Persian preposition classes (original) (raw)
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A Functional Analysis of Prepositional Phrases in Persian
International Journal of Linguistics, 2012
Prepositional phrases may take different roles in Persian sentences as independent constituents. They can also act as constituents dependent to nominal, adjectival and adverbial phrases. Role and Reference Grammar presents a general classification of prepositional phrases. This classification is applied to prepositional phrases in Persian in this paper. In this theory, prepositions are categorized as either predicative or non-predicative. The former provides semantic information for the clause in which it occurs. The latter bear no semantic information for the clause and the nominal phrase occurring with them is determined by the predicate.The prepositional phrases are also classified into three groups of adjunct prepositional phrases, argument-marking, and argument-adjunct. In the first group, the predicative prepositions as heads, take the syntactic adjunct position. In the second group, the non-predicative prepositions don't add substantial semantic information to the clause and the nominal phrase occurring with them is determined by the predicate. It means that the prepositional phrase is one of the arguments of the predicate. The third group contains predicative prepositions that add to the meaning of the sentence. In addition, argument-adjunct prepositional phrases introduce one of the participants in the event. This study demonstrates that the prepositional phrases in Persian have different functions. They not only take an adjunctive role but also act as argument for the predicates of different kinds
A Cross-linguistic Study of Prepositions in Persian and English: The Effect of Transfer
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2012
The present paper is a contrastive study which attempts to investigate the errors made by Iranian EFL learners due to the cross-linguistic influence between their L1/SL and L2/TL language (i.e. Persian & English respectively). To meet the goals of the study, an error analysis was conducted to examine the status of different types of errors of prepositions made due to the transitional constraints between Persian and English languages. To this end, a translation task was developed by the present researcher. The translation task aimed at identifying the interlingual preposition errors caused by the process of transfer between the target language (English) and the source language (Persian). The translation task was then given to 53 adult EFL learners at intermediate level to translate the sentences from Persian into English during the allotted time. After collecting and analyzing the data, the corollaries of the study indicated that the Iranian EFL learners under investigation were faced with the errors related to the wrong and redundant use of prepositions more frequently as compared with the errors related to the omission of prepositions in L2 while translating from Persian into English. The findings might make a significant contribution to the preparation of corpus of preposition errors in Iranian EFL learners discourse and thus inform Iranian ELT practitioners and teachers of the cross-linguistic areas of difficulties concerning the acquisition of second language prepositions. Index Terms-Contrastive Analysis, cross-linguistic transfer, language prepositions, EFL learners * Correct equivalents of the above Persian sentences translated into English. 1. I play football with my friends twice a week. 2. I usually rest for 30 minutes after lunch. 3. I usually wake up at 6:30 a.m. 4. Maryam is afraid of cats. 5. Amin asked his father to give him some money. 6. On Fridays, students do not go to school in Iran. 7. Reza enjoyed watching the football game. 8. My idea is totally different from your idea. 9. In the next day, I had to cancel my trip. 10. I watched the football match on TV yesterday. 11. The children went home happily. 12. Your success depends on your self-confidence. 13. Her husband died of cancer. 14. On weekends, I go swimming. 15. I worked for two hours in my office yesterday.
Prepositions in Hazaragi Persian
Working Papers in Linguistics and Literature (UGC RecognizedLlisted Journal), 2019
This paper as a pioneering work aims at investigating prepositions in Hazaragi which is a variety of Persian, spoken by the Hazaras –an ethnic group native to Afghanistan, and mainly residing there. It also focuses on shared prepositions used in both standard Persian and Hazaragi. In accordance with the findings of this paper, there are at least, 26 pure Hazaragi prepositions, to which if we add 19 other prepositions shared with standard Persian, it totally makes 45 simple prepositions. Among them, az, da, khan/khoon/soon, qad, and taa join some other prepositions and form complex ones. The total number of complex prepositions raises to 124. Thus, the entire number of prepositions used in Hazaragi is 169. This paper first investigates Hazaragi simple prepositions followed by Hazaragi complex prepositions, and finally it lists the prepositions shared between Hazaragi and Persian. The approach used in carrying out this paper is descriptive where Hazaragi prepositions are described in the respective dialect and the conclusion is drawn. Keywords: Preposition, simple, complex, shared, Hazaragi, Persian
The goal of this paper is to analyze the syntax of spatial preposition in Norwegian and Persian language. This account is pretty novel as it analyzes the prepositional phrases in a unified way, since it does not restrict itself to some simple spatial prepositions. Rather, the chosen approach accounts for both simple and complex spatial prepositions. Furthermore, there is a clear difference in spatial prepositions between Persian and Norwegian. In this study, some of the nuanced differences between Persian and Norwegian, when it comes to spatial prepositions, are offered. Moreover, it goes further than this, by analyzing wh-questions responses in the form of spatial prepositions and shows the ungrammaticality of some of the answers by adhering to the principles stated in this novel approach. In this work, some important features of Persian and Norwegian spatial prepositions are further detailed which shows the rich internal structure of spatial preposition and its flexibility of movement/orientation aspect.
