Document Type : Research

Authors

• Kivan Zahedi ¹
• Lila Sharifi ²

¹ Beheshti University

² Azad University

Abstract

Indicating the importance of abbreviation production and its characteristics in Farsi. The present study is to show the history of word formation processes in Iranian language through exemplification of ancient Persian Cuneiform and Pahlavi scripts. Moreover, it justifies this processes by introducing principles of economy and Least Effort and their relation with language, and also remarking viewpoint of Zipf (1949) and Martinet (1962). This study concludes that Economy principle has so important regulatory role in language that each non-economic change which force an extravagant expenditure on the system and is an obstacle in comprehension will be removed or prevented. Economy is naturally a regulatory criterion for all aspects of human behavior which is controlled by the Least Effort principle. In a dynamic process such as language change, words are subject to shortening, displacement, deletion, borrowing and semantic change. It is a natural event in all languages and Farsi is not excluded. Presenting samples of abbreviations carved on ancient Iranian coins and Hozvares abbreviations, the present study also suggests that the ancestor of our today language employed such word formation processes in a good manner.

Keywords

• Abbreviation
• Economy
• Least Effort
• Cuneiform
• Pahlavi scripts
• Hozvares