Overview of Persian Grammar

1. The Phonemes of Persian

This section gives the graphic inventory used in this course for modern literary Persian of Iran. It is a notation oriented toward the phonological and grammatical forms of Persian, not a letter-by-letter transliteration of the Perso-Arabic script. Historical distinctions useful for etymology are therefore introduced only when they correspond to a relevant opposition in the Persian form being described.

Consonants and the auxiliary element w

Notes on signs not retained in the table:

• Historical sources of /s/ are not distinguished in this notation: they are simply written s in the modern profile.
• Historical sources of /z/ are likewise written z.
• The graphic or etymological opposition between sources of h is not maintained as a modern phonemic opposition; the course writes h.
• Historical uvular values are brought together under q for modern literary Persian of Iran.
• The sign ‘ is reserved for glottal consonantism preserved in a normative form, for example in a word such as ba‘d. It is not used to mark every vocalic onset automatically, nor to reproduce every etymological ‘ayn or hamza mechanically.
• w is not treated as an independent consonant in the main table: it marks the non-syllabic element of sequences such as ow, except in an explicitly distinct historical profile.

Vowels

Diphthongs

The two diphthongs retained here are ey and ow.

2. Case, Gender, and Sentence Structure

To read a simple Persian sentence, one must start from syntax rather than from nominal declension. The noun does not change form according to its function; grammatical relations are indicated by position, prepositions and, for some direct objects, by rā (see § 22).

The noun phrase also ignores the masculine/feminine opposition. This absence of gender applies to the noun itself, to the adjective, and to determiners.

In a neutral declarative sentence, the verb closes the clause. In a copular sentence, the attribute therefore comes before the copula:

Kamrān āmāde ast <Kamran ready is> “Kamran is ready.”

A yes-no question can be produced without changing word order, by intonation alone. āyā makes the question explicit, while magar adds an expectation of a contrary answer.

3. Absence of Article and Number

A Persian noun is not preceded by a definite or indefinite article of the English type. Referential value is first inferred from context: a bare noun may refer to an already identifiable referent or introduce a reference that has not yet been individualized.

To mark a new or unidentified reference explicitly, Persian uses -i on the noun or on the whole noun phrase:

daftar “(the) notebook”; daftari “a notebook”; daftar-o qalam “a notebook and a pen.”

yek “one” can serve a similar function. It appears alone or in combination with -i:

yek nāme / yek nāme‘i / nāme‘i “a letter.”

Number is marked separately from determination. The ordinary plural uses -hā; -ān, more classical and often human, remains possible in some words or registers:

daftarhā “notebooks / the notebooks”; zanān or zanhā “women / the women.”

Nominal plural does not automatically trigger the same agreements as in Romance languages. In the third person, a human or animate plural subject normally calls for a plural verb; with an inanimate or abstract subject, the singular remains frequent, even though the plural may occur.

An attributive or predicative adjective does not bear the plural marker, and an adjectival demonstrative behaves the same way. Pluralization reappears when the adjective functions as a noun, or when the demonstrative is pronominal:

ān daftarhā “those notebooks”; ānhā “those ones.”

ān daftarhā kohne ast “those notebooks are old”; kohnehā “the old ones.”

The Persian plural can coexist with an Arabic plural preserved in borrowed vocabulary:

ketābhā = kotob “the books.”

4. Adjectives and Ezāfe; Expression of Possession

In the Persian noun phrase, ezāfe marks a dependency that runs from the head noun toward the element placed after it. This link can introduce a possessor, a quality, an apposition, or a complement.

qalam-e dānešāmuz “the student’s pen”;

doxtar-e javān “the young girl”;

Kamrān-e naqqāš “Kamran the painter”;

xānom-e Behzād “Mrs. Behzad.”

The same mechanism is found in groups that have become almost lexical. Their English translation may reverse the terms, but the Persian structure remains that of a noun followed by a determiner linked by ezāfe:

pir-e mard <old /ezāfe/ man> “the old man”;

pir-e zan <old /ezāfe/ woman> “the old woman.”

The indefinite marker is placed differently depending on the intended scope. When -i has scope over the whole group, it is added at the end of the ezāfe chain. If the marker is attached directly to the noun, the adjective is no longer linked by ezāfe:

bāq-e kučeki = bāqi kuček “a small garden.”

To modify the degree of an adjective, an intensifying adverb is placed before the adjective, for example xeyli or besyār:

in daftar xeyli kohne ast <this notebook very old is> “this notebook is very old.”

Possession expressed by a complete sentence is not built like a simple noun phrase. Persian often uses māl “property”, followed by the possessor through ezāfe. Another solution uses az ān, literally “of the one of”:

in daftar māl-e Kamrān ast “this notebook belongs to Kamran”;

in daftar māl-e man ast <this notebook property /ezāfe/ me> “this notebook is mine”;

in daftar az ān-e Kamrān ast <this notebook from that of Kamran is> “this notebook belongs to Kamran.”

