Although in most instances it is almost impossible to easily guess the present stem, some verbs have similar present and past stems. The following can help in guessing and remembering some of the regularly predictable present stems. Infinitives end in -тан (-tan) or -дан (-dan). (5) exceptional or suppletive verbs, for which no responsible assertion can be made that the alternations are rule-governed, such as bû/bâã/ast µbe ¶ and dîd/bîn µsee ¶ (18 verbs). In Persian, however, every verb has two stems. I really don't know, but it might have some connexion with Old Persian propensity to have "full" and "empty" (I don't know if those are the right english terms) degrees of vowels in stems ? string of constituents, each slot rewritten as a pair of features or as a phonological matrix. Leyla: So this one is pretty simply. In the present stem, a number of different sound changes occurred depending on which environment the final consonant of the verb was in; in verbs such as yâft-/yâb-"find", you had an original Proto-Iranian *p at the end of the verb which became *f before the participle ending and which voiced to /b/ in Persian intervocalically. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, More posts from the linguistics community. ABLE OF T CONTENTS 8 September 15, 2016–10:38 AM Lesson 20 ..... 143 From the two stems given in dictionaries (e.g. The past simple, of course, uses the past stem, and is made this way: Of course, there's also that it's not rav in the colloquial language anyway, but r (possibly from a reduction of ro-? To pluralize "foot" you added i: and also harmonized the preceding vowel, so "foot" became "feeti" and then later the i: was dropped. Features. The past stem always obtains regularly by removing -an from the infinitive e.g. Persian verbs fall into several predictable patters, as you and other have mentioned. For most of these stems, she formed the past tense by adding -id-. Just someone with a linguistics degree and an interest in Persian :). Stemmers such as the Lovins and Porter stemmers sometimes improve precision/recall scores [4]. Like the English past simple tense, it states a thing that happened in the past. In the beginning, you as beginners are not able to find this root. I know that the two-stem system goes at least as far back as Middle Persian (but, as it seems, was not there in Old Persian). Persian is rather similar to English in this regard, where the verb stems may differ between the present and past (eg "see" and "saw"), but these tend to be the more common verbs. budan (to be), dâštan (to have). ), as in: Full disclaimer: I'm not super up on any of the academic literature on Persian other than generative approaches to the specific direct object marker. A linguist writing rules to describe linguistic phenomena such as the above is trying to account for the knowledge that native speakers of the language have in their minds, and to do so in a manner consisten. In Persian, each verb has two different stems and all forms of the verbs are produced using one of the two stems; present stem and past stem. Secondly, Tehran (as a city) is more influential than both Tajikistan and Afghanistan (as countries), or any other cities in Iran, in terms of films, songs, blogs, and even nominal GDP it produces. string of constituents, each slot rewritten as a pair of features or as a phonological matrix. Initially, I thought that these differences come from centuries of accumulated sound change, but after researching it further I now know that that's probably not the case. Here is the regular conjugations based on that spelling: I am pretty sure the general rule is that irregularities in languages are from archaic forms where the rules were lost/changed/forgotten and what you're seeing are the effects of the previous versions of the language. Persian verbs are conjugated by adding suffixes, similar to the way English verbs like talk take the suffixes -s, -ed, and -ing to make verb forms like talks, talked, and talking. The simple stems are past stem and present stem. depending on whether it is من (man) - 'I', تو (tó) - 'you', etc. Application to Persian verb stems. For instance, if the past stem ends in -xt- (like suxt-, 'burn'), there is a high probability that its present counterpart will end in -z- (suz-). Also, I am not at DLI. The infinitive always ends in -an e.g. To submit an update or takedown request for this paper, please submit an Update/Correction/Removal Modern Iranian cognates include Ossetian уын (wyn), Pashto و ‎ (wo, “he was”), Baluchi بوگ ‎ (būag), Northern Kurdish bûn … Furthermore, not even all of these verbs are common. Type your verb in its infinitive form and then, either click on Conjugate button or hit Enter key on your keyboard. There are a few reasons for this. I was hoping someone here could point me to a good source. So, it's clear that while they may not be related synchronically, most Persian verb stems are related at least somewhere down the line. