Syntactic relations of nominals in the North Western Iranian languages (with special focus on Mazandarani and Gilaki)

Traditionally, three cases are postulated in Mazandarani and Gilaki, namely the nominative, the genitive (marked by -e / -ə) and the accusative / dative (marked by the postposition -re / -a ~ Persian -rā). Other postpositions are not included into the case system. In this article, a caseless description of the Mazandarani and Gilaki grammar with inverse ezāfe connection and postpositions is suggested. Direct, as in Persian (typical for southwestern Iranian languages), and inverse ezāfe marking as in Mazandarani and Gilaki are unified into a single system.