Expletives in Persian

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 University of Tehran

2 Razi University of Kermanshah

Abstract

The present study investigates the existence of expletives in Persian. Rizzi (1982, 1986) suggests that pro-drop languages, by virtue of licensing pro, would have empty non-referential subjects. However, Karimi (2005) takes the violation of Definiteness Effect in Persian as indicating that neither overt nor covert expletives exist in this language. Following Darzi (1996), we present pieces of evidence to show that Persian has overt expletives.  We then present arguments in support of Rizzi's (1982, 1986) hypothesis that pro-drop languages may have covert expletives as well. Finally, we provide cross-linguistic pieces of evidence from Icelandic, Finnish and Portuguese to suggest that being a pro-drop language or violating the Definiteness Effect in a language does not necessarily entail the absence of expletives in that language.

Keywords


کتابنامه
حق شناس، علی محمد. سامعی، حسین. سمائی، سید مهدی. طباطبایی، علاءالدین. (1387). دستور زبان فارسی،تهران: سمت.
خیامپور، عبدالرسول. (1386). دستور زبان فارسی، چاپ سیزدهم، تبریز: ستوده.
زاهدی، کیوان. (1387). " انواع فاعل نحوی بی­آوا در زبان فارسی"، مجلۀ دستور،ش4، صص 170- 182.
طبیب زاده، امید. (1386). " بررسی انواع بندهای متممی در زبان فارسی و شیوۀ نمایش آنها در فرهنگ­ها"، مجلۀ فرهنگ نویسی، ش 1، صص 211- 235.
لازار، ژیلبر. (1957). دستور زبان فارسی معاصر، ترجمۀ مهستی بحرینی (1384)، تهران: هرمس.
ماهوتیان، شهرزاد. (1378). دستور زبان فارسی از دیدگاه رده شناختی، ترجمۀ مهدی سمائی، تهران: نشر مرکز.
مشکوة الدینی، مهدی. (1379). دستور زبان فارسی بر پایۀ نظریۀ گشتاری، ویرایش دوّم، مشهد: دانشگاه فردوسی.
ناتل خانلری، پرویز. (1377). دستور زبان فارسی. چاپ شانزدهم، تهران: توس.
 
Adger, D. (2003) Core Syntax: a Minimalist Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bruge, L. (2002) "The positions of demonstratives in the extended projection principle", In G. Cinque (ed.), Functional Structures in DP and IP, the Carthography of Syntactic Structures. Volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Carrilho, E. (2008) "Beyond doubling: overt expletives in European Portuguese dialects", In S. Barbiers, O. Koeneman, M. Lekakou & M. van der Ham (eds). Microvariation in Syntactic Doubling. Syntax and semantics vol. 36, 301-349. Bingley: Emerald publishers
Chomsky, N. (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding. Dodrecht: Foris.
Cunha, C., and L. F. Lindley Cintra (1984) Nova Gramatica do Portuguese Contemorano. Lisboa: oão Sá da Costa.
Darzi, A. (1996) Word order, NP movement, and opacity conditions in Persian, Ph.Ddissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Grimsha, J. and A. Mester (1988) “Light verbs and theta marking” Linguistic Inquiry 19;205- 232.
Ghomeshi, J. (2001) "Control and Thematic Agreement" Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 46;9-40.
Haegeman, L. (1994) 2nd edn.Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Holmberg, A. and U. Nikanne (2002) "Expletives, subjects, and topics in Finnish", In P. Evenonios (ed.), Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP71- 105. NewYork: Oxford University Press.
Karimi, S. (2005) A minimalist Approach to Scrambling: Evidence from Persian.The Hague: muton.
Mohammad, J and S. Karimi (1992) Light verbs are taking Over: complex verbs in Persian, Proceedings of The Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL). PP 195-212.
Nicolis, M. (2008) "The null subject parameter and correlating properties: the case of creole languages", In T. Biberauer (ed.), The Limits of Syntactic Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Milsark, G. (1977) "Towards an explanation of certain peculiarities of existential constructions in English", Linguistic Inquiry 3, 1- 29.
Moyne, J, and G. Carden (1974) "Subject reduplication in Persian", linguistic Inquiry 5, 205- 249.
Quirk, R. and S. Greenbaum (1990) A Student Grammaer of English. London: Longman.
Rizzi, L. (1982) Issues in Italian syntax. Dortrecht: Foris.
Rizzi, L. (1986) "Null objects in Italian and the theory of pro", Linguistic Inquiry 17, 501- 557.
Soheili Isfahani, A. (1976) Noun phrase complementation in Persian, Ph.D dissertation, University
     of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign.
Ura, H. (1994) "Varieties of raising and feature-based bare phrase structure theory" MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 7, Cambridge MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.
Ura, H. (1997) "Varieties of raising and feature-based bare phrase structure theory" Unpublished Paper.
Ura, H. (2001) "Case", In M. Baltin and C. Collins(eds), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory. 334-373.Oxford: Blackwell.
Vangsnes, Ø. A. (2002) "Icelandic expletive constructions and the distribution of the subject types", In P. Sevenonios (ed.), Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP, Oxford: Oxford Univarsity Press.