@rmstevens2
There was influence in both directions*, but I do not know whether this disappearance of the genders was more than a mere late Turkish influence. There should be a prerequisite for such a grammatical change. And in my opinion there may have been such, because we have IE influence on Persians from Mitanni for example. In other words, we don't know if before this influence Iranian was without genders and therefore dropped them more easily, as actually happened with English.
*Syntactic convergence phenomena between Iranian and Turkic languages are all the more striking because the structures of the respective languages contrast almost in mirror image. Taking Persian to represent Iranian, since Turkic languages are more homogeneous, we may compare the following typical features of morphology: Noun Phrase (NP) and Sentence (S) syntax, and verb structure:
TABLE 1
On the other hand, there are some striking, longstanding similarities between Persian and Turkic, in contrast with other adjacent or related languages: numerals govern a singular, not a plural, noun; gender is not grammatically distinguished, even in the 3 sg. pronoun there is no adjective agreement; and there is a similar series of pronominal enclitics (Doerfer, 1967, pp. 57-59; Stilo, 1981, pp. 163-64). Although documentation is lacking, ancient convergence cannot be ruled out.
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There was influence in both directions*, but I do not know whether this disappearance of the genders was more than a mere late Turkish influence. There should be a prerequisite for such a grammatical change. And in my opinion there may have been such, because we have IE influence on Persians from Mitanni for example. In other words, we don't know if before this influence Iranian was without genders and therefore dropped them more easily, as actually happened with English.
*Syntactic convergence phenomena between Iranian and Turkic languages are all the more striking because the structures of the respective languages contrast almost in mirror image. Taking Persian to represent Iranian, since Turkic languages are more homogeneous, we may compare the following typical features of morphology: Noun Phrase (NP) and Sentence (S) syntax, and verb structure:
TABLE 1
On the other hand, there are some striking, longstanding similarities between Persian and Turkic, in contrast with other adjacent or related languages: numerals govern a singular, not a plural, noun; gender is not grammatically distinguished, even in the 3 sg. pronoun there is no adjective agreement; and there is a similar series of pronominal enclitics (Doerfer, 1967, pp. 57-59; Stilo, 1981, pp. 163-64). Although documentation is lacking, ancient convergence cannot be ruled out.
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