The comparative degree belongs to adjective morphology: -tar is added to the base, and the second term of comparison is introduced by az:

Kamrān az Leylā bozorgtar ast “Kamran is taller than Leyla.”

The superlative adds -tarin. If the resulting form is used as a noun, the group indicating the reference set is attached by ezāfe:

kučektarin-e dānešāmuzān “the smallest of the students.”

5. Prepositions and Prepositional Phrases

Two types of constructions must be distinguished. Simple prepositions govern their complement directly; prepositional phrases, by contrast, are often built around a noun or relational adverb and require ezāfe before the complement.

Simple Prepositions

In this first type, the preposition immediately precedes the noun phrase:

be has a particularly wide domain of use; in classical Persian it can also take a value close to “with”. Before the demonstratives in and ān, linking commonly gives badin and badān (see § 6).

Phrases With a Nominal or Adverbial Head

When the spatial or abstract relation is carried by a noun such as ru “face” or jā “place”, this noun behaves as a head: the complement that specifies the reference point follows with ezāfe.

The resulting prepositional group can then determine a noun by ezāfe:

manzel-e bi bāq “a house without a garden.”

6. Hiatus Avoidance

The linking rules depend on two elements: the final vowel of the base and the initial of the suffix or ezāfe. They belong at once to pronunciation, to the transcription adopted here, and sometimes to the way Persian script does or does not mark the link.

The indefinite -i clearly illustrates the difference between written and pronounced form. After a base in -i, the suffix normally has no audible or visible realization; sandali can therefore be interpreted as “the chair” or “a chair”. Poetry may nevertheless make this vowel reappear for metrical needs. After -e, the script uses a hamza over -e (‭هٔ) or a separate i (یا); in this transcription the junction is written with ‘:

nāme‘i “a letter.”

For ezāfe, the linking form is -ye after the vocalic endings -ā, -e, -u, and -i. The script does not indicate it in the same way in every case: after -i, it is not written; after -e, it appears as superscript hamza (هٔ):

daftarhā-ye kohne “the old notebooks.”

The preposition be- forms a lexicalized case: before in and ān, it takes a -d- link.

be-d-ān “to that one”, be-d-in “to this one.”

7. Personal Pronouns and Enclitic Personal Suffixes

Persian distinguishes two personal series. The first is autonomous: it behaves like an ordinary noun phrase. The second is enclitic: it leans on a preceding word and first serves to mark a possessor, with a few complement uses.

Personal Pronouns

For the third person, the choice presented here depends mainly on whether the referent is animate or inanimate. When ast immediately follows to or u, the sequence can be reduced phonetically and graphically:

to + ast → tost; u + ast → ust.

in xāne-ye tost <this house of you is> “this is your house.”

hame ust “everything is Him” (or “He is everything”) [Sufi formula].

Enclitic Personal Suffixes

In possession, the enclitic is placed at the end of the possessed group, not after each of its words. The linking rules of § 6 apply after a vowel; after an ending in -e, the script separates the enclitic and gives it an initial a-:

nāme-at “your letter.”

āvāz-e soxanguyešān “the voice of their spokesperson”

The same principle applies to coordinations and ezāfe chains: a single personal marker, placed on the right, is enough for the whole group.

xāhar-o barādarat “your sister and brother”;

doxtar-e kučekaš “his/her little girl.”

These suffixes are not limited to the nominal domain. In poetry and in spoken usage, they can resume a direct or indirect object, including inside a verbal phrase (see § 22-§ 23).

8. Reflexive Pronouns

The form xod covers all persons. It therefore does not vary by itself; the context, or an added element, identifies the person concerned.

To make the reference explicit, one adds either a personal suffix or an independent pronoun introduced by ezāfe.

in daftar māl-e xod-e man ast “this notebook is mine”

xodaš hāzer ast “he/she is present in person.”

Before a noun, xod instead serves as emphasis: the referent itself is targeted, without an intermediary.

xod-e dustānam “my friends themselves.”

9. Demonstratives

Demonstratives first distinguish proximity and distance. Used as adjectives, they remain invariable; used as pronouns, they have plural forms.

After the preposition be-, the encounter with in or ān follows the hiatus avoidance rules described in § 6.

Demonstratives also serve as the base for several lexical series. The spatial series combines the demonstrative with jā “place”:

injā “here”; ānjā “there.”

The identity series combines in / ān with ham “same”:

hamin / hamān “the same.”

The manner or quality series is based on čun “like”:

čonin / čonān “such.”

10. Interrogatives and Exclamatives

Interrogatives are divided according to two criteria: their function in the noun phrase and the type of referent. Used alone, they notably oppose animate and inanimate; before a noun, they act as determiners. Several of these forms can also be read as exclamatives.

With the copula ast, some sequences contract: če + ast gives čist, while ki / ke + ast gives kist.

When če determines a noun, the indefinite suffix may remain possible:

če xāne(i) “which house?, what a house!”

Two compounds formed with če ask about or emphasize manner, quality, or kind:

• če gune: “of what sort”, “how”, or, in exclamation, “how”;
• če towr: “how” or “how, what a.”

