Pashto

Abstract

Pashto, an Indo–European language, is spoken by some 40 million people living on both sides of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. From a strictly genetic point of view, it belongs to the northeastern group of Iranian languages. The classification of the dialects is based on phonological criteria only. Pashto literature dates from the 16th century. The script is – like Persian or Urdu – the Arabic script adapted to the needs of a language that has phonemes unknown in Arabic. From the typological point of view, Pashto shows a type of ‘split ergativity’ determined by tense and a ‘differential object marking’ in the present tense.