The study delves into the significance of paratexts within the Zoroastrian writing tradition, particularly focusing on the Avesta manuscripts. It analyzes how elements like colophons and marginal notes aid in organizing and interpreting the content of these texts. These paratextual features not only structure knowledge but also reflect the roles and activities of individuals involved throughout the manuscript's lifecycle, from creation to preservation.
Many languages that are spoken today in Iran will fall silent in the near future. A large number of these languages and dialects have never been recorded or described. Many are at risk of falling out of use as their speakers die or members of younger generations shift to speaking different languages. The speed of these developments has increased dramatically over the past century. Furthermore, since language is closely linked to culture, when a community loses its language, it also loses a great deal of its cultural heritage and early history, including traditions of ceremonies, rituals, myths, poetry, songs, humor, habits, and oratory. These traditions and cultural habits are frequently replaced by the habits of the dominant community. This edited volume brings together work by theoretical linguists and field linguists who share a strong commitment to the scientific documentation and investigation of endangered Iranian languages. five chapters of this volume represent the contributors’ findings on endangered Iranian languages and dialects found both inside Iran as well as in other countries. Their work deals with a variety of topics, ranging from documentation methods to aspects of philology, morphology, phonology, syntax, and dialectology.
"This volume is an extraordinary history of dance, full of mystery and humor. The various developments in the history of this art in Iran have never before been presented in a single book, making -Dance in Iran: Past and Present- the most comprehensive work on the subject to date. The book examines the major branches of Iranian regional, ethnic, and national dances as well as Iranian ballet and describes their history to the present."--Page [4] of cover.
Bactrian, the only Iranian language written in the Greek alphabet, was spoken in ancient Bactria in northern Afghanistan. It is an intermediary Middle Iranian language, possessing the characters of both Eastern and Western Iranian groups, and thus playing a very important role in the dialectology of Iranian Languages. Saloumeh Gholami’s study deals with various relatively unknown phonological, morphological and syntactical features of Bactrian and includes the following topics: historical phonology of Bactrian; the syntactical position of different kinds of nouns and their relationship in a sentence; the different types of pronouns and their syntactical properties; the function and syntactical position of prepositions and postpositions; adverbs and their formation; proximate and remote deixis adverbs as well as their different syntactic positions; various kinds of conjunctions and their functions; selected aspects of the verb; word order in clauses with transitive or intransitive verbs, and an investigation of double object constructions; as well as the different types of compounds.