11. Numeral, Quantifying, and Indefinite Pronouns and Adjectives

The quantified group is built from left to right: first the quantity word, then the noun. The morphology of the noun does not necessarily reflect semantic plurality; after a quantifier or a number, the expected nominal form remains singular.

Indefinite and Distributive Determination

Type	Forms
totality	hame “all”; hamejā “everywhere”; hamejā-ye Irān “everywhere in Iran”
distribution	har “each”; har kas “everyone”
indeterminacy	harče “whatever”; with a comparative: harče zudtar “as soon as possible”
otherness	digar “other”; pesar-e digar(i) “another boy”
negation	hič ... na “no, not any”

The series built on digar can function without an expressed noun: digari and yeki digar mean “another, someone else”; kasi digar means “someone else”, while yek-digar marks reciprocity.

With hič, negative value is obtained by combining the indefinite with verbal negation:

hič ābi namānd “no water remained”; hič kas nayāmad “no one came.”

Quantity

Quantifiers follow the same general syntax as cardinals: they are preposed and leave the noun in the singular. When the quantity is vague or interrogative, the group can still receive the indefinite suffix, for example in čand daftar(i).

Type of quantity	Forms and examples
small quantity	yek kami “a little”; yek qadri “a certain amount of”
open quantity	čand “a few; how many”; čandān “so many”
interrogative quantity	če-qadr “how much, how many”
large quantity	xeyli, besyār, ziād “much, many”
demonstrative quantity	in qadr, ān qadr “so much, so many”
variety	hame jur “all kinds of”

besyār dānešāmuz “many students”; in qadr qahve “so much coffee”; hame jur pārče “all kinds of fabrics.”

Cardinal Numbers

Here are the basic forms from which compounds and measure groups are formed:

Number	Form	Number	Form	Number	Form
1	yek	11	yāzde	30	si
2	do	12	davāzdah	40	čehel
3	se	13	sizdah	50	panjāh
4	čahār	14	čahārdah	60	šast
5	panj	15	pānzdah	70	haftād
6	šeš	16	šānzdah	80	haštād
7	haft	17	hefdah	90	navad
8	hašt	18	hijdah	100	(yek) sad
9	noh	19	nuzdah	200	davist
10	dah	20	bist	300	sisad
400	čahārsad	500	pānsad	600	šešsad
700	haftsad	800	haštsad	900	nuhsad
1000	(yek) hazār	500000	korur	1000000	milyun

In compound numbers, the elements are announced from largest to smallest. The link between them is o:

bist-o se “23”;

čahārsad-o panjāh-o do “452.”

The noun following a cardinal remains in the singular:

se zan “three women”;

dah daftar “ten notebooks.”

To express an approximate quantity of large scale, the numeral may receive a plural marker; the counted noun itself remains singular:

sadhā daftar “hundreds of notebooks”;

hazārān dānešāmuz “thousands of students.”

Classifiers, Measures, and Indefinite Subject

A classifier may be inserted between the cardinal and the noun. Its function is to specify the type of counted unit; it often has no lexical equivalent in English. tā is frequent with inanimates, and nafar with humans:

se tā daftar “three notebooks”;

čahār nafar dānešju “four students.”

The same structure admits nouns of measure, container, set, or category:

panj kilu berenj “five kilos of rice”;

se kāse āš “three bowls of soup” (but se kāse-ye āš “three soup bowls”);

do dast lebās “two sets of clothes”;

čahār joft kafaš “four pairs of shoes”;

do now‘ gol “two kinds of flowers.”

For an unidentified human agent, Persian readily uses a third-person plural where English would use “one”, “they”, or a passive.

12. The Infinitive

The infinitive gives the process a nominal form. It is recognized by its endings -tan and -dan:

didan “to see”; neveštan “to write.”

Since it behaves like a noun, the infinitive can enter an ezāfe chain, depend on a preposition, or specify the use of a noun.

raftan-e Leylā “Leyla’s departure”;

qalam-e neveštan <pen of-writing> “a pen for writing”;

piš az āmadān-e dustam <before from coming of my friend> “before my friend’s arrival.”

13. The Past Stem

To obtain the past stem, one starts from the infinitive and removes the ending -an. In this type of verb, the past base is therefore derived directly from the infinitive form.

Infinitive	Past stem
didan “to see”	did
neveštan “to write”	nevešt

This stem first serves as the bare third-person singular form in the preterite:

did “he/she saw”; nevešt “he/she wrote.”

It is also found after impersonals such as bāyad “must, it is necessary” or mitavān / momkin ast “it is possible”, when the action has no expressed personal subject:

bāyad nevešt “one must write”;

mitavān did = momkin ast did “it is possible to see.”

Finally, it serves as the support for the tenses of the past series: preterite, imperfect indicative, imperfect subjunctive, and the future built with xāstan.

14. The Present Stem

The present stem is less predictable than the past stem. For many verbs it must be memorized together with the infinitive; the correspondences below give only frequent patterns.

