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Persian Progressive Tense: Serial Verb Construction or Aspectual Complex Predicate?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Azita H. Taleghani
Azita H. Taleghani*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto, Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto at Mississauga
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Abstract

The present and past progressive tenses in Persian are the only tenses in which both the main verb and the minor verb dâštan “to have” receive agreement marking. Morpho-syntactically, Persian progressives show the similar properties of both Aspectual Complex Predicates and Serial Verb Constructions. The question that this paper addresses is: are Persian progressive tenses Aspectual Complex Predicates or Serial Verb Constructions? By presenting the morpho-syntactic and semantic analysis of Persian progressives, and highlighting the main properties of Aspectual Complex Predicates and Serial Verb Constructions, the paper shows that, despite the similarities between these verbal constructions and Aspectual Complex Predicates, Persian progressives are instances of Serial Verb Constructions where neither a complementizer nor a conjunction separates the two verbs and the complex describes a single conceptual event.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 5: On Persian Language and Linguistics , December 2010 , pp. 607 - 619
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2010

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Footnotes

Abbreviations: Acc = Accusative, Ez = ezafe, F. = feminine, ImP = imperfect, Incl = Inclusive, N = name, Nom = nominative, Past = past, Pl. = plural, Pres = present, Sg. = singular, Stm = Stem.

References

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3 Bybee et al., The Evolution of Grammar, 130.

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11 Butt refers to these SVCs as complex predicate constructions, but they are not the same as true Persian complex predicates.

13 Butt, The Structure of Complex Predicates in Urdu, 224.

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24 See Azita H. Taleghani, “Possessive Construction in Persian” (Unpublished paper, 2006), 16

25 Direct objects are marked by râ if they are specific. This is illustrated by the following example.

It is worth noting that the particle râ is a specificity marker that appears with nominal elements that receive accusative case. In spoken language, râ is employed as ro and o. See for detailed analysis: Karimi, Simin, “Specifically Effect: Evidence from Persian,” Linguistic Review, 16 (1999): 125–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lazard, Gilbert, A Grammar of Contemporary Persian (Cosa Mesa, CA, 1992)Google Scholar; Ghomeshi, Jila, “Projection and Inflection: A Study of Persian Structure” (PhD diss., Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto, 1997).Google Scholar

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28 See Karimi, A Minimalist Approach to Scrambling, 29.

29 Taleghani, Azita H., Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2008), 162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Butt, The Structure of Complex Predicates in Urdu, 102: footnote 7.

31 Seuren, “Serial Verb Construction,” 18–23.

32 Taleghani, Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian, 177.