Pahlavi Grammar and Vocabulary
Domain 2: Pahlavi Grammar and Vocabulary
The grammar section tests Middle Persian forms rather than New Persian: noun plurals, the ezafe linker, pronouns, prepositions, and present/past verb stems. Middle Persian has no grammatical gender, and case endings are largely lost; relationships are shown by prepositions, the ezafe, and word order.
Core rules
- Plural: -ān is common with animate nouns (mardān, “men”); -īhā marks many inanimates and abstracts. Learn lexical exceptions rather than applying one ending everywhere.
- Ezafe: ī links a noun to a following noun or adjective: šāh ī Ērān, “king of Iran.” It is not the verb “is.”
- Pronouns: man “I,” tō “you,” ōy “he/she,” mā “we,” šmā “you (pl.),” ōyšān “they”; enclitics -m, -t, -š attach to verbs and nouns.
- Prepositions: pad “in/with/by,” az “from,” ō “to,” bē “without/except.”
- Verb: learn present and past stems; kardan “to do” has kun- (present) and kard (past). Basic clauses tend to be SOV.
Worked example
mardān ī šāh means “the men of the king”: mardān = men (plural), ī = ezafe, šāh = king. No copula is needed; translating “the men are king” is wrong because ī marks possession or relation, not predication. A predicative “the king is ...” would require a verb or copula construction, not this ezafe chain.
Traps that cost marks
Overusing -ān for every plural; translating ī as “is”; confusing man “I” with mard “man”; treating Pahlavi as New Persian; overlooking enclitics such as -š “his/her.”