Operation	Environment	Example
removal of a final syllable	past stem in -id, -est, -eft, -oft, or -ād	xaridan / xar- “to buy”; dānestan / dān- “to know”; oftādan / oft- “to fall”
removal of final -d	past stem in -nd or -rd	māndan / mān- “to remain”; āvardan / āvar- “to bring”
consonant removal with vowel change	past stem in -ud	nemudan / nemā- “to show”
removal of final -t	past stem in -ft or -št	koštan / koš- “to kill”

This stem is the base of finite present forms, both in the indicative and in the subjunctive. It also serves to form non-finite derivatives. With -ande, one obtains a present participle with adjectival or nominal value; with -ān, a present gerund:

šekanande “breaking” (šekastan / šekan- “to break”); āyande “future, next”; šenavande, pl. šenavandegān “listener(s).”

konān “while doing.”

15. Personal Endings

Personal endings indicate the person and number of the finite verb. They are placed after the verbal base; the third-person singular ending -ad appears only in imperfective forms.

After a base ending in a vowel, the ending is not always added directly. A link in -y- appears before an ending beginning with a-; before -i, the transcription indicates the junction with ‘. The forms in § 18 give these alternations in context.

16. Conjugation Prefixes

Verbal prefixes are divided among three domains: aspect, mood, and polarity. They do not all stack in the same way; negation, in particular, modifies the presence of be-.

Domain	Prefix	Function
aspect	mi-	presents the action as ongoing, repeated, or considered in its duration; it characterizes the present and imperfect indicative
mood	be-	accompanies the subjunctive and imperative, with values of aim, injunction, subjectivity, or doubt
negation	na-	negates the verbal form; it is placed before mi- and normally replaces be-

na-raft “he/she did not go.”

In classical Persian, mi- can appear as hami, while be- can receive a punctual aspectual value opposed to (ha)mi.

The phonology of the root matters when it begins with a vowel. A root with an initial other than i- triggers a -y- link after na, and be- becomes bi-. Before i-, the initial alef, transcribed ‘, attaches to the preverb. The examples in § 18 illustrate both cases.

17. Tenses Formed on the Past Stem

The past stem produces two simple tenses by addition of the endings. Without a prefix, one obtains the preterite; with mi-, the same base enters the imperfect.

With neveštan “to write”, the base is nevešt-. The preterite gives:

neveštam, nevešti, nevešt, neveštim, neveštid, neveštand.

In the imperfect, mi- precedes the same personal series:

mi-neveštam, mi-nevešti, mi-nevešt, mi-neveštim, mi-neveštid, mi-neveštand.

Negation is placed before the verbal complex. In the preterite, it directly precedes the base; in the imperfect, it is placed before mi-.

naneveštam “I did not write”; na-mi-neveštam “I was not writing” (pronounced nemi°).

18. Tenses Formed on the Present Stem

From the present stem nevis- of neveštan “to write”, three series are obtained. They are distinguished by the chosen prefix and by the presence or absence of an ending in the second-person singular.

Domain	Mark
present indicative	mi- + present stem + ending
present subjunctive	be- + present stem + ending
direct imperative	be- + present stem, without an ending in the second-person singular

In the “imperative” column, only the second person corresponds to a direct command. The other forms are subjunctives with the value of a wish, exhortation, or indirect injunction.

The present indicative is not limited to the moment of speech: it can also announce a future action when the temporal context requires it.

Negation shows that mi- and be- do not behave in the same way. Before the indicative, na- precedes mi-; before the subjunctive and imperative, na- replaces the prefix be-:

na-mi-nevisam “I do not write” (pronounced nemi°);

nanevisam “that I not write”; nanevis “do not write!”

If the root begins with a vowel, junctions follow the hiatus avoidance rules described in § 15:

• goftan / gu- “to speak”: na-mi-guyam “I do not speak”; mi-gu‘i “you speak”;
• āvardan / āvar- “to bring”: biāvar “bring!”;
• istādan “to stand”: be‘ist “stand up!”

The Case of dāštan “to Have”

With its lexical meaning “to have”, dāštan (dār-) is conjugated outside the prefixed model: normally neither mi- nor be- is added to it. As the light verb of a verbal phrase, however, it follows the construction of the whole verbal complex and can receive mi-:

nān dāram “I have bread”;

rāh rā nešān mi-dāram “I show the way” (nešān dāštan “to show”).

19. The Past Participle

The past participle is built on the past stem with the suffix -e. This is the form that enters compound tenses, but its use is not limited to conjugation.

raftan “to go” → rafte.

As an adjective, it describes the resulting state of a noun; as a noun, it can designate what has been said or accomplished:

dar-e baste “the closed door” (bastan “to close”);

guftehā-ye Mahdi “Mahdi’s words” (goftan “to say”).

In another use, the participle serves to build an adverbial group. It places the main process after a process already reached or in its immediate continuation. The link with the main clause can be provided by va / -o “and”:

be-bāq rafte (va) goli čid <to-garden gone (and) a flower picked> “after going to the garden, he/she picked a flower.”

When the expected participle would be šode “having been”, it can remain understood. In the following example, entry into the courtyard is presented as the prior state of the main action:

vāred-e hayyāt (šode) va sedā zad <inside of courtyard (having been) and call struck> “once he/she had entered the courtyard, he/she called.”

20. Auxiliaries

Auxiliaries distribute information that the simple verb carries by itself elsewhere: they receive the inflection and indicate the value of the compound form, whether anteriority, modality, future, or passive.

Auxiliary	Main grammatical value	Formal note
budan / bāš- “to be”	pluperfect, perfect subjunctive	be- does not appear in the forms presented here; mi- is rare
xāstan / xāh- “to want”	future	the auxiliary precedes the verbal base of the lexical verb
šodan / šav- “to become”	passive	in the passives below, the form does not take be-
copular forms of “to be”	perfect and existential predication	opposition between unstressed forms, sometimes suffixed, and full stressed forms

For “to be”, one must distinguish the short forms, which often lean on the preceding word, and the full forms. The latter serve to posit existence or to give the predication more relief; they do not replace the modal or future uses of budan.

After a final vowel, the copula ast frequently fuses with the preceding word and its initial disappears:

Leylā injāst “Leyla is here.”

21. Compound Tenses

The common base of compound tenses is the past participle. The final form then depends on the added auxiliary: copula, budan, xāstan, or šodan.

Auxiliary	Resulting form	Construction	Example
enclitic form of “to be”	perfect	past participle + short copula	xaride am “I have bought”
budan / bāš-	pluperfect or past subjunctive	past participle + form of budan	xaride budam “I had bought”; xaride bāšam “that I have bought”
xāstan / xāh-	simple future	auxiliary in the present without mi- + past stem	xāhim xarid “we will buy”
šodan / šav-	passive	past participle + conjugated form of šodan	xaride mi-šavad “it is bought”

The perfect can receive mi- when the form describes an old habit rather than a single completed event.

mi-xaride and “they used to buy.”

In passive forms, the participle gives the verbal lexeme and šodan carries the tense and mood oppositions:

xaride mi-šavad “it is bought”;

xaride šode ast “it has been bought”;

xaride šavad “that it be bought.”

22. The Definite Direct Object Marker

rā follows the object noun phrase when that object is definite or specific. The marker therefore bears on the whole group, not on the verb:

daftar rā mi-xaram “I buy the notebook.”

A non-specific object remains outside this marking; it appears bare or with the indefinite suffix -i:

daftar(i) xarid “he/she bought a notebook.”

Two singular pronouns fuse lexically with this postposition: man gives marā, and to gives torā.

marā did “he/she saw me” (didan “to see”).

A pronominal object can also be expressed otherwise. In spoken language and in poetry, an enclitic suffix can resume the direct object:

didam-aš “I saw him/her.”

This enclitic seeks a host in the verbal group; it is not necessarily the finite verb:

be-xāk-aš sepordand <to-earth-him/her entrusted> “they buried him/her.”

When the direct object contains a possessor coreferential with the subject, the reflexive xod is used. The ordinary pronoun instead marks a distinct possessor:

nāme-ye xod rā xānd “he/she read his/her own letter”;

nāme-ye u rā xānd “he/she read his/her letter (someone else’s).”

23. Verbal Phrases

A verbal phrase brings together a non-verbal lexical nucleus and a light verb. The nucleus determines the semantic content, while the light verb provides the inflection and allows the whole unit to function as a verbal predicate.

Lexical nucleus	Role in the phrase	Example
preposition	orientation or trajectory	bar gaštan “to return”
adverb	process modification	pas dādan “to give back”
adjective	change of state	boland kardan “to raise, lift”
noun	lexical content of the action	harf zadan “to speak”

In these complex forms, the prefix be- tends to be omitted.

From the point of view of the definite direct object, the phrase nevertheless counts as an ordinary verb: the object group takes rā.

kamar-band-e xod rā tang kard <belt of self rā tight made> “he/she tightened his/her belt.”

An object personal suffix can choose the non-verbal nucleus as its point of support:

tang-aš kard “he/she tightened it”;

yād-at kard <memory you made> “he/she taught you.”

The complements of the verbal phrase must nevertheless be distinguished from the complements of the lexical nucleus. When the complement depends on the noun or adjective of the phrase, the link is nominal or prepositional rather than verbal.

ejāze-ye raftan dād <permission of leaving gave> “he/she gave permission to leave”; yād-e vatan-e ‘aziz-e xod rā kard <memory of homeland ezāfe dear of self rā made> “he/she remembered his/her dear homeland.”

24. Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordination can be explicit, with a conjunction or the enclitic -o, but it can also remain implicit when the relation between the two processes is immediately recoverable.

Form	Value
-o (enclitic), va	“and”
vali	“but”
yā	“or”
yā... yā	“either… or”
balke	“or rather”
ham... ham	“both… and”

Juxtaposition is especially natural when two actions form a tight sequence; the second predicate then gives the purpose or outcome of the first.

raftam qalamhā xaridam <I-went pens I-bought> “I went to buy pens.”

25. Subordinate Clauses Without a Subordinating Conjunction

A dependent clause does not always need an expressed subordinator. The link may be carried by the meaning of the main clause and by the mood of the dependent verb. The essential contrasts therefore concern the expected verbal form.

Juxtaposed Subjunctive

After a main clause expressing will, command, fear, or intention, the following clause may simply be juxtaposed and take the subjunctive:

be-bāzār mi-ravam mive be-xaram <to-market I-go fruit that-I-buy> “I am going to the market to buy fruit.”

Modal impersonals trigger the same choice if the dependent clause has its own subject. The most useful are:

Value	Forms
necessity	bāyad; in the past bāyist
possibility	mumkin ast / bud, or mi-tavān / mitavānist
sufficiency	kāfi ast / bud
agreement or decision	qarār mi-šavad / šod

bāyad be-madrase be-ravad “he/she must go to school.”

Bare Past Stem

When the dependent action is impersonal or lacks a distinct subject, the verb may be reduced to the past stem:

bāyad montazer mānd “one must wait.”

Imperfect of Non-Realization

For an action that should have, could have, or was wished to occur but was not realized, the dependent clause shifts to the imperfect. With kāš “if only”, the same form expresses regret:

bāyad zudtar mi-āmadam “I should have come earlier”;

kāš u rā mi-didam “if only I had seen him/her.”

Posteriority of the dependent clause can maintain a present after a main clause in the past:

be-bāzār raftam ke mive be-xaram “I went to the market to buy fruit.”

Progressive by Juxtaposition

The progressive follows the same principle of juxtaposition. dāštan “to have” receives the conjugation and introduces the clause that expresses the ongoing action:

dāram nāme mi-nevisam “I am writing a letter right now”;

dāštam nāme mi-neveštam “I was writing a letter then.”

26. The Conjunction ke

The word ke is a very general subordinator. It therefore does not correspond to a single English conjunction: depending on context, it introduces reported content, purpose, consequence, focus, or explanation.

As a complementizer, it opens the clause depending on a verb such as “to know”, “to say”, “to ask”, or “to be surprised”. Reported speech does not always force a change of tense or mood:

mi-dānid ke u fardā mi-āyad yā na “do you know whether he/she will come tomorrow or not?”;

goft ke be-madrase mi-ravam <said that to-school I-go> “he/she said that he/she was going to school”;

porsid ke kojā benšinam “he/she asked where to sit”;

ta‘ajjub kard ke bārān mi-bārid “he/she was surprised that it was raining”;

Leylā āmad ke nāme āmāde ast “Leyla came [to say] that the letter was ready.”

The constructions described in § 25 also accept ke, except in the case where an impersonal directly governs the bare past stem. A purposive value is then frequent:

be-bāzār mi-ravam ke mive be-xaram “I am going to the market to buy fruit”

Outside complement clauses, mood depends on interpretation: purpose, possibility, doubt, or posteriority calls for the subjunctive.

In correlations, ke introduces the term that completes the announced measure or intensity:

ān qadr āheste raft ke qāfele resid “he/she walked so slowly that the caravan arrived.”

To focus a constituent, it is placed before the clause and followed by ke:

dar madrase bud ke u rā šenāxtam “it was at school that I recognized him/her.”

ke can also make explicit a demonstrative, a noun, or a prepositional group. The English translation then chooses an expression suited to the logical relation: “the fact that”, “namely that”, “because”, or a more natural reformulation.

bedin dalil bāz gašt ke rāh baste bud “he/she came back for this reason, that the road was closed” = “he/she came back because the road was closed”;

mesl-e ān bud ke hame čiz rā farāmuš karde bāšad “it was as if he/she had forgotten everything.”

In conjunctive locutions, the word preceding ke carries the essential relation between the clauses:

Relation	Locution
time	vaqti-ke “when”
place	jā‘i-ke “where”
cause	az ānjā‘i-ke “because”
concession	bāvojudi-ke “although”
comparison	hamān-towri-ke “exactly as”
consequence	be-towri-ke “so that” (+ subjunctive)

The combination with in or ān also gives fixed locutions:

pas az ān ke “after”; barā-ye ān ke “so that, in order that.”

27. Relative Clauses

The relative clause is introduced by ke, but ke itself does not carry English distinctions such as “who”, “whom”, “which”, “whose”, or “to whom”. The function of the antecedent is read in the internal structure of the relative: no resumptive element, resumption by a pronoun, preposition, or possessive suffix.

In a restrictive relative, the antecedent receives -i. ke follows this antecedent; if it is the definite object of the main clause, rā may be inserted before ke.

