کاربرد صفتِ فاعلیِ نقلی به‌عنوانِ صفتِ فاعلیِ مضارع در متون قدیم و نقدی بر فرضیۀ ابدال صفتِ فاعلی به صفتِ مفعولی

 
1. Introduction
In a number of Classical Persian texts, one occasionally encounters forms that are morphologically identifiable as passive participles but exhibit a functional profile that diverges from their canonical passive interpretation. These forms refer to an entity—animate or otherwise—that performs an action in the present or future, or is habitually or continuously characterized by a particular state. Semantically, therefore, they encode agent-oriented meaning typically associated with the present active participle.
Although these forms are traditionally labeled “passive participles” on morphological grounds, their interpretation regularly involves an agent who has previously engaged in an action or undergone a state whose relevance persists. Notably, in the cases examined here, the temporal reference of the action or state is not necessarily confined to the past, thereby challenging conventional categorial assignments.
This study first reassesses the descriptive criteria employed in Persian grammaticography for the classification of participial constructions; it then demonstrates that certain morphologically perfect participles in both historical Persian and contemporary usage may assume syntactic and interpretive functions typically associated with imperfective agentive participles. Finally, it offers a principled analysis of the semantic and diachronic mechanisms licensing this functional extension.
 
2. Research Background
The categorial and functional properties of participial formations in Persian have been the subject of extensive scholarly treatment, and virtually every authoritative grammar of Persian devotes consideration to the opposition between active and passive participles. Within this tradition, Abolghasemi characterizes the construction consisting of an intransitive past stem + -e/-a as a “past-oriented active participle”, while Farshidvard, identifying -e/-a as a “resultative/perfective adjectival suffix,” argues that although such derivatives are not uniformly passive in interpretation, they nevertheless exhibit a consistent retrospective temporal value. Both scholars thus indirectly gesture toward what the present study conceptualizes as the “perfect active participle”, a category that remains underexamined.
The only focused examination of cases where a perfect active participle (e.g., fahmīde) replaces an expected Present active participle (e.g., fahmande) in Classical Persian is found in two articles by Haji-Seyyed-Aghaei. Her explanation, which attributes the alternation to a phonological substitution of -ande with -īde, is demonstrably incorrect. As this study argues, the phenomenon is not phonological in origin but results from semantic and morphosyntactic reanalysis.
3. Discussion
A prominent participial formation derived from verbal bases in Persian involves the structure “past stem + -e” (alternatively, “present stem + -te/-de”), which is conventionally described in most Persian grammars as a passive participle. However, as widely acknowledged in the literature, these participles do not uniformly encode patientivity and, in certain contexts, may convey an agentive interpretation. Specifically, participles formed via “past stem + -e” can denote a completed past event with present relevance, functioning semantically as active rather than passive. Owing to their semantic alignment with the resultative or perfect domain, as well as their formal resemblance to the participial component in perfect constructions, this study designates them as perfect active participles (ṣefat-e fā ʿelī-ye naqlī).
A second type of participle, traditionally labeled the active participle, is formed through “present stem + -ande” and denotes an agent who performs an action or possesses a property habitually, continuously, or without temporal restriction. This study refers to this category as the present active participle (ṣefat-e fā ʿelī-ye możāre ʿ).
In Classical Persian texts, there are instances in which perfect active participles appear in syntactic or semantic roles typically associated with present active participles. In regular verb classes, the only distinction between forms such as fahmīde (“having understood”) and fahmande (“understanding”) is orthographic. Consequently, many editors of historical texts have normalized these forms, thereby inadvertently erasing important evidence. Haji-Seyyed-Aghaei attributed the residual attestations to a phonological substitution of -ande with -īde. Nevertheless, occurrences involving irregular verb stems indicate that neither scribal error nor phonological change can account for all cases. For example, the form delkhaste (“weary”) in the Shahnameh cannot plausibly be derived from any hypothetical delkhalande; it must be analyzed as a perfect active participle functioning in a present role.
The replacement of a present active participle by a perfect active participle can be explained semantically along two pathways:

A past action or state that attributes a property to its referent (i.e., a perfective active participle) may license the interpretation of the referent as performing the action or instantiating the state in the present, or more generally, as possessing the property habitually or in a timeless sense. Gradually, the present or generalized aspect of the action/state comes to dominate, relegating the original past-event component to a subordinate semantic layer. Consequently, the participle is reanalyzed as denoting a present or habitual property, functioning as a present active participle.
A past-performed action or a state ascribed to the referent in the past, which confers a property upon it (i.e., a perfective active participle), has the potential to persist in the referent and render it a permanent bearer of the property denoted by the action or state. In other words, when the action or state is iterable or continuous, the referent comes to instantiate a property that signifies a durable or habitual disposition to perform the action or possess the state. Consequently, the participle is reinterpreted as denoting a present active property, reflecting the referent’s ongoing or permanent attribution of the action or state.

This semantic shift from perfective active to present active interpretation may occur diachronically or operate synchronically without necessitating a historical continuum.

Conclusion

In Persian, the construction “past stem + -e” can give rise to participles that encode an agentive referent who performed an action in the past whose effects extend into the present. These forms are appropriately analyzed as perfect active participles. In both classical and modern texts, such participles are occasionally deployed in syntactic and semantic contexts typically reserved for present active participles (present stem + -ande). In fact, it can be argued that in Persian, one structural means of attributing to a referent an action or state without temporal delimitation is the use of the perfective active participial construction—formed by “past stem + -e” (or alternatively “present stem + -te/-de”).