Zoroastrian Middle Persian: Digital Corpus and Dictionary (MPCD)

中古波斯语作为萨珊帝国的官方语言，在公元第一个千年中发挥了突出的历史和文化作用，它的使用跨越了几个宗教传统。它的文本在语言和文化方面连接了东西方，涵盖了从古代晚期到早期伊斯兰时期的一段时间。尽管如此，这种语言还没有一个全面的数字数据库，也没有一个全面的词典编纂工具，涵盖了这种语言在其存在的漫长时期内的各种词汇。作为实现这一最终目标的第一步，目前的项目旨在创建一个在线开放获取的所有琐罗亚斯德教中波斯语（以下简称：ZMP）巴列维文字文本的语料库。该项目将提供约705,000个单词的音译和抄写语料库，以及15个最古老的抄本的数字摄影文档。文本将根据通用依赖关系制定的指导方针提供形态和部分语法注释。这个全面的巴列维文本数字语料库将反过来被用作创建ZMP数字中古波斯语-英语词典的基础。我们希望随后能够将我们的工作扩展到相关的项目中，包括并创建其他类型的中古波斯文本的语料库和词典。数字语料库和随后的数字词典构成了两个紧密相连的分析工具。他们专注于文本的两个密切相关但独立的方面，语法和语义，它们在项目的工作中联系在一起。将使用基于网络的工作环境，这将使语料库和词典能够协同处理，并将作为研究和分析已编制资源的用户界面。此外，该项目旨在使巴列维文学的语料库可用于数字人文学科中发展的语料库语言学的分析和方法。该项目将采用一种全面的新方法和方法来研究用ZMP编写的文本，从而为语言学和概念史的综合分析创造一个共同的基础。这种方法还采用了一种视角，即强调语料库和词典中文本之间的“横向”（即体裁）和“纵向”（即历史）差异。因此，该项目被认为是识别ZMP文学文本复杂结构中的内部和外部因素的基础，并为文化，宗教和社会历史的差异化分析提供适当的手段。该项目的最终目标是将目前的努力与其他项目（无论是已完成的还是正在进行的）在古伊朗和中伊朗研究领域之间建立联系和互动。

The Middle Persian language played a prominent historical and cultural role in the first millennium CE as the official language of the Sasanian Empire, with a usage spanning several religious traditions. Its texts link East and West in both linguistic and cultural terms, and cover a period stretching from late antiquity to the early Islamic period. Despite this, there is no comprehensive digital database for this language, nor is there a comprehensive lexicographical tool covering the full variety of its vocabulary throughout the long period of its existence. As a first step towards this eventual goal, the present project aims to create an online open-access corpus of all Zoroastrian Middle Persian (henceforth: ZMP) texts in the Pahlavi script. The project will present a corpus of around 705,000 words in transliteration and transcription, as well as digital photographic documentation of the 15 oldest codices. The texts will be supplied with morphological and partial syntactical annotation according to the guidelines developed by the Universal Dependencies. This comprehensive digital corpus of Pahlavi texts will in turn be used as a basis for the creation of a digital Middle Persian-English dictionary of ZMP. It is our hope that we will subsequently be able to expand our work into related projects to include and create corpora and dictionaries of other types of Middle Persian texts. The digital corpus and the ensuing digital dictionary constitute two closely interlinked analytical instruments. They focus on two closely connected but separate aspects of the texts, syntax and semantics, which are linked together in the work of the project. A web-based working environment will be used, which will enable the collaborative processing of both corpus and dictionary and will serve as a user interface for research and analysis of the prepared resources. Moreover, the project aims to make the corpus of Pahlavi literature accessible to the analysis and methods of corpus linguistics developed in the Digital Humanities. The project will adopt a comprehensive new approach and methodology for texts written in ZMP, thereby creating a common basis for comprehensive analysis of both linguistics and conceptual history. This approach also adopts a perspective that highlights ‘horizontal’ (i.e. genre) as well as ‘vertical’ (i.e. historical) differences between texts, both in the corpus and the dictionary. The project is thus conceived as a basis for identifying internal and external factors in the complex fabric of ZMP literary texts, and for providing an adequate means for differentiated analysis of cultural, religious, and social history. A final aim of the project is to bring about links and interactions between the present endeavor and other projects, whether completed or ongoing, in the field of Old and Middle Iranian Studies.