Grammaticalization of “Dāshtan”

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies
in collaboration with 
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago and the Department of Near Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto

present

Virtual Lecture Series on Persian Language Pedagogy: 
New Trends and Innovations

Grammaticalization of “Dāshtan”

Dr. Mahbod Ghafari
University of Cambridge

When: Feb 11, 2023 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Abstract:
“Dāshtan” is one of the most frequent verbs in Persian and not only used as a simple intransitive verb, but it is also used as verbal part of compound verbs. Further this verb is used as an auxiliary verb to underline the progressive aspect, particularly in spoken Persian. It seems that there are different unusual grammatical and semantic behaviors of this verb which make it an exceptional verb and at the same time difficult for the learners to master. The complexity and different behavior of this verb can be a result of the process of grammaticalization. 

Bio:
Mahbod Ghaffari is Associate in Persian Language and Culture at the University of Cambridge. He received his PhD in linguistics in Iran and a certificate in “Leadership in Higher Education” from the University of Oxford. He has taught Persian language and culture, Iranian cinema, linguistics, methodology, and translation, at different universities since 1998. Mahbod has written several books and articles on teaching Persian and presented a number of papers at conferences. He has published Fārsi Biyāmuzim/Let’s Learn Persian series in 5 levels (first edition: 2000-2003 and second edition 2017-2021) and Persian for Dummies (2018) and developed www.persianlanguageonline.com, which is a three-level interactive online Persian program (2013-2015).