A Study of the Tâleqâni's Osul-e Dastur-e Zabân-e Fârsi

Persian Traditional Grammar by an Iranian Grammarian

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to make a linguistic analysis of Tâleqâni's Osul-e Dastur-e Zabân-e Fârsi which is one of the typical Persian Grammars written on the traditional model. I also intend to criticize some of his grammatical description and his own view of Persian language and grammar in general.
Tâleqâni, together with other traditional grammarians, classifies the parts of speech into nine, i. e. nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, conjunctions, numerals. In the following discussions I will mainly focus on the noun ('esm) and verb (fe'l) treated in the chapter 2 and 5, which make up most of its volume of the part 1, and comment on his description of them.
His grammar, as is the case with his contemporary ones, has the following characteristic features:
1)His framework of classification o parts of speech is based on the traditional Latin and Islamic grammars, thus causing confusion of classification criteria.
2) No phonological or phonetic descriptions are found. Instead, the rules of orthography in the declentional and conjugational systems are rather minutely stated.
3) No distinction between synchronic and diachronic approaches is made. His main interest is directed to the correctness of writing. Correctness, in this case, means that it is modeled on classic writings, not on contemporary writings. Thus his linguistic materials for description are mostly taken from classical writers, such as Sa'di, Hâfiz, Ansari, etc.