Type of resumption	Construction
no resumption if the antecedent is subject	doxtar-i ke injā ast dust-e man ast “the girl who is here is my friend”
rā in the main clause	daftar-i rā ke xaridam injāst “the notebook that I bought is here”
optional object pronoun in the relative	javān-i ke pari-ruz (u rā) didid injāst “the young man whom you saw the day before yesterday is here”
preposition preserved in the relative	javān-i ke bā-u āmadam injāst “the young man with whom I came is here”
possessive suffix on the dependent noun	javān-i rā ke daftar-aš injāst mi-binam “I see the young man whose notebook is here”

Appositive relatives use the same introducer. They add information about an already identified referent:

in javān ke dust-e man ast šomā rā komak xāhad kard “this young man, my friend, will help you”;

Kamrān bāqi dāšt ke dar ān golhā-ye besyār bud “Kamran had a garden where there were many flowers.”

Some ke constructions instead develop a noun or adjective group and take on an adverbial value in translation. The main clause then resumes the whole situation:

dars ke tamām šod be-manzel raftim <lesson that finished became to-house we-went> “when the lesson was over, we went home”;

ānjā ke residim istādim <there that we-arrived we-stopped> “once we arrived there, we stopped.”

28. Other Subordinating Conjunctions

Not all subordinate clauses pass through a locution in ke. Some subordinators function alone: čun, for example, can have the temporal value “when”. For cause, čun, zir, če, and čerā occur with or without ke.

The case of tā requires contextual reading, because the same form can mark a limit, a starting point, an expected endpoint, an aim, or a comparison:

Domain	Approximate English value
extension of a limit	as far as, as long as, insofar as
starting point of an event	as soon as, by the time that
expected endpoint	until; often with a negation
aim or result	so that, in order that; with subjunctive
second term of comparison	than, rather than

dir amad tā hame raftand “he/she arrived late, when everyone had left”;

injā bemān tā bād ārām šavad “stay here until the wind calms down.”

29. Condition

The basic conditional conjunction is agar “if”. To choose the tenses, one must first decide whether the hypothesis is presented as open or as contrary to fact.

Type of hypothesis	Subordinate Clause	Main Clause
potential or conceivable	present subjunctive; preterite if the process is anterior	present indicative or future
unreal or unrealized	imperfect or pluperfect	imperfect or pluperfect

For a still conceivable condition:

agar vaqt dāšte bāšid, fardā mi-āyam “if you have time, I will come tomorrow.”

For an unreal or unrealized condition:

agar dir na-mi-āmadim, dar rā bāz mi-yāftim “if we had not arrived late, we would have found the door open”;

agar xabar dāšte bud, safar na-mi-kard “if he/she had been informed, he/she would not have left.”

With agarče “even if, although”, the indicative or subjunctive depends on the status assigned to the subordinate content: recognized fact, or mere possibility.

30. “To Begin To”

Inchoative verbs, that is, verbs meaning “to begin”, take two possible complements. The choice depends on the complexity of the action begun.

If the action can be expressed by a verb without its own complement, the complement is reduced to be + infinitive:

šoru‘ kard be neveshtan “he/she began to write.”

If the action begun itself contains an object or a developed verbal structure, Persian instead uses a dependent clause in the subjunctive, simply juxtaposed:

šoru‘ kard panjare rā tamiz konad <beginning made window rā clean that-he/she-make> “he/she began to clean the window.”

31. Forms and Constructions of the Classical Language Found in Texts

Noun Phrase Order and Adpositions

Reading classical texts requires recognizing constructions that contemporary Persian no longer generalizes. Some involve word order: the epithet may be placed before the noun it qualifies.

širin mordan-e u “his/her sweet dying” (Nezāmi).

On the side of adpositions, several forms require an equivalence with the modern system. ze is read as a variant of az, andar as an older form of dar, and be can open complex prepositional groups such as be sar bar “on the head.”

ze lahad raqs konān bar xizam “from the tomb, I rise dancing” (Hāfez).

kandar ney fetād “who fell into the reed flute” (Rumi).

Old Values of rā and Personal Suffixes

The marker rā has a more flexible distribution in classical Persian than in the contemporary norm. It may be absent where a definite direct object would be expected today, and it may also signal a participant affected by the process: beneficiary, recipient, or possessor touched by the action.

malek rā mohr bar dāšt lit. “she removed the bandage from the king” (Nezāmi);

čašm-o guš rā ān nur nist “that light belongs neither to the eye nor to the ear” [Rumi].

The form of personal enclitics may also be reduced in verse. For singular suffixes, the initial vowel is sometimes suppressed:

be rasm-e namāz āmadandiš piš “they came before him to pay him homage” (Ferdowsi)

Preverbs, Aspect, and Negation

Classical verbal morphology uses preverbs more freely than current standard Persian. mi and its variant hami orient the interpretation toward duration, repetition, or stability of a state. The particle can be separated from the verb and is used with personal forms, with dāštan “to have”, budan “to be”, and even with the impersonal bāyestan.

hami goft ke ku ku ku ku “he/she said: ‘where, where? where, where?’” (‘Omar Xayyām).

mey-e rowšan mi xor “drink the clear wine” (‘Omar Xayyām).

