Lecture 4 Eastern Middle Persian Soghdian

Sogdian script The Aramaic script was by no doubt introduced to Soghdiana by the time of the Achaemenians. Based on the earliest surviving documents Soghdian had already taken a distinctive character of its own. The Ancient letters are the best sources of Soghdian material.

Soghdian script cont. The Sogdian scripture can be divided in three distinct categories: The Archaic script of the Ancient letters and other texts up to about 5th century The formal of Sutra script chiefly employed for Buddhist texts The cursive script, with various sub-types. The latest of which is referred to as “Uighur” because of its adoption for writing Turkish.

Gender The Old Iranian distinction of three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) has been preserved, although the survival of the neuter is marginal as many old neuter nouns have shifted to masculine and feminine.

Numbers The distinction of three numbers (singular, duel and plural)has been preserved, however the old duel forms have come to be used in the position immediately following a numeral, where they occur not only after the number two but also higher numbers, and thus developed in the special form called ‘numerative’.

Grammatical Case The case distinctions, largely reflecting Old Iranian cases. The light stem cases are: Nominative (NOM) Accusative (ACC) Genitive-dative (G-D) Locative (LOC) Instrumental-ablative (I-A) Vocative (VOC) The heavy stems are reduced to the opposition of direct (DIR) vs. oblique (OBL)

Adjective The productive suffix of the comparative is –(i)star . e.g. murzǝk-istar ‘shorter’ Somewhat obsolete is the suffix –tar which is not suffixed to derived stems or compounded forms. Thus we have: δūr-tar ‘farther’, namr-tar ‘sweeter’. Old superlative forms with the suffix –tam are attested. An alternative way is preposing ēw ‘one’ or āδparm ‘whatsoever’ to the comparative form. e.g. ēw ǝxšnak-istar ‘the most excellent’

Elative Soghdian possess special elative formation with the meaning ‘so much ’, ‘very ’. It is formed by means of the exclamatory particles čā- ‘how’ and wā- ‘so’ together with the suffixes –t, -(ǝ)st, in various combinations. e.g. wā-zārī ‘so miserable’, wāt-spēt-t ‘so white’

Demonstrative Pronouns Soghdian distinguishes two kinds of demonstratives: 1) one employed as the article and 3rd person pronouns (weak demonstrative). e.g. yu (m.NOM), (ǝ)mu (m.ACC) 2) the other extended forms functioning as a proper demonstratives (strong demonstrative). e.g. yunē (m.NOM), munō (m.ACC)

Adposition In Soghdian both preposition and postposition are common. Inherited prepositional elements are par- ‘on, in’, č- ‘from’, δ ‘with’ The most common postpositions are sā(r) ‘towards, from’, parēw ‘together with’ which themselves are often preceded by prepositions kū/čan … sā(r).

Verbal Morphology The Soghdian verbal system is based on two stems, the present and the past. Many stems are shared with Old Persian.

Present stem Soghdian present stems represent many Old Iranian classes. The most productive classes are: the thematic in –a- the infixed with infix –n- the inchoative in –s- the passive in –ya- the causative in –aya-

Finite Verbs A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand by their own as complete sentences.

Mood Moods in Soghdian includes: Indicative Subjunctive Optative Imperative Imperfect Conditional

Past Stems All past stems end in –t. They derive from Old Persian past participle in –ta- A secondary past stem can also be formed by adding –at to the present stem tkos “to look” ------------tkosat

Imperfect stem In addition to present and past stems, which provide the basis for the majority of verbal forms, certain verb posses a distinct imperfect stem. This stem is characterized by the preservation, or analogical extension, of Old Iranian augment. This results in a short end to the verb by cutting the long ending vowel. Framaya “to order”---------framay

A quick note… Of all Middle Iranian Languages, Soghdian possesses the greatest range of forms expressing the various tenses, moods, and aspects. In general the active has displaced the middle in the inflection of Soghdian present stems. The most significant of surviving middle forms are all third persons singular; the imperfect and optative.

Future tense A future tense is formed by the addition of the particle –kam to the present indicative and less often to the optative, subjunctive.