Eurasian Studies Balkans, Anatolia, Iran, Caucasus and Central Asia Studies Notebooks

Series | Eurasian Studies
Edited book | Borders
Chapter | Arabic ḥadd in Iranian

Arabic ḥadd in Iranian

Notes on Some Cases of Grammaticalization

Abstract

Arabic ḥadd – whose primary sense is that of ‘cutting edge’ – is a highly polysemic word which belongs to the Semitic root ḤDD and conveys the broad idea of ‘edge’ and ‘limit’. A well integrated term in many contexts of the Islamic cultural area (i.e. Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Hindi, Kashmiri, Marathi, Malay, etc.), Ar. ḥadd generally maintained the status of a polysemic word in the target languages, characterizing different semantic domains and different registers. Here the ecology of borrowings from Ar. ḥadd in the Iranian languages, where it is already recorded in Choresmian and Early New Persian, is examined. While describing some interesting cases of grammaticalization, semantic bleaching and semantic extensions, an extensive array of linguistic spaces will be excavated, suggesting as well a possible alternative hypotesis for the presumed extinction of the lexical set of OPrs. hadiš-.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Language: en

Keywords Arabic DialectologyIranian StudiesGrammaticalizationIranian DialectologyLoanwords


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