The absence of hami / mi in the present is therefore not exceptional in texts:

naqši zanad-am rāh-e xayāl “an image crosses the path of my thoughts” (Hāfez)

The preverb be, for its part, tends to present the process as punctual or bounded. It is found before personal forms, imperatives, infinitives, and past participles. It is normally not associated with another preverb, even though the old language permits some combinations with negation.

benešaste hami goft “having sat down, he/she was speaking” (‘Omar Xayyām).

In the imperative, its absence is common. Its presence may nevertheless be required by the form of the verse as much as by syntax:

xiz-o balā benemā “rise and show Your stature” (Hāfez).

Metrical constraints also explain some contractions. After be-, the vowel of the verb may fall when it begins with p, b, d, f, n, r, or g; before o, the expected form may become bo, as in bobride for beboride:

marā bobride and “they have cut me” (Rumi)

Other preverbs appear regularly in the old language; poetry also allows them to be moved away from the verb to which they attach.

če māye bedu gowhar andar nešāxt “what a quantity of precious stones he/she set in it!” (Ferdowsi).

For the negative imperative, the classical particle is ma:

kas rā izā‘ makon “do not harm anyone” (Nāser al-Din Tusi).

Classical Verbal Morphology

Some old endings modify temporal or modal value. Added to the present or preterite, -i can refer to a past habit or a prolonged state; depending on context, it also marks the unreal, regret, wish, or dream scene. The form can combine with mi.

šahān nehādandi ru “the kings placed their faces” (‘Omar Xayyām).

mi šodandi bar taxt-e u “they stood before his throne” (Ferdowsi).

The verb budan “to be” offers several classical variants. The preterite form bud can be reduced to bod, especially to satisfy the meter:

pušidani now bod “to dress was new” (Ferdowsi);

In the present, bovad is a third-person singular built on bov-, a root parallel to bāš-:

hasti ke bovad zāt-e Xodāvandi ‘aziz “the Being that is the essence of the beloved Lord” (Jāmi).

Another ending, -ā, occurs in the third-person singular of the preterite. With goftā “he/she said”, it often serves to launch direct speech; elsewhere, it can color the form as a wish or exhortation, or simply answer the verse.

goftā "del-e xorram-e to kābin-e man ast" “she said: ‘your joyful heart is my dowry’” (‘Omar Xayyām).

The perfect may finally contract, especially in the third-person singular. Thus budast is equivalent to bude ast:

‘āšeq-e zāri budast “he has been a wretched lover” (‘Omar Xayyām).

Precative and Adjectival Forms

The precative continues an old Middle Persian subjunctive. In the corpus examples, it appears in the third-person singular of the present, with -ād added to the present root:

be āmorzeš rasād ān āšnā‘i “may that love attain forgiveness!” (Nezāmi).

The formation present stem + -ān, described above as a gerund, retains a living adjectival value in classical Persian. Modern Persian mainly preserves lexicalized forms. In the texts, konān, nālān, ravān, and tābān attach respectively to kardan / kon- “to do”, nālidan, raftan / rav- “to go”, and tāftan / tāb- “to shine, illuminate.”

The impersonal bāyestan “to be necessary” finally admits more complements than in the modern norm: not only the past stem with the value of a short infinitive, but also a full infinitive or a personal form, present or past.

bāyad sepordan “one must deliver, entrust” (Nezāmi).

32. Note on Meter

Classical Persian meter counts syllables according to their weight. A line of verse is therefore not just a sequence of stresses: it realizes a pattern in which short and long positions alternate.

The basic weight depends on syllable structure:

Type	Structure	Example
short	open short vowel (a, e, o)	first syllable of soxan “speech”
long	long vowel (ā, i, u), diphthong, or short vowel closed by a consonant	first syllable of šā‘er “poet”; second syllable of the same word
overlong	long vowel followed by consonant(s), except before n alone; or short vowel followed by two consonants	āf- in āftāb “sun”; goft in goft k[e] “said that”

An overlong syllable does not have the same metrical value everywhere. Inside the line, it may occupy the equivalent of a long followed by a short; at the end, it is reduced to a long. Poetic licenses modify these equivalences at points, but they do not remove the quantitative principle.

Some grammatical forms create variable positions. Ezāfe, that is, the -e linking a noun to an adjectival or nominal determiner (see § 4), may be counted as short or as long depending on context.

The great classical poems are attached to identifiable patterns: the Šāhnāme uses a variant of the motaqāreb ( ̆ ˉ ˉ | ̆ ˉ ˉ | ̆ ˉ ˉ | ̆ ˉ), Nezāmi’s Xosrau va Širin belongs to the hazaj ( ̆ ˉ ˉ ˉ | ̆ ˉ ˉ ˉ | ̆ ˉ ˉ ), and Rumi’s masnavi and ‘Attār’s Manteq al-teyr use a variety of ramal ( ˉ ̆ ˉ ˉ | ˉ ̆ ˉ ˉ | ˉ ̆ ˉ ).