| Group |
Iranian (with Kurdish,
Talysh etc.), Northwest Iranian (with Median,
Baluchi etc.) |
| Geography & History |
One of Western Iranian languages, Parthian used to be one of the official
languages of Parthia, together with Persian
and Greek. Before the Parthian Kingdom was ruled by Arshakides dynasty,
Parthian was only a tongue spoken in the small region of Central Asia,
but later it spread to all Iran, Armenia, was used in Central Asia. It
was spoken widely also in the Sasanide Empire, until the 6th century AD.
The oldest documents found include the economic documents from Nisa (1st
century BC). |
| Phonetics |
There are three pairs of vowel phonemes in Parthian - long and short
a, i, u, and two single long vowels e, o which
appeared from ancient diphthongs. Consonant mutations included the following:
*z, *d > z, *dv > b and some others. |
| Nominal Morphology |
The grammar structure can be characterized by analytism: ancient categories
of gender and case were lost in noun declension. However, in early
inscriptions indirect cases can be somehow seen. |
| Verbal Morphology |
In the late forms of the language the inflected forms of verbs were
replaced by analytic construction using the ancient participle in -ta-.
Thew sentence can have an ergative construction with a transitive verb
in the past. |
| Writing |
The Parthian script was a descendant of the Aramaic alphabets. The
oldest inscriptions are usually written with additions of ideograms, as
well as rock inscriptions dating back to the 3rd century AD. |
| Close Contacts |
Persian |
| Picture |
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| More info |
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