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Syntax, Morphology, and Semantics of Ezafe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Parviz Parsafar
Parviz Parsafar*
Affiliation:
Yuba College, Marysville, CA, USA(pparsafa@ yccd.edu)
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Abstract

Although ezafe has been studied by many scholars for many years, it does not yet have a transparent grammatical status. Grammarians have regarded ezafe as a polysemous “word” carrying over ten different “meanings/functions.” After a brief review of the previous treatments of ezafe, this paper will present a syntactic analysis, followed by a morphological description and a semantic analysis of this ubiquitous morpheme. It will also compare the distributional properties of other relevant bound morphemes with those of the ezafe. It will finally conclude that ezafe is a dummy clitic-like morpheme which is semantically void, while syntactically it functions as an “associative marker” which subordinates its [+N] host, on the left, to its following complements.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 5: On Persian Language and Linguistics , December 2010 , pp. 637 - 666
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2010

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Footnotes

Note that the findings in this paper are part of research that took place between 1990 and 1996. I am greatly indebted to my advisor, Professