Ricerc@Sapienza

Impersonal verbs and constructions attested in ancient Indo-European languages show a marked uniformity at both semantic and structural levels, even though the etymons of the forms involved are often different. This allows us to surmise that these constructions were inherited from Proto-Indo-European. In this scenario both Ancient Greek and ancient Indo-Iranian languages differ from other varieties of the Indo-European family since they have relatively few impersonal verbs and constructions.

The most important functions of the accusative in Old Persian are consistent with those in other ancient Indo-European languages: it marks the direct object of transitive verbs, and can express the spatial notions of goal and path, as well as the temporal notion of duration. Besides these functions, there are other, in some way ‘rare’ or ‘particular’ occurrences of the Old Persian accusative that have not yet been explained, or not explained convincingly. This paper aims to investigate two interesting uses of the accusative: the double accusative construction and the mām kāma construction.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the semantics of the Old Persian verb duruj-, usually translated as ‘to lie’, to deceive’. In order to better understand the semantic nuances and the contextual meanings of the Old Persian verb and to offer a comprehensive – albeit concise – description, this paper is divided into two main sections. The first part is devoted to a brief overview of various cultural-historical aspects starting from Iranian mythology, which – as is known – is closely linked to the world of ritual.

To date, there has been no comprehensive study specifically devoted to the syntax or morphosyntax of Old Persian cases. The authors of the present work have decided to remedy this with a study regarding an Old Persian case that from various viewpoints is not only the most complex, but also the most interesting: the

Il lavoro delinea una nuova ipotesi di lettura delle grafie 'aberranti' proprie delle tarde iscrizioni achemenidi. Apre l'articolo una rassegna delle opinioni più accreditate circa lo status delle grafie tardo-achemenidi. Sulla base degli indizi fonologici e scrittori e tenendo conto delle peculiarità della scrittura sillabica achemenide, si dimostra come determinate scrizioni tardo-achemenidi riflettano la morfofonologia proto-mediopersiana. Viene ricostruito il sistema dell'ergatività scissa propria del medio-persiano che si ritiene funzionasse già in epoca tardo achemenide.

Even though the foreign transmission of Old Persian lexemes has been examined quite extensively, some terms regarding colors have been neglected and deserve further investigation. This paper examines certain Iranian color terms in Achaemenid Aramaic documents from Ancient Bactria included in Naveh and Shaked’s 2012 publication. Color terms are generally attested in texts marked by the letter C that regard the storage and distribution of goods and commodities as well as their quantity.

This chapter looks at the long evolution of Persian, which is the only Iranian language to be substantially documented in all three periods of Old, Middle, and New Iranian on account of its close association with the main political centres for most of the time over the centuries: Old Persian with the Achaemenids, Middle Persian with the Sasanians, and New Persian with Islamic powers. The chapter ideally includes two parts, preceded by a brief survey of research on the three stages of the language.