ON THE SYSTEM OF CONJUGATION IN OSSETIC IN COMPARISON WITH PERSIAN AND THE GERMANIC LANGUAGES

	ISSN 2223-165X
	Izvestiya SOIGSI

Home Editorial board Publication ethics Current Information Archive Peer review guidelines Contacts Address: Pr. Mira, 10, Vladikavkaz, 362040, RNO-A, Russia E-mail: soigsi@mail.ru	DOI: 10.46698/VNC.2025.97.58.011 ON THE SYSTEM OF CONJUGATION IN OSSETIC IN COMPARISON WITH PERSIAN AND THE GERMANIC LANGUAGES Gutieva, Elmira T. , Dzarasov, Viktor S. Izvestia SOIGSI. 2025. Issue 58 (97). P.112-121. Abstract: The article examines the origin and typology of the dental marker of the past tense in Ossetic, Persian, and the Germanic languages within the framework of the comparative-historical method. The relevance of the study stems from the ongoing scholarly debate on the nature of the Germanic dental preterite, traditionally interpreted as a unique innovation of the Germanic group. The research offers novelty by revisiting this long-standing assumption through the inclusion of East and West Iranian data, particularly from Ossetic, whose verbal morphology displays structural parallels with the Germanic weak preterite. The aim of the study is to identify the premises for reconstructing shared mechanisms in the formation of past-tense morphology and to test the hypothesis that the dental marker may reflect a genetically earlier Iranian model derived from reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European verb dhe- ‘to do’. The methodology combines historical-comparative analysis of verbal paradigms, internal and external reconstruction, examination of the distribution of dental allomorphs, and comparative analysis of personal endings in early Germanic and East Iranian sources. The results demonstrate that the structural pattern “root + dental exponent + personal ending” appears both in Germanic and in several Iranian languages, with Ossetic preserving simple and reduplicated dental formations comparable to Gothic data. The study concludes that the dental marker is best interpreted as a grammaticalized reflex of a postposed element descending from dhe-, and that the parallels between Germanic and Iranian verbal systems may indicate a deeper diachronic interconnectedness. Keywords: dental preterite; Ossetic; Germanic languages; Iranian languages; comparative-historical linguistics; verbal morphology. Language:: Russian Download the full text For citation:: Gutieva, E.T., Dzarasov, V.S On the System of Conjugation in Ossetic in Comparison with Persian and the Germanic Languages // Izvestiya SOIGSI. 2025. Iss. 58 (97). Pp. 112-121. (in Russian). DOI 10.46698/VNC.2025.97.58.011 + References 1. Klaproth, Julius von. 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