Fragmented Verbs in Persian

Abstract

In morphological typology, languages are divided into the three categories of flectional, agglutinative and analytic‌-based, in terms of conveying grammatical relations such as tense, aspect, gender and the like. Accordingly grammatical features of the verb like agreement, tense, mood, causativity, transitivity and so forth are expressed through either affixation, stem changing or the use of separate words. In Persian, such grammatical relations are mainly stated by dependent words, detached from the predicate; Persian, therefore, is analytic in verb inflection. The present study investigates the way of conveying grammatical relations of verb in Persian based on Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin, 2005). In Role and Reference Grammar, the predicate of a clause is comprised of one of three nexus types: coordination, co-subordination or subordination. Considering the analytic nature of Persian in terms of conveying the verb’s grammatical relation, in this study, verb formation is studied at the level of nuclear juncture according to Role and Reference Grammar.

Keywords

• fragmented verbs
• typology
• aspect
• mood
• nuclear juncture
• role and reference grammar