Comparative Study of Adjectives in Pashto and Dari as Cognate Languages

Abstract

In Pashto, adjectives align with nouns in terms of number, gender, and case, which distinguishthem from adjectives in Modern Persian-Dari. In both Old and Modern Persian, unlike in Pashto, adjectives are divided into two categories: attributive and predicative. In Modern Persian-Dari, there is little visible difference between adjectives and othergrammatical roles, such as modifiers. The identification of adjectives in this language mainly depends on grammatical characteristics, whereas in Pashto, the structure of adjectives, in terms of number, gender, and case, is crucial.One of the obvious topics in Persian grammar books is the agreement between adjectives and nouns, which is derived from Arabic. It has never existed in Persian as a strict rule; however, in Ancient Iranian languages, and in Middle Western Iranian languages and Modern Persian-Dari, adjectives have always been able to agree with their nouns in terms of number, gender, and case.The authors of this paper aim to first present the opinions of several grammarians and the history of adjective-noun agreement in Persian, and then providea general definition of adjectives in both Pashto and Persian-Dari, followed by a comparison of adjectives in Persian-Dari and Pashto from various perspectives. In this scholarly article, a library-based research method and a comparative approach are usedto validate the study of adjectives.