, most clearly so in the family terms, the other Book Pahlavi Zoroastrian texts display the new system with no case distinctions at all and solely a contrast between singular and plural. At this stage, the old direct and oblique cases of the nouns of relationship such as pid and pidar were preserved only as free variants.[102] At the same time, even when morphologically unexpressed, the 'underlying' case of a nominal phrase remains relevant throughout the Middle Persian period for the agreement on the verb and the use of the pronominal enclitics, to be described in the relevant sections.
In addition to the plural ending -ān, a new plural suffix -īhā is increasingly common both in later Manichaean texts,[102] where also the variant -īhān occurs, and especially in Book Pahlavi.[60] It is used with inanimate nouns[103] and has been said to express 'individual plurality': 'the various, individual Xs'.[104] [105] At the same time, -ān is still used with inanimate as well as with animate nouns, and is far more common than -īhā.[106] Some examples are šahr-īhā (štryhʾ) 'countries' and dar-īhā (BBAyhʾ) 'doors', but also čiš-ān (MNDOMʾn) 'things'. The resulting late Middle Persian system looks as follows, as exemplified with the words mard 'man' and kо̄f 'mountain':
| mard-∅ (GBRA) kо̄f-∅ (kwp) | mard-ān (GBRAʾn)kо̄f-ān (kwpʾn) (in some exceptional words -īn) | kо̄f-īhā (kwpyhʾ) (Manichaean -īhān) |
As long as case declension was still preserved, a possessor noun stood in the oblique case. In this older construction, it preceded the possessed noun. After the breakdown of the case system, what remained of this construction was a simple juxtaposition between a possessor noun and a possessed noun, and that was indeed preserved as one possible expression of possession: e.g. dūdag sālār (dwtk' srdʾl) 'the head of a family', 'the family('s) head', Ōhrmazd nām (ʾwhrmzd ŠM) 'the name of Ahuramazda'.[107] [108] However, there was also a more explicit option using the relative particle ī, which introduced a following possessor nominal phrase (also in the oblique case, as long as the distinction existed): e.g. sālār ī dūdag (srdʾl Y dwtk'), nām ī Ōhrmazd (ŠM y ʾwhrmzd).[109] This is discussed in more detail in the section on the relative particle.
Indefiniteness may be expressed by the encliticisation of the word ē(w) (spelt '1' or HD) 'one' to a noun: mard-ēw (GBRA-1) 'a (certain) man'.[110] This usage has been described by certain scholars as an 'indefinite article',[111] while others do not regard it as such, since its use is far less common than that of the English word a(n).[110]
Originally, adjectives had the same inflectional categories as nouns and took the same endings. When used independently as nouns, they still have number inflection: weh-ān (ŠPYLʾn) 'the good (people)'.[96] When they are used as attributive modifers of nouns, however, agreement is optional and, while it remains common in Manichaean Middle Persian, it is increasingly rare in Book Pahlavi, where, e.g. both abārīgān gyāgān (ʾp̄ʾrykʾn gywʾkʾn) 'other places' and abārīg dēwān (ʾp̄ʾryk' ŠDYAʾn) 'other demons' have been attested. When the modifying adjective is introduced by the relative particle ī, as well as in predicative position, it never takes the plural suffix: e.g. mardān ī weh (GBRAʾn Y ŠPYL) 'good men'.[112] [113] Some sources also assert that the original singular oblique case ending -ē (-y) is seen in attributive preposed adjectives in some examples: e.g. čē-š asar karb az asarē rо̄šnīh frāz brēhēnīd (MEš ʾsl klp MN ʾsly lwšnyh prʾc blyhynyt) 'for he created the eternal form from eternal light'.[114]
Comparison of adjectives (as well as adverbs) is regularly expressed with the comparative degree suffix -tar (spelt -tl) and the superlative degree suffix -tom (spelt -twm),[113] [115] or possibly -tum;[116] in Manichaean, they also have the allomorphs -dar and -dom after voiced consonants. For example, abēzag (ʾp̄yck') 'pure' is compared abēzag-tar 'purer – abēzag-tom 'purest'
There are also some irregular or relict forms reflecting more ancient suffixes (comparative -y or -īy or resulting fronting of the preceding vowel, superlative -ist) and/or suppletion:[115] [117] [113]
| positive | comparative | superlative | meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| xо̄b/xūb (xwp) | weh (ŠPYL), Manichaean also wahy or wahīy (sp. why) | pahlom (pʾhlwm), pāšom/pašom (p(ʾ)šwm); cf. wahišt (whšt) 'paradise' | 'good' |
| wazurg/wuzurg (LBA, wc(w)lg) | meh (ms), mahistar (mhstl); Manichaean also mahy or mahīy (sp. mhy) | mahist (msst) | 'big' |
| kо̄dag/kо̄dak (kwtk) | keh (ks) | kahist (ksst) | 'small' |
| was (KBD) | wēš (wyš), frāy (plʾy), freh (plyh) | frāyist (plʾyst), frahist (plh(y)st) | 'much', 'a lot', 'many' |
| kam (km) | kem (kym) | kamist (kmyst) | 'a little', 'few' |
| garān (glʾn) | grāy (glʾy) | grāyist (glʾyst) | 'heavy, serious' |
| nazd (nzd) | -------|nazdist (nzdst)|'near', in superlative also 'first'|-|dо̄šag (dwšk)|-------|Manichaean: dо̄šist (dwšyst)|'beloved'|} In some cases, only a 'superlative' form exists without corresponding positive and comparative forms: bālist (bʾlyst') 'supreme, highermost', nidom (nytwm) 'lowermost', bēdom (bytwm) outermost, fradom (AWLA) 'first', abdom (ʾp̄dwm) 'last'.[118] The object of comparison for an adjective in the comparative degree is introduced by the preposition az (hc) 'from', the subordinating conjunction kū (AYK) 'where, that' or, more rarely, čiyо̄n (cygwn') 'as':[119] о̄y az/kū/čiyо̄n tо̄ о̄zо̄mandtar (OLE MN/AYK/cygwn' LK ʾwcʾmndtl) 'he is stronger than you.'The object of comparison for an adjective in the superlative degree is introduced by the preposition az (hc) or simply by a possessive construction: о̄y (az) mardʾn о̄zо̄mandtom (sp. OLE (MN) GBRAʾn ʾwcʾmndtwm) PlacementWhen adjectives modify a noun without the help of any linking particle, they usually precede them,[121] but may occasionally follow them, too.[122] A far more common possibility than either is for the adjective to be introduced by the relative particle ī, on which see the relevant section. Thus, e.g. 'a/the big house' can be expressed as wazurg mān (LBA mʾn'), mān wazurg (mʾn' LBA) or mān ī wazurg (mʾn' Y LBA). PronounsPersonal pronounsThe personal pronouns have a stressed form and an enclitic form. They are as follows:[123] [124] |