Moscow: Publishing house "East Lit-ra", 2001. 600 p. ^*

The elegant and resonant language of Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Hafiz, Sadeq Khedayat and Imam Khomeini is referred to in literature as the" French language of the East", the second language of Islam. In Russia, there is a long tradition of studying the Persian language, but so far no complete and comprehensive grammar has been created that would summarize the scattered research of many Persian scholars. There was no such grammar in other countries either. Even the voluminous works on the grammar of the Persian language published in Iran itself do not give a complete picture of its current state. These works largely adhere to traditions borrowed from Arabic classical grammar, and most examples illustrating grammatical rules or phenomena are taken from classical poetry, whose language differs significantly from modern Persian.

Meanwhile, the science of Persian grammar does not have a consensus of opinion on all issues, and a number of problems have not yet received proper coverage. To a large extent, these gaps are filled in by the new work of the Iranian scientist Yu. A. Rubinchik, who is known not only in Russia, but also abroad.

The book consists of three main parts: I - Phonetic and morphological structure of the Persian word, II-Morphology, III-Syntax.

Ancient inscriptions, manuscripts, ancient books and documents allow us to present a picture of the evolution of the Persian language from the first millennium BC to the present day. If the old Persian language had a developed and complex system of cases of nouns and adjectives with various types of declension and case endings, as well as numerous verb forms, the categories of which were also expressed mainly by inflection (ending), then within one and a half thousand years its appearance changed dramatically: cases, genders of names, dual number disappeared; a different paradigm appeared the grammatical meanings of names and verbs began to be transmitted by service elements, i.e. the language became analytical. For example: at amade ast - "he (she) has [already] come", where at - pronoun, amade - verb participle expressing its lexical meaning, ast - a service verb that expresses the perfect meaning of the verb form (when the result of a past action is related to the present moment). There are a number of other analytical forms that express different temporal and modal shades. (Here we can talk about some analogy with the English verb). There are also non-analytical verb forms in which the person and number are expressed by endings that are standard for most verb forms (these are mostly survivals).

If inflectional languages such as Russian express relations between words in a sentence mainly using case endings, then analytical languages such as Persian or English use prepositions and strict word order in the sentence. Although it has very limited grammatical means for expressing the various shades of thought found in inflectional languages, Persian is nevertheless recognized as colorful and highly expressive. How is this achieved?

Yu. A. Rubinchik, who devoted a number of works and a monograph ¹ I came to the conclusion that in this language phraseological units perform the functions of some parts of speech. A noun: барг-е сабз - "modest gift "(lit.: "green leaf"), sang-ye pah - "hindrance", " stumbling block "(lit.: "stone on the road"); adjective: pir-o-kur - "decrepit", "infirm" (lit.: "old and blind"), mourad-e ehteram - "respected" (lit.: "subject of respect"); adverbs: bae tour-ye motawasset - "on average" (lit.: "by the method of average"), dar yek cheshm bar ham set - "in the blink of an eye", "instantly" (lit.: "for one closing of the eyelids"), etc.

^* The book was published with the assistance of the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Russian Federation.

page 217

The main sphere of functioning of phraseological units is the verb. According to the structure, all verbs in the Persian language are divided into simple, prefixed and complex verbs. The first two groups are very small and practically not replenished, while complex verbs make up the bulk of verbs. The study of the nature, semantics and use of complex verbs in speech led Yu. A. Rubinchik to believe that these are phraseological units with different structure and degree of motivation/unmotivation of their meaning, for example: kar cardan - "work" ( kar "work" + gimbal "do"), but cap set - "peek", "visit" ( cap "head" + set "beat"), sarma jordan - "catch a cold" ( sarma "cold" + jordan "eat"). Close to complex verbs are also numerous verbal phraseological units, i.e. stable phrases consisting of three or more words: тартиб- е асар дадан - "react", bedrud-e hayam goftan - "pass away", etc. All these phraseological units that differ in the integrity of their meaning behave in the language as corresponding parts of speech, performing their functions in the sentence.

Yu. A. Rubinchik came to this fundamental conclusion about the role of phraseology in the grammatical system of the Persian language as a result of many years of work, which he started from the time when he supervised the creation of a two-volume Persian-Russian dictionary 2 . This conclusion has become a new word in Iranian studies. Now you can add one more quality to the characteristic of the typology of the Persian language: this is a phraseological language.

In his new book, Yu. A. Rubinchik made other discoveries that have not yet been covered in the grammatical literature on the Persian language:

- clarified issues of phonetics and phonology, phonemic composition of the language;

- formulated problems of morphonology, i.e. phonetic phenomena occurring at the junctions of morphemes, all kinds of sound inserts (epentheses) used in word formation;

- gave clear criteria for distinguishing multiple words with undivided semantics, i.e. assigning them to a particular part of speech, due to their lack of special features (for example: mard - "the man", sard - "cold", but bala - "top", "top", "top");

- corrected and formulated the questions of word formation of parts of speech; for the first time clearly described the categories of the name and verb;

- developed a strict gradation in the structure and meaning of simple (two-part and one-part, especially impersonal) and complex (compound and compound) sentences; re-analyzed non-union complex sentences;

- summarized and presented in the form of a holistic concept the complex problems of the postpositive excretory article -and, making out the corresponding category of noun emphasis, and the postposition -ra, formalizing the direct complement of a transitive verb;

- gave a generalized description and defined the features of the functioning of Arabic loanwords that play a certain role in Persian grammar.

Yu.A. Rubinchik's comments on the problems of Persian writing and spelling, which make teaching and lexicographic work difficult, are also interesting and logical. There are many other innovative points in the book.

The creation of a coherent and holistic teaching on the modern Persian language marks the completion of a certain stage in the scientific work of the author, who not only scrupulously studied and summarized the achievements of other researchers, but also critically revised a number of well-established opinions. The publication of such a work was an event in both domestic and world Iranian studies.

The work is written at a high scientific level, in excellent language, and illustrated with convincing examples. It will certainly become the subject of in - depth study and benevolent criticism, and most importantly, it will be introduced into scientific use and teaching practice.

I believe that the publication of a new work by Yu. A. Rubinchik on the grammar of the Persian language will have a resonance not only in Russia, but also in the world of Iranian studies, especially in Iran itself, where special importance is currently attached to the development and dissemination of the Persian language.

notes

¹ Rubinchik Yu. A. Osnovy frazeologii persianskogo yazyka [Fundamentals of Phraseology of the Persian language]. east. lit-ry, 1981.

² Persian-Russian Dictionary / Edited by Yu. A. Rubinchik, Vol. 1-2, 2nd stereotype ed., with an appendix. novykh slov [new words], Moscow: Russian Language Publ., 1983.

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