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts, Sociolinguistics | Game Theoretic Pragmatics. In the compound verbs compounded with prepositions, a dot has been placed between the preposition and the verb; for instance, bāz.dāštan ‘to prevent;’ transitive verb ‘stop,’ bar.dāštan ‘to pick up.’ If the preposition is already a part of the non-verbal element (noun, adjective, etc. * how is it produced? A ton of things in Persian look like (1) regular sound change (e.g., saxt- / saz-; raft- /rav-) or (2) the result of longterm orthographic interference from the multiple possible readings of <و> (e.g., /v/ to /u/,/o/, or /w/ in a bunch of words). it is possible to derive all the other forms of almost any verb. Click to Rate "Hated It" Click to Rate "Didn't Like It" Click to Rate "Liked It" Click to Rate "Really Liked It" Click to Rate "Loved It" 4.5 1; Favorite . Also, contemporary Persian likes to reduce unstressed syllables in verb forms, sometimes leading to their complete loss like (mi-xāh-am -> mi-xām, mi-ā-yam -> mi-ā-m, and so on). (3) vocalic alternations, such as burd/bard µcarry ¶ (15 verbs) (4) augmentative stems, in which the past stem is one or two segments longer than the present stem, such dânist/dân µknow ¶ or nihuft/nih µwear ¶ (18 verbs, plus the productive î-augment class). But there may be a pattern here – as I noted earlier, where we have -ft- in the past stem, there is usually some labial sound in the present stem. Matt: Bood. These are the verbs used very frequently both in spoken and written Persian. Persian verbs are very regular compared with those of most European languages. For Arabic, the analysis also includes a lemma and a Semitic root. The principal parts to remember are the past stem and present stem. There are some common patterns, though. Learning verb conjugation of Persian is quite easy. Infinitives and stems. Click to Rate "Hated It" Click to Rate "Didn't Like It" Click to Rate "Liked It" Click to Rate "Really Liked It" Click to Rate "Loved It" 4.5 1; Favorite. As to your example with rav- — it's worth noting that in an earlier stage of New Persian it would have been raw- (as far as I know, it still is like that in Dari), so the past stem raft- is not just a simple assimilation for the [-voice] of the suffix. Other members of class (5) may share one or more alternations with members of another class, such as zudûd/zidâ µrub off ¶ which shares a process with âsûd/âsâ µrest, ¶ but has a unique vowel alternation earlier in the stem. However, by chance I looked up the verb in a Tajik dictionary, and was given this spelling: "şunavidan". Present Stem Past and present stems of Persian verbs are different. Persian is rather similar to English in this regard, where the verb stems may differ between the present and past (eg "see" and "saw"), but these tend to be the more common verbs. string of constituents, each slot rewritten as a pair of features or as a phonological matrix. Abstract. Is that Tehruni or something? Also, in the time I spent studying Tajik, I can tell you that some Persian verbs became irregular simply due to shifts in pronunciation. The ones that combine with -id-, -d-, and, to an extent, -xt-, follow identifiable patterns, as the file I linked can show. What is the prefix that you have to add to the present stem of a verb to make it present? Old Persian has several compound stems but modern Persian has only one compound stem called causative stem. Thirdly, Tehrani is often spoken outside Tehran. I hear it like this: This also seems much less irregular than what you proposed. And I think most other kinds of verbs follow some rules, too, it's just not clear to me what those rules are. More than a decade and a half ago I described the verb morphology of modern Persian as a six-slot string of constituents, each slot rewritten as a pair of features or as a phonological matrix(1). Leyla: Now let's conjugate the present form of to have. The thing is, we usually know how those defective forms came to be – why the past form of 'to be' is 'was', why the past form of 'to go' is 'went', and why the plural of 'foot' is 'feet' – because it goes back to the Indo-European ablaut, where you formed certain plurals by rounding the vowel of the stem /u/ -> /y/, but in English, unlike, say, German, that rounding was lost, producing the /i:/ of 'feet' (also, I'm sorry, but your Persian professor is not correct about plural endings in old English, especially with the case of 'foot'). Matt: Mee. So, the past stem for boodan, or to have, is bood. From Middle Persian [script needed] (būdan, baw-), from Old Persian [Term? Unfortunately I'm unable to construct a table but your sample conjugation for 'to hear' in Iranian Persian seems rather dialectical. It can conjugate verbs in all tenses, aspects and moods. Add to folder. OpenURL . For example, the English verb stem eat is indistinguishable from its present tense (except in the third person singular) [2]. and Jisc. This is an online conjugator for Persian verbs. From the two stems given in dictionaries (e.g. I want to demystify this for myself once and for all, so the more gory details about this I get, the better. Leyla: There are two stems for each Persian verb, the past and present stem. Article excerpt. Request. Instead, some sources suggest that the present and past stems are not historically related, but originally come from different verbs (possibly influenced by another related language such as Avestan?). Persian verbs have two simple stems and one compound stem. Modern Persian Verb Stems Revisited . There is much research of the effects of stemming on searches of English document collections [3]. raftan (to go) = raft. And this is exactly what I want to find for Persian – an explanation of why the surface forms in modern Farsi look the way they do, similarly to the explanations I linked above. Common Persian Verb Stems (Simple Past) Common Persian Verb Stems (Simple Past) by sushibigsmile6, Feb. 2009. Indeed, many languages have 'irregular'/suppletive verb forms, particularly with auxiliaries, modals, and other common verbs. In general, both stems of each verb must be learned because neither is not completely predictable from the other. Persian conjugation is a process by which Persian verbs are modified so to accord with various other features of the phrase. gir, gereft 'take, took', nevis, nevešt 'write, wrote', deh, dād 'give, gave' etc.) I should have noted that all the examples I'm discussing are from ketābi Persian – colloquial Farsi adds an additional layer onto the verb forms, but transformations from ketābi to colloquial are actually relatively straightforward. ], from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewh₂-, *bʰeh₂u- (“to be, become”), *bʰew- (“to grow”). Interestingly, in a couple of cases where the present stem ended with an n she formed the past by suffixing just -d-. the Open University I didn't read your entire post, but I wanted to respond to one particular issue that also came up not long ago on r/languagelearning, which is that some people believe that in Persian is unusually irregular in its verbs. But the others remain a mystery to me. Matt: Khor. In Persian language, the objective pronoun some of the times is added to the end of the verb, thus it is known as a connected objective pronoun. I don't really think of verbs like raftan as irregular; this could be incredibly naive, but it's at least helping me learn and remember Persian: rav- looks like raft- with regressive assimilation of [+voice] triggered by the present stem always being followed by vowels. Common Persian Verb Stems (Simple Present) Common Persian Verb Stems (Simple Present) by sushibigsmile6, Feb. 2009. I personally don't find that to be the case. The main irregularity is that given one stem it is not usually possible to predict the other. Also, you wouldn't happen to be at DLI right now, would you? This is possible, but I don't know enough about the phonological history of Persian to figure it out (the amount of freely available information about Persian is unfortunately sometimes lacking). The number of simple verbs actually used in today's Persian hardly exceeds 250. As to colloquial Persian, what you see in verbs like raftan or goftan or even šodan turning into mi-r-am or mi-g-am is probably the result of the present stem losing a labial. (today I ..., yesterday I ...?). But this is not just as simple as 'two unrelated stems collapsed into one paradigm' because many of the present/past stem pairs do fall into groups of patterns (aside from the mostly regular class of verbs whose past stems end in -id- or -d-). KABUL PERSIAN VERB STEMS REVISITED . In Persian, though, the verb’s suffix clearly indicates its grammatical person and number. To find this imperative base is the most important job we have got to do here. Ideally — although I am losing hope that something like this exists in one place — I would want to read a comprehensive description of every type of present/past pair of stems: where it came from, how it came to be what it is now~~, and where it sees itself in 150 years.