The Izāfa or ezāfé (Persian: اضافه), also written as İzafet, Izafat and Izofa, is a Persian language grammatical construct which links two words together; it consists of an unstressed vocal -e or -i[1] (with a connecting -y- after vowels) that sometimes approximately corresponds to the English preposition of. It is generally not indicated in writing in the Persian script,[2] though it is in Tajik.
Common uses of the ezafe are:[3]
The term is inherited from Arabic iḍāfa, which means a genitive construction. It is also traditionally used in often in Iranic languages and sometimes Turkic languages, where it applies to a typologically quite different structure. Ottoman Turkish did use it extensively borrowing it from Persian, in its original function (the official name of the Ottoman Empire was Devlet-i Âliye-i Osmaniyye), although there it is transcribed as -i or ı rather than -e. It is also used extensively in Urdu, mainly in poetic settings.