Page 1 of 1

Persian definite and indefinite articles, or lack thereof

Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2019 6:42 pm
by AML
I'm a bit confused about definite ("the") and indefinite ("a", "an") articles in Persian. My basic understanding is that Persian does not have articles and that definite/indefiniteness is implied via context. But I've also read about the suffix -i, which can be added to make indefiniteness clear. Is this true, and is it used in both writing and speaking? Also, are there other ways to make definite/indefiniteness clear? Please help clarify this topic. Much appreciated.

Re: Persian definite and indefinite articles, or lack thereof

Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2019 7:18 pm
by vonPeterhof
I don't really know about the Persian of Iran, but in Afghanistan indefiniteness of singular nouns is often marked by putting yak (literally "one") before the noun. There's also a way of distinguishing definiteness of direct objects, with definite ones marked with the accusative marker -rā (-ra in the colloquial language) and indefinite ones unmarked (a similar system exists in some Turkic languages and in Hebrew, even though it also has a definite article).

Re: Persian definite and indefinite articles, or lack thereof

Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2019 10:18 am
by 白田龍

Re: Persian definite and indefinite articles, or lack thereof

Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2019 1:08 pm
by AML


Yep, I have John Mace, but what I'm asking is beyond that, because I basically repeated what he wrote.

Re: Persian definite and indefinite articles, or lack thereof

Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2019 9:31 pm
by 白田龍
This presentation is confusing, but focus on the examples:

https://jasbi.github.io/research/jasbi_ ... NACIL1.pdf

the -e definite suffix is never used in formal Persian, and I think it is not very frequent in colloquial speech, but you hear it sometimes.

This gave me a headache:
https://d-nb.info/1079901191/34