Chapter 5. Ezafe and the article

Abstract

There are a variety of different nominal systems within the Western Iranian languages. Nominals in some of these languages are maximally sensitive to case, number, gender, animacy, ezafe (modification), and definiteness. However, most of these languages only inflect for a subset of these categories. An additional peculiarity of these systems is that some of these languages feature wildly differing systems when inflectional features interact. For instance, Zazaki features a caseless system on indefinite nouns, a bicasual (two case) system on definite nouns, and as many as four cases (following Paul, 1998a) on modified nouns. This paper explores, synchronically and diachronically, the nominal systems observed in Western Iranian languages focusing on the interaction between (in)definiteness and modification by attributive adjectives. This constitutes a near-comprehensive juxtaposition of data that can serve as an essential reference for anyone who seeks to study and understand Ezafe and the article in New Western Iranian.