Investigating the Morphological Structure and Meaning of "-gar" in Persian

Abstract

This paper, based on two dialects of Kurdish, studies the -g{r suffix of Farsi morphologically and semantically. In the Sorani (sO:rani) dialect of Kurdish this suffix is -k{r. In Hawrami (h{wrami) dialect of Kurdish the present verbal stem of (k{rdaj) (to do) is -k{r and in Sorani it is -k{. Sorani has a suffix called -{r similar to English -er that produces nouns with mainly agent and instrument interpretation. In this paper, regarding -g{r, two hypotheses are presented: firstly, this suffix is composed of two bound morphemes (-k{, present verbal stem of kerden (to do) in Sorani+ -{r). Secondly, it is the present verbal stem of k{rdaj in Hawrami which is k{r-). These hypotheses were studied, in a descriptive-analytic way, based on Lieber’s Lexical Semantic Representation theory (Lieber, 2004 and 2009). The conclusion is that -g{r is derived from the addition of -{r suffix of Sorani to the present verbal stem of kerden or -k{ in the same dialect.

Keywords

• suffix
• morphology
• lexical semantics
• semantic skeleton
• semantic body
• semantic feature
• co-indexation principle