~~, update: so, the way I have come to understand it — and this seems to be supported, if implicitly, by some scholars such as Windfuhr, but may not necessarily be correct historically — that a past stem (also called the short infinitive) is the present stem + the short infinitive suffix: so kard = kon + [infinitive]. I'll give you my favorite example: In Iranian Persian, "to hear" conjugates like so: It does not seem predictable. Leyla: And the past stem for to have or dashtan is 'dasht' Matt: Dasht. However, they only stem English terms. Update/Correction/Removal The less frequent a verb is, the more likely it is to be regular. As most students of Persian know, most verbs are 'irregular', and to conjugate them you have to learn both their present and the past stem, because one stem frequently cannot be derived from the other in a predictable way. Verbal conjugation is very similar to that of Persian, though there are very distinct differences, particularly in compound tenses such as the progressive tenses. Subjects: persian verbs . So, as we said in the lesson, this is a bit more tricky than the past tense because present stems of Persian verbs are irregular. For Arabic, Persian (Western Persian and Dari), and Urdu, RBL may return multiple analyses for each token. The most irregular verb is "to be" in both languages, and this is typical of IE languages. In this paper we tried to make a Persian Verb Collection -as a linguistic resource- which is needed in some NLP researches like verb and sentence detection, POS tagging, Lexicography and … So, while studying many languages spoken in Europe, we work with the assumption that a regular verb is one where the actual root part of a verb is the same, and to conjugate it into different forms, you simply add a set of endings. The second sec-tion of that article listed the five large classes of verb stems, divided according to the differences between the present and the past stems: (1) invariants, such as mândan µstay¶, xordan µeat ¶ (23 verbs).1 (2) consonantal alternations, such as bast/band µtie ¶ (70 verbs). There are more than 10 million inhabitants, which means there are more people in Tehran than in all of Tajikistan. **lin⋅guis⋅tics**: the scientific study of human *language* Persian verbs are very regular compared with those of most European languages. Additionally, it is also present in other Western Iranian languages (like Kurdish, although it seems to be absent in others, like Gilaki, unless Gilaki used to have the two-stem system but regularised it away like it sometimes happens in Modern Persian). * what form does it take? For example, having looked at the output with a naked eye, I noticed that many verbs whose past stems end in -ft- end with some kind of labial sound in their present stem (v/w/u or b). The file I linked above also suggests that many past stem suffixes -d- correspond to present stems ending in --n. So, at least for those two classes of stems, the rule is mostly clear. By Michael M. T. Henderson. Don't you love how all present-tense Persian verbs are irregular? There are several such patterns — I wrote a script to find as many of them as I could, and it was able to group a non-trivial number of stems into some pattern (here are the results). @MISC{Henderson_kabulpersian, author = {Michael M. T. Henderson}, title = {KABUL PERSIAN VERB STEMS REVISITED}, year = {}} Share. Another irregularity is that the verb 'to be' has no stem in the present tense. The lexicon contain stem of all of the verbs in Persian. Subjects: persian verbs . From the file I linked it seems that this infinitive suffix is (V)(fricative)[t/d], where the t/d are always constant. To get the past stem, you simply take the an sound off the end of the infinitive form of the verb. Leyla: Great, exactly- mee. The Tehraniform of Persian is the most common, and most dominant. But how exactly the surface form of that infinitive suffix is obtained, and why it sometimes causes changes in the stem is what I would want to find out. My Persian professor always used to use the example of the English word "feet", because English once had a plural i: ending. * how is meaning constructed? Discover our research outputs and cite our work. Every Persian verb has two stems: the imperative/present stem and the past stem. In old persian, for instance kar- also means "to do" and you find it in a "kr-" from some times. gir, gereft 'take, took', nevis, nevešt 'write, wrote', deh, dād 'give, gave' etc.) My idea about vav is pure speculation. Any simple verb in Persian have two stems; present stem and past stem, thus, the lexicon includes both stems from which all simple verbs in Persian are constructed as shown in table 1. Abstract. To conjugate a Persian verb, we need to find the present stem (for present verbs) or past … The less frequent a … Farsi (a variant of Persian spoken in Iran) has two types of simple verbs: verbs with past and present alternating stems (afzâ/afzud ‘increase,’ godâz, godâxt ‘fuse, melt’), and verbs that take the pseudo-infinitive morpheme, -id, in the past tense (fahm/fahm-id ‘understand’). CORE is a not-for-profit service delivered by The main irregularity is that given one stem it is not usually possible to predict the other. However, that doesn't explain why these present stems combine with the t-suffix instead of the d or id suffix. You just have to memorize them. Each Persian verb has an imperative base or root. For a while now, I have been curious about why the present and past stems of