Postpositions in Mazandarani: Evidence for Generalizing, Historical Harmony and Natural Serialization Principle

This paper adopts a typological approach to adpositional phrases in Mazandarani (Mazani), a language spoken in the north of Iran, and argues that contrary to many Iranian languages and dialects it enjoys absolute concordance with the OV word order. Mazandarani, having the noun-postposition and genitive-noun order, is in complete agreement with Greenberg’s (1974) number 2 and 4 universals and at the same time with Vennemann's (1974) Natural Serialization Principle. Postpositional phrases like kelide ja “with the/a key” and kale myun “in the middle of the garden” indicate that there is no difference between the original postpositions and the noun-like postpositions in Mazandarani in this respect. The headdependent word order is a confirmation of the intact typology of Mazandarani. We follow Hawkins (1983) in claiming that adpositions are better and more general indicators of language types.