# داشتن
## Persian
### Etymology

From Middle Persian [Book Pahlavi needed] (dʾštn' /⁠dāštan⁠/, “to hold, to have”), [Book Pahlavi needed] (YHSNN-tn' /⁠dāštan⁠/), 𐫅𐫀𐫢𐫤𐫗 (dʾštn /⁠dāštan⁠/), from Old Persian 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎫𐎡𐎹 (d-a-r-y-t-i-y /⁠dārayatiy⁠/, “to hold, have”), from Proto-Iranian *dāráyati, from Proto-Indo-Iranian *dʰāráyati (“to hold, carry; to bear, support”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰer- (“to hold”).

### Pronunciation

* (Classical Persian) IPA: [dɑːʃ.ˈtan]
* (Dari, formal) IPA: [d̪ɑːʃ.t̪ʰǽn]
* (Dari, formal) IPA: [d̪ɑːʃ.t̪ʰǽn]
** (Kabuli) IPA: [d̪ɑːʃ.t̪ʰǽn]
** (Hazaragi) IPA: [d̪ɔːʃ.t̪ʰǽn]
* (Iran, formal) IPA: [d̪ɒːʃ.t̪ʰǽn]
* (Tajik, formal) IPA: [d̪ɔʃ.t̪ʰǽn]
* Audio (Iran):(file)
* Audio (Iran):(file)

### Verb

| Dari | داشتن |
| Iranian Persian | داشتن |
| Tajik | доштан |
دَاشْتَن • (dâštan) (present stem دار (dâr))
* to have; to possess, to own
    چهار تا بچه داریم. ― čahâr tâ bačče dârim. ― We have four children.
* (Iran, auxiliary, not in very literary language) to be (doing something) [from 1870s]
    دارم می‌روم. ― dâram mi-ravam. ― I am going.
    داشتی قدم می‌زدی. ― dâšti qadam mi-zadi. ― You were walking.
* (Classical Persian) to keep, to hold
** c. 1520, Selim I of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Benedek Péri, The Persian Dīvān of Yavuz Sulṭān Selīm, Budapest, Hungary: Research Centre for the Humanities, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, →ISBN, page 212:بمستی روز هجران خویشتنرا شاد دارم چه عدلی کز خرابی ملکرا آباد دارمba-mastī rōz-i hijrān xwēštan rā šād dāram či adlē k-az xarābī mulk rā ābād dāramI keep myself happy with drunkenness on the day of separation; What justice it is that I should keep my kingdom flourishing through [my own] depravity!(Classical Persian transliteration)

#### Usage notes

* Unlike most other verbs, the simple present imperfective form of داشتن does not use the durative prefix میـ (mi-).
* داشتن as the progressive auxiliary is normal in both speech and many text genres, but is still avoided in more conservative literary registers as a colloquialism. Its usage in this sense was first recorded in colloquial usage in the 1870s, having been entirely absent from Classical Persian. Geographically, its utilisation is limited to Iran, and it is substituted for conjunct verb constructions from ایستاده (istâde, “standing”) and رفتن (raftan, “to go”) in Transoxiana and Afghanistan, respectively. For example, the present continuous sentence "He is reading the book" would be translated as follows (with Classical Persian transliterations):
       Iranian: او دارد کتاب را می‌خواند (ō dārad kitāb rā mēxwānad)
       Dari: او کتاب را خوانده می‌رود (ō kitāb rā xwānda mērawad)
       Tajik: او کتاب را خوانده ایستاده است (ō kitāb rā xwānda īstāda ast)
    Meanwhile, the past continuous sentence "He was reading the book" would be translated as follows:
       Iranian: او داشت کتاب را می‌خواند (ō dāšt kitāb rā mēxwānd)
       Dari: او کتاب را خوانده می‌رفت (ō kitāb rā xwānda mēraft)
       Tajik: او کتاب را خوانده ایستاده بود (ō kitāb rā xwānda īstāda būd)
* In medieval texts, the nuance of داشتن is often closer to English "to hold; to keep", and possession is usually marked by را (râ, “at”, the indirect object marker) + بودن (budan, “to be”).

#### Derived terms
### References

* ↑ Cheung, Johnny (2007) Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 2), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 58
* 1 2 Shadi Davari, Mehrdad Naghzguy-Kohan (2017) “The grammaticalization of progressive aspect in Persian”, in The Grammaticalization of Tense, Aspect, Modality and Evidentiality, De Gruyter Mouton, →DOI, pages 163-190
* ↑ Gernot Windfuhr, John R. Perry (2009) “Persian and Tajik” (chapter 8), in The Iranian Languages‎ (in English), page 534:The development in the morphosyntax of these three varieties is the history of increasing differentiation, particularly in their verb systems through the development of new constructions. These include the progressive Aktionsart (...). Persian uses dāštan in its basic meaning 'keep, hold', where both auxiliary and dependent verb are finite. Tajik and Afghan use conjunct verb constructions with istoda 'standing' and raftan 'go', respectively: Pers. dārad ketāb mi-xān-ad, Taj. [kitob-ro xond-a] istoda ast, Afgh. [ketåb-ra xånd-a] mē-rav-ad 'he is reading the book'.
* ↑ Roohollah Mofidi, Negin Mohammadi Nafchi (2023) “Aspect in Tajik” (chapter 4), in Shinji Ido, Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, editors, Tajik Linguistics‎ (in English), pages 183-229:Progressive auxiliary: Tajik istodan 'to stand', Dari raftan 'to go', Persian dāštan 'to have'. (...) What is interesting in the overall picture is that Tajik, Dari, and Persian have all employed an auxiliary for the progressive aspect, though from different sources. (...) This could have happened after the 16th century. (...) In the case of Dari, (...) the periphrastic progressive construction is a "recent" development. (...) The [following] examples represent this construction: raft-a mē-ravom 'I am going', mihmān-hā-rā xošāmadguyi kard-a mē-raft '(S)he was welcoming the guests'. (...) The periphrastic progressive construction of the Persian of Iran is a rather recent development, being recorded for the first time in the late 19th century from spoken varieties. Zhukovskij reports to have attested it in a popular folk song in the late 1870s.