Abstract:

In this article Mammad Piriyev (b. 1948), a man from a small Talyshi-speaking mountain village in the Republic of Azerbaijan, narrates some events from his great-grandfather’s life probably some time in the late nineteenth century. Talyshi is a Northwest Iranian language spoken along the Caspian littoral and adjacent mountainous areas in Azerbaijan and Iran. Mr. Piriyev's narrative is transcribed, translated and provided with morpheme divisions. The article then presents ample commentary on grammatical points from the narration. In addition, some brief notes are also provided on the areal nature of some of these grammatical points (word order of possessor and adjective modification, numeral classifiers, adpositional typology, clitic movement, verbs of existence and possession, and the typology of the copula) that are also features found in neighboring languages such as Azerbaijani, other Iranian languages, Armenian, and Neo-Aramaic, among others.

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