Plural and Collective in the Sogdian Ancient Letters

In most varieties of Sogdian, all regular plural forms of nouns and adjectives are formed with a suffix which derives from the Old Iranian collective suffix *‐ tā ‐. In the earliest substantial Sogdian documents, however, the so‐called ‘Ancient Letters’ of the early 4th century ce , it can be shown that forms with this suffix differ in their syntax as well as their morphology from the plural forms inherited from Old Iranian and thus form a grammatical category distinct from ‘plural’.