This article describes the grammar of the standard Tajik language as spoken and written in Tajikistan.
Little remains of the case system, and grammatical relationships are primarily expressed via clitics, word order and other analytical constructions.
Natural gender is usually distinguished by a change of word, like English, e.g. мурғ (murgh) 'fowl' and хурӯс (khurūs) 'rooster'.
Alternatively the modifiers 'нар' (nar) for male or 'мода' (moda) for female can be pre or post-posed to the noun, e.g. хар-и нар (khar-i nar) 'male donkey' and хар-и мода (khar-i moda) 'female donkey'.
books" Two forms of number exist in Tajik, singular and plural.
For example, the singular for 'horse' is асп (asp), and the plural, 'horses' can be either аспҳо (aspho) or аспон (aspon).
For words ending in ӣ, the ӣ is shortened to и before suffixes Irregular plurals from Arabic exist in a fair number of words, though—due to the lesser influence of Arabo-Islamic learning in modernity—these tend to be less widely used in Tajik than in other varieties of Persian.
Unlike in literary Tajik, the colloquial language has innovated few more grammatical cases, including:[1] There is no agreement of the adjective, or modifier with the head word.
Typically, adjectives follow the nouns they modify, and are linked with the izafet construction (called izofa in Tajik), for example: китоби хуб (kitobi khub, good book) and китобҳои хуб (kitobhoi khub, good books).
The izofa-construction (from изофа, اضافه, meaning 'addition') is the name given to the combination of a head word and a modifier (for example an adjective) using the unstressed enclitic, -и, (-i).
The past stem is the easier to recognize, as it is determined simply by removing the -ан from the infinitive.
The personal suffixes are: The most important and common prefix is the progressive ме- (me-) which forms imperfective tenses.