Event Structure of Prepositional Nuclear Junctures in Persian: a Role & Reference Grammar Account
The ITB Journal, 2010
In the present research study an attempt has been made to analyze one group of complex predicates or nuclear junctures (NJs) in Persian (as an Indo-European language) in terms of its event attribute within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin & Lapolla 1997, Van Valin 2005). These complex predicates fuse with the prepositional phrases and the impoverished forms of the verb referred to as ‘light verb’ (Cattell 1984). In this study a distinction is made between predicative and non-predicative prepositions providing some examples along with schematizing their layered structure of the clause. To determine the verb class of the prepositional (P) light verb constructions (LVCs) the main five diagnostic tests are applied to a wide range of examples from our collected Persian data. It has emerged from the findings of this study that all the prepositional phrases in Persian prepositional nuclear junctures are of locative type and the light verbs in these constructions belon...
The present paper is a contrastive study which attempts to investigate the errors made by Iranian EFL learners due to the cross-linguistic influence between their L1/SL and L2/TL language (i.e. Persian & English respectively). To meet the goals of the study, an error analysis was conducted to examine the status of different types of errors of prepositions made due to the transitional constraints between Persian and English languages. To this end, a translation task was developed by the present researcher. The translation task aimed at identifying the interlingual preposition errors caused by the process of transfer between the target language (English) and the source language (Persian). The translation task was then given to 53 adult EFL learners at intermediate level to translate the sentences from Persian into English during the allotted time. After collecting and analyzing the data, the corollaries of the study indicated that the Iranian EFL learners under investigation were faced with the errors related to the wrong and redundant use of prepositions more frequently as compared with the errors related to the omission of prepositions in L2 while translating from Persian into English. The findings might make a significant contribution to the preparation of corpus of preposition errors in Iranian EFL learners discourse and thus inform Iranian ELT practitioners and teachers of the cross-linguistic areas of difficulties concerning the acquisition of second language prepositions.
The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics, 2018
This chapter is devoted to three specific features of Persian syntax, namely, the Ezafe construction, differential object marking with the enclitic râ, and complex predicates, which have received a great deal of attention for more than thirty years. Each of these phenomena involves language-specific challenging facts which need to be accurately described and accounted for. At the same time, each constitutes a topic of cross-linguistic investigation for which the Persian data can be of crucial interest. The chapter is divided into three sections. Each section provides an overview of empirical facts and the way various theoretical studies have tried to account for them. While it was impossible to do justice to all influential studies because of the impressive amount of work on each topic, the article is nevertheless intended to be as exhaustive as possible and to maintain the balance between different theoretical approaches.
A Corpus Based Study of Distribution of Preposition in Pakistani and British Englishes
Journal of Education and Practice, 2014
The present study, in the context of World Englishes, explores the distribution of preposition across two varieties of English i.e. Pakistani and British Englishes. It is a corpus based research and studies the frequency of preposition along with its types and (un)shared prepositions in the said varieties. These varieties of English have been studied using Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen (LOB), Freiburg LOB (FLOB) and Pakistani Written English corpus (PWE) respectively. CLAWS Tagger 7 and Antconc.3.3.5 have been used as research tools. The corpus methodology has contributed significantly to gain objective and quantitative findings. In Pakistani English the preposition has been found to be used more frequently than in the British variety. There have been found no significant differences between the numbers of the types of preposition. The findings of the study correspond closely to that of Mindt and Weber's study (1989) conducted on the prepositional distribution in American and British Englishes.
Concept structuring in Persian PP-centric complex predicates
Prepositions contribute to the schematic meanings in Persian complex predicates. Based on the Concept Structuring System (Talmy 2000), we argue that since the light verb and preverbal noun belong to different subsystems, they fulfill distinctive conceptual dimensions of the semantic representation. The preverbal noun, belonging to the open class system provides the content meaning, while the light verb, belonging to the closed class system, determines the schematic meanings of complex predicates. Analyzing some Persian data, we see (a) how the light verb and preposition are so well connected to each other and to the noun by their configuration (b) how they provide different schematic meanings for different complex predicates and (c) how the same noun can combine with a different light verb and a preposition to elicit a different meaning for the complex predicate.