Grammar and Structure: Stems, Ezafe and Object Marking
Grammar and Structure tests explicit control of Persian morphology and syntax: word order, the ezafe, object marking, the tense/aspect system, agreement, subjunctive triggers, conditionals and passive formation. Items are typically sentence-level transformations or error identification.
Skeleton rules
- Neutral order is Subject – modifiers – Object + را – Verb. Since را marks the object, other constituents can move for emphasis without changing roles.
- The ezafe links a head noun to possessors, adjectives and titles: درِ خانه، کتابِ خوب، آقای رضایی. It surfaces as -e/-ye/-at: خانهٔ من، برادرِ او.
- Verbs build on two stems. Past: رفت-; present: رو-. Aspect prefixes: می- (imperfective), بـ(ِ)- (subjunctive and imperative). The perfect adds the past participle plus forms of بودن: رفتهام.
- Negation attaches نـ- directly to the verb and replaces می- in the subjunctive: نروم "that I not go" versus نمیروم "I don't go".
- Subjunctive follows باید، ممکن است، میخواهم، تا، که.
- Passive is شدن plus past participle: نوشته شد، فرستاده میشود.
Worked example
«اگر وقت داشتم، حتماً میآمدم.» Reasoning: Persian marks unreal conditions with past-tense forms rather than an auxiliary like "would have". داشتم is past simple of داشتن in the اگر clause; میآمدم is past imperfective of آمدن, first person singular, meaning "I would have come". The literal trap is reading it as "whenever I had time, I came"; حتماً plus the conditional frame signal the counterfactual.
Traps
- Adding می- to a negated subjunctive: writing نمیروم where نروم is required.
- Omitting را before a definite object: کتاب را خواندم, not کتاب خواندم.
- Reversing ezafe order: کتابِ بزرگِ من, adjective before possessor.
- Using کردن with an intransitive predicate: درس تمام شد, not تمام کرد.