The present paper deals with the origin of the ezafe construction in Persian. It demonstrates how in Old Persian a relative pronoun (hya-) ‘who/ which’ in sentences with omitted copula was interpreted as a “connector”/ “linker” (ezafe marker) coming between a noun and another noun or adjective. As a result of this reanalysis a relative clause was recast into a noun phrase. I will argue that the loss of agreement and case marking (which were present in Old Persian) has affected the syntax of the noun phrase in Middle Persian and New Persian. The emergence of the ezafe construction to mark the genitive and attributive constructions (which were formerly implemented by the genitive case and agreement) compensates for this loss.

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