Middle Persian - Transition From Old Persian

Transition From Old Persian

In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from the fall of the Achaemenids in the 4th century BCE up to the fall of the Sassanids in the 7th century CE.

The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period (Old Persian and Avestan) to an analytic form:

  • nouns, pronouns, and adjectives lost their case inflections
  • prepositions were used to indicate the different roles of words.
  • many tenses began to be formed from a composite form

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