Dehnamaki: A Newly Found Komisenian Variety

Document Type : Original Article

Author

The State University of New Jersey

Abstract

This paper is based on my fieldnotes taken in June 2022 in Dehnamak, located between Garmsār and Semnān. Dehnamaki was identified as a variety of the Komisenian Sprachbund. The paper draws a sketch grammar of Dehnamaki. It has a ternary set of present, past, and perfect stems, as in xor-, xord, xorč- ‘eat’. The verb alignment is nominative-accusative, lacking distinctions between transitive and intransitive verbs, but the distinct set of past-tense person markers (Table 1), which are originally the oblique pronominal clitics, display a feeble residue of Middle West Iranian ergativity. The second part this paper concerns with the typology of Dehnamaki.

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