Iranian languages

In this article, the plural marker in the Mahshahri dialect is examined. Mahshahri is the native language of the people of Bandar-e Mahshahr. This dialect has close similarities with other Iranian language varieties spoken in southern Iran, particularly those of other southern cities of Khuzestan Province, and Iranian language varieties of Bushehr, Fars and Kohkiluye and Boyr-Ahmad provinces. From a methodological point of view, this research is descriptive and analytical. The research data were mainly obtained through a questionnaire and by examining the text of a twenty-minute continuous speech from the Mahshahri dialect. The investigations carried out in this article show that the plural marker of Mahshahri is /-æl/, which, based on the phonetic environment of the base to which it is added, can have other allomorphic manifestations as well. The conducted studies also indicate that there are variations in the use of the plural marker in the Mahshahri dialect. These variations, in many cases, align with the replacement of the marker with its standard Persian counterparts. Therefore, the variations that can be seen in the use of the plural marker of Mahshahri can be considered in line with other current changes that are underway in the direction of leveling the dialect with standard Persian in Iran. 

Because of their objective measurement and unambiguous correspondences, syntactic parameters are used as comparanda for deep comparison and relatedness of language varieties. The Parametric Comparison Method (Longobardi & Guardiano, 2009) is based on the hypothesis that syntactic parameters are appropriate traits to use as comparanda for contrastive analysis and distance measurement of language pairs and then to provide language taxonomy. This article addresses the syntactic distance and genealogical taxonomy of language varieties that are closely related genealogically, geographically, and culturally. To analyze relatedness and genealogical issues of Kurdish language varieties and the Persian language, abstract grammatical rules, modeled as syntactic parameters which are applied in the domain of determiner phrase (DP), are used as comparanda. The results show that Laki and Lori are at a close distance from Sorani, and on the other hand, Kurmanji and Kɪrdki are also close syntactically. According to the tree achieved from the syntactic distances, Kurmanji is at one end of the spectrum and Persian is at the other end. Thus, it can be concluded that some preliminary deductions regarding the phylogenetic taxonomy of the Iranian languages and dialects, with a focus on Kurdish language varieties and other related dialects, can be proposed.