Talk:Persian verbs

Thou Art

The canonical person table (1st, 2nd, 3rd and their plurals) oddly has "thou art" in parentheses with an asterisk preceding it. Is this because "thou art" is understood by the author as a pseudo-approximation to English in order to differentiate it from you (2nd person plural) or because, as in English, this person and it's associated forms and conjugations are moribund in the spoken language? If the former is the case, I think it is rather overly quaint and pedantic to use "thou". If the later is the case, shouldn't we still leave it as you singular for ease of comprehension. I assume the asterisk means "not in use" because it precedes the words, rather than following them, which would indicate a footnote with extra information.

For comparison, in many dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, "tu" (2nd person singular) is absent, as are its associated conjugations - the second person singular having been replaced by você, which conjugates as though it were third singular. Just the same, those tu forms are still found in literary sources, as well as Biblical scripture. Just the same, though etymologically related, it is never presented as Thou in English grammatical comparisons. (Though maybe in translations of Bible verses..."thou shall not...")

In either case, it is very confusing to someone with no background in the language, like me, who is here for a cursory understanding of the verb system for comparative reasons. Thank you. 50.144.3.131 (talk) 18:31, 5 October 2014 (UTC)Tom in Florida

I agree. I have changed it to 'you (sg.)'. Kanjuzi (talk) 14:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Unnecessary duplication

The article seems to have been made by adding together two different accounts, written by different people, with different systems of transliteration, without any attempt being made to harmonise the two. There is thus a lot of unnecessary duplication, since the same facts are presented twice over. In editing it, I have already deleted some, and intend before long to shorten the article still further. Kanjuzi (talk) 14:26, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

The writer of the first half of the article seems to have added his or her own book to the references. Since it is an obscure work, hard for Wikipedia readers to consult, and it does not seem to add any information about the verb 'to be' which is not available in any grammar of Persian, I have deleted the reference. Kanjuzi (talk) 14:54, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Another section which surely needs editing is the one entitled 'Active and passive voice' with its two large tables. There are several problems here. First, there is no translation for any of the verbs, which is confusing for people who don't know the language; secondly, the names given to the tenses ('Imperfective preterite' etc.) don't match those used elsewhere in the article; thirdly, it contains tenses such as the 'Imperfective pluperfect subjunctive passive' (khorde mishode bude bashad) which the author himself or herself admits 'never occur in modern Persian'. One might point out that they never occur in classical Persian either, and are it seems purely theoretical. So although the tables are elegantly designed, I think they might have to be modified. They also duplicate information already given elsewhere. Kanjuzi (talk) 15:13, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

There is a lot of space in the article devoted to very minor features of Persian (e.g. the causative and the optative); I have reduced these sections. Meanwhile everyday features such as how Persians say 'I can go' or 'I would have gone', are entirely omitted. Something needs to be added here.

I have harmonised the transliteration in the two halves of the article to make it conform to that of Windfuhr, that is 'ā' is marked as long to avoid confusion with 'a', but 'ī' and 'ū' since they are always long are not marked. Kanjuzi (talk) 08:29, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Potential contribution from The World's Major Languages - need some help integrating it into the main article

I own a copy of The World's Major Languages which I inherited after my my father died ~12 years ago, and it's been an interesting read. Among the languages mentioned, one which caught my eye was the Persian chapter, and in particular the verbal system (as well as the <rā> particle). The book's treatment of Persian verb tenses (pp. 535-7) is different from what is presented here in the article, for which it uses the 3rd-person singular of <raftan> "to go" with the negative prefix as an example. I'll only show the forms in the indicative mood to highlight how it is different.

Imperfective:

• Present: né-mi-rav-ad
• Past: né-mi-raft
• Past Inferential: né-mi-raft-e ast

Aorist: ná-raft Perfective:

• Present: ná-raft-e ast
• Past: ná-raft-e bud
• Past Inferential: ná-raft-e bud-e ast

Under this analysis, <mi-> marks imperfective aspect, with all the implications mentioned under "present tense" in the article, and thus can be used with both present (read: non-past) and past 'tenses'. The perfect forms are not just the perfective aspect, but are also resultative-stative. The aorist, meanwhile, is tense-neutral (it can occur when describing simple present, simple past, and future actions, particularly with verbs of motion) in addition to its basic function as a narrative in past-tense contexts, with the context identifying the temporal basis of the utterance. The two past inferential forms in both the imperfective and perfective (as well as the present perfective form, when used as the inferential aorist) thus expresses the inferential aspect combined with the past tense as well as the literary remote past. Thus the basic tense vector is [present:[past:inferential past]], with aspect as a basic vector of the system.

It is an interesting analysis, but my concern here is how it would "fit" with the existing article, which uses a different analysis of Persian verb tenses. If I know how this could work, I'd love to include it into this article. --Daniel Blanchette 14:53, 10 October 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanCBJMS (talk • contribs)

2.1 Personal endings

I'm writing from the perspective of someone who uses this article to learn and I've been confused by the fact that 'Personal endings' is a subcategory of 'Participles'. I suspect that it's an error, but if it is not, it would be helpful to clarify this choice on the page. Thank you! Quicksanddiver (talk) 01:45, 28 December 2018 (UTC)