تبديل عدد يك به نشانه نكره در زبان فارسي

The change of number one to the marker of indefiniteness in Persian

The present paper discusses the way the marker of indefiniteness has emerged in Persian. The study shows that, since the ancient times, number one has been used as the marker of indefiniteness. The hypothesis is that during the middle Persian period, number one, following countable singular nouns, has changed to the marker of indefiniteness, which has gradually been generalized to uncountable singular and plural nouns as well.