Preverbs in Iron and Digor Dialects of Ossetian: Semantics and Morphosyntax

This article presents a comparative analysis of the preverb systems in the Iron and Digor dialects of contemporary Ossetian. The relevance of this study lies in its contribution to addressing various grammatical issues within Iranian languages through a comparative lens. The functions of preverbs are described in detail, taking into account their dialectal variation and supported by a substantial corpus of illustrative linguistic data collected by the authors during dialectological expeditions. The degree of morphological integration of preverbs is also examined. It is reported that eight productive preverbs are present in the Iron variant of modern Ossetian, while the Digor variant contains seven. The study demonstrates that, alongside aspectual, locative, and deictic functions, Ossetian preverbs have developed abstract and detached semantics. The findings of this comparative analysis confirm that both the Iron and Digor dialects allow preverbs to convey meanings of action completion or transitions from one state (quality) to another in action verbs. It has been established that, based on morphosyntactic characteristics, Ossetian preverbs can be classified as “preverbs with limited autonomy.”

Ossetian language, Iron dialect, Digor dialect, verb, preverb, semantics, grammaticalization