پژوهشي در فعل وسطي

A Diachronic Study of the ʹMiddle Verbʹ in Persian Language

Verb system is one of those complex and lengthy categories in ancient languages; it includes many details and different structures. One of these structures -- the ʹmiddle verbʹ -- was used when the action of the doer was reflected on himself, that is, when the agent did an action in favor or against himself. This kind of structure lost its morphological character in the Middle Period and, subsequently, it vanished in the New Period. Instead, reciprocals or reflexives expressed the same sense. Thus, while the original nature of the middle verb was preserved, the way it was expressed changed. This paper tries to both illustrate the morphological form of the middle verb in Old Persian and to survey the process of its changes in later periods. References are also made to the syntactic forms which have replaced the morphological form of the ʹmiddle verbʹ,