There are eight grammatical cases in Old Persian. The instrumental and ablative cases are usually counted as one case, thus reducing the number of cases to seven. Since Middle Persian, grammatical cases are indicated with case markers rather than inflection system. Case markers are usually adpositions. However, they can be of other parts of speech. For example, the genitive marker “e” can be introduced as a particle or an adposition but it has actually evolved out of Old Persian conjunction “hya” and should be considered a conjunction.
Grammatical Cases in Modern Persian
The following table shows the list of grammatical cases and their markers in modern Persian.
| Case | Denotes | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | Subject | None. This is the primary case |
| Accusative | Direct object | Postposition “râ” (را) |
| Instrumental | Means | Preposition “bâ” (با) |
| Dative | Target | Preposition “be” (به) |
| Ablative | Source | Preposition “az” (از) |
| Genitive | Relation | Conjunction “e” |
| Locative | Location, Time | Preposition “dar” (در) |
| Vocative | Addressing | Postposition “â” (ا) |
Grammatical Cases and Word Order
Grammatical cases categorize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, … according to their grammatical function. In modern Persian, all types of objects and complements are marked for their grammatical role. Case marking has allowed Persian to retain free word order, which is typical of languages having an inflection system. Consider the following sentences:
| Accusative | پدر پسر را بوسید Pedar pesar râ busid The father kissed the son |
|---|---|
| Dative | پسر به پدر کمک کرد Pesar be pedar komak kard The son helped the father |
| Ablative | پدر از پسر پرسید Pedar az pesar porsid The father asked the son |
English does not have an inflection system nor it marks the accusative, dative and ablative cases. As a result, when the word order changes, the meaning changes as well. For example, since “the son” is not marked for the accusative, the meaning of “The son kissed the father” is different from the meaning of the original sentence “The father kissed the son”. Similarly, “The father helped the son” and “The son asked the father” have a different meaning from the original sentences in the above table.
In Persian, the dative is typically marked with به, the ablative is typically marked with از and the accusative is typically marked with را. Therefore, it is possible to change word order without changing the original meaning.
| Order | Accusative | Dative | Ablative |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOV | پدر پسر را بوسید | پسر به پدر کمک کرد | پدر از پسر پرسید |
| SVO | پدر بوسید پسر را | پسر کمک کرد به پدر | پدر پرسید از پسر |
| OVS | پسر را بوسید پدر | به پدر کمک کرد پسر | از پسر پرسید پدر |
| OSV | پسر را پدر بوسید | به پدر پسر کمک کرد | از پسر پدر پرسید |
| VOS | بوسید پسر را پدر | کمک کرد به پدر پسر | پرسید از پسر پدر |
| VSO | بوسید پدر پسر را | کمک کرد پسر به پدر | پرسید پدر از پسر |
Conclusion
As opposed to Old Persian, New Persian is not considered an inflected language but it still indicates grammatical cases. New Persian has replaced the complex system of affixes and inflection paradigms with a set of case markers. This allows Persian to fulfill the same functionality as an inflected language like Sanskrit, Latin and Russian. Having free word order is a clear proof.