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Part of
Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond
Edited by Robert Crellin and Thomas Jügel
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 352] 2020
► pp. 279–310

Chapter 8
The perfect in Middle and New Iranian languages

 | Goethe University Frankfurt
This paper is the first step towards a description of the category ‘perfect’ in Middle and New Iranian languages. It attempts a comprehensive overview of the various forms that developed in the course of the past 2000 years, arriving at a typological classification of the Iranian languages. The comparison of perfects with their paradigmatic counterparts helps delimit the functional range that the perfect covered or covers, which, owing to lack of information, is as much as can be achieved for the majority of the Iranian languages. The diachronic perspective provides insight into the functional development of the perfect, which began with a resultative construction, and which in turn developed via a perfect into a simple past or past perfective (in some cases more than once). The paper concludes with a brief overview of some special perfect constructions such as double perfects, evidentials and perfect continuous forms.
Keywords: Middle and New Iranian, perfect, diachronic path, tense, aspect
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Historical and typological overview
  • 3.Perfect formations in Iranian languages
    • 3.1Type 1 – the prf.p construction
    • 3.2Types 2 and 3 – two isolated cases
    • 3.3Type 6 – the ak perfect
    • 3.4Type 4 – the ‘stay perfect’
    • 3.5Types 5 and 5′ – the ‘have perfect’
    • 3.6Type 7 – the ‘exist perfect’
    • 3.7Types 8, 9 and further subtypes
  • 4.Semantics of Iranian perfects
    • 4.1Double perfects or supercomposed perfects
    • 4.2Perfect and evidentiality
    • 4.3Perfect continuous forms
  • 5.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
Published online: 23 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.352.08jug
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