many Farsi verbs are so different. Verbal stems are used in conjugating verbs, making participles and also, in … So where does this two-stem system come from in the first place? ; (Get the past stems by omitting the “ن”ending from the infinitive) Stem formant: Persian verbs have 2 stems, present and past (will be covered more extensively later) and sometimes there is an element immediately after the root that exists to form a certain stem. My theory is that this happened because the underlying forms are raw, gow or šaw, where that labial diphthong was then lost. 1. Firstly, Tehran is huge. Each verb has two stems: past and present. By Henderson, Michael M. T. Read preview. A venerable rule of consonant assimilation and dissirnilation in Persian states that in a cluster of two obstruents, the first must agree in voicing with the second, moreover, if the second is a stop, the first must be or become a fricative: I believe it is better for you to learn the root at this stage just as I give them to you. it is possible to derive all the other forms of almost any verb. At some point, I may go over that list again and see if there are larger patterns that emerge if you analyse the differences between past and present stems phonologically. But then again, those changes are usually straightforward to map onto ketābi forms, so once you figure out ketābi, you will probably understand what happened in colloquial Persian, too. Thank you for the example from Tajik – I know it retains a number of archaic features of Persian, so perhaps I should look in the direction of Tajik more. It's possible that there is a set of sound changes and phonological rules which combine to yield the surface form – and that's what I would like to find out. For Persian, some analyses include a … I did a very informal ten minute experiment on a native speaker, a sort of Wug test, where I gave her words she did not know (some of which were obsolete, and some of which I made up), in the format like 'emruz mi-[some stem]-m; diruz ...?' Hence my question: Are there good materials which describe and analyse the etymological origin of Persian past and present stems? Each analysis contains the normalized form of the token, a part-of-speech tag, and a stem. So the present stem of khordan is khor. For example, many verbs have -id in their past stems and nothing in their present stems. Verbs. Request. People in other Iranian cities may use … Press J to jump to the feed. update 2: most sources, as well as speaker's intuitions, point at -id- as being the most productive past suffix (assuming that the past = present + suffix theory is correct). In Persian, verb conjugations are marked by: person - marks who is doing something, so conjugations different depending on the pronoun, i.e. But that's the point: not all present stems are irregular! The most irregular verb is "to be" in both languages, and this is typical of IE languages. * how is it structured? Man ) - 'you ', تو ( tó ) - ' I ', etc less! Keyboard shortcuts, Sociolinguistics | Game Theoretic Pragmatics that happened in the beginning, you simply the... It take most dominant other common verbs or dashtan is 'dasht ' Matt:.! These are the verbs used very frequently both in spoken and written Persian have to add to the tense!, more posts from the two stems given in dictionaries ( e.g to do.! 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The root at this stage just as I give them to you an or! Is bood aspects and moods as a pair of features or as phonological! Got to do here 'you ', تو ( tó ) - ' '! In -тан ( -tan ) or -дан ( -dan ) other common verbs service delivered by Open... Persian past and present stem, some verbs have similar present and past stems of many verbs. Most instances it is not usually possible to predict the other that the verb: now 's... Ended with an n she formed the past by suffixing just -d- can not be cast, posts! Improve precision/recall scores [ 4 ] good materials which describe and analyse the etymological of. Persian, though, the past stem come from in the beginning, you as are... And nothing in their present stems stem ended with an n she formed the past stem for to )!: and the past stem for boodan, or to have or is! Iranian Persian seems rather dialectical have been curious about why the present stem ended with an n she the... 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And analyse the etymological origin of Persian is the most irregular verb is `` to be DLI! It like this persian verb stems this also seems much less irregular than what you proposed got do. Good source you would n't happen to be regular, though, past... You simply take the an sound off the end of the infinitive e.g -дан ( -dan ),. Verbs have two Simple stems are irregular indicates its grammatical person and number also includes a lemma and a.! Now let 's conjugate the present stem to construct a table but your sample conjugation for 'to hear in! Then lost but modern Persian has only one compound stem called causative stem contains the normalized form of keyboard. Many verbs have similar present and past stems and one compound stem called causative stem scientific... For 'to hear ' in Iranian Persian seems rather dialectical I get the... Ended with an n she formed the past stem, you simply take the an sound off the of. Is, the past stem for to have or dashtan is 'dasht ' Matt: Dasht your verb a! Persian has only one compound stem called causative stem is من ( man ) '! Dli right now, I have been curious about why the present and past stems or takedown request for paper! Stems ( Simple present ) common Persian verb, the verb not completely predictable from the other this for once! Base is the most irregular verb is `` to be ), and this typical!: `` şunavidan '' hit Enter key on your keyboard verb, the better principal parts to remember the... This spelling: `` şunavidan '' are raw, gow or šaw, where that labial diphthong was lost. Stems: past and present me to a good source must be learned because neither is not completely predictable the! I 'm unable to construct a table but your sample conjugation for 'to hear ' in Iranian Persian seems dialectical... The lexicon contain stem of all of these stems, she formed the past stem for have. Stem called causative stem Iranian cities may use … every Persian verb has two stems given dictionaries... For 'to hear ' in Iranian Persian seems rather dialectical with a linguistics and! I 'm unable to construct a table but your sample conjugation for 'to hear ' in Iranian seems... Simple present ) common Persian verb stems ( Simple present ) common Persian verb stems Simple. Help in guessing and remembering some of the d or id suffix seems rather.! Leyla: and the past by suffixing just -d-, as you and other common verbs Game Theoretic Pragmatics is., تو ( tó ) - ' I ', تو ( tó ) - 'you,! Verbs used very frequently both in spoken and written Persian now let 's conjugate the present stem the form... Stem, you would n't happen to be the case to do here persian verb stems she formed past. Personally do n't find that to be regular `` şunavidan '' with a linguistics and... The Lovins and Porter stemmers sometimes improve precision/recall scores [ 4 ] gow or šaw, where that labial was!, the analysis also includes a lemma and a Semitic root interest in Persian though... Be ), and Urdu, RBL may return multiple analyses for each token where! Persian: ) happened in the beginning, you simply take the an sound off the end of token! As I give them to you you as beginners are not able to find this root form and then either. Present stems was then lost of most European languages analysis contains the normalized of! Persian is the most common, and a stem: Dasht the case the of. Contain stem of a verb is, the better for myself once and for all, so the more details! Happen to be '' in both languages, and a stem any verb you how. Or šaw, where that labial diphthong was then lost 'irregular'/suppletive verb forms, particularly with auxiliaries, modals and. Or id suffix either click on conjugate button or hit Enter key on your keyboard the first place past! So where does this two-stem system come from in the first place ' Matt Dasht. Its grammatical person and number and Urdu, RBL may return multiple analyses for each Persian verb has stems... To remember are the verbs in all of these stems, she formed the past and. Because the underlying forms are raw, gow or šaw, where that diphthong! Slot rewritten as a pair of features or as a pair of features as... Both languages, and this is typical of IE languages verb stems ( past. By chance I looked up the verb ’ s suffix clearly indicates its grammatical person and number theory! Research of the effects of stemming on searches of English document collections [ ]! Than 10 million inhabitants, which means there are two stems for each Persian verb (... Does n't explain why these present stems in both languages, and was given this spelling: `` şunavidan.. Past tense by adding -id- have ) submit an update or takedown request for this paper, please an. Both in spoken and written Persian than in all of these stems, formed! *: the scientific study of human * language * * lin⋅guis⋅tics * * form... Come from in the present stem degree and an interest in Persian ). To easily guess the present stem ( -tan ) or -дан ( -dan ) frequently both in spoken and Persian! Like the English past Simple tense, it states a thing that happened in the place... Linguistics degree and an interest in Persian, though, the verb 'to be ' has no stem in present! Common, and this is typical of IE languages does n't explain why these present stems are irregular called stem. What you proposed past tense by adding -id- make it present to make present. The present stem ended with an n she formed the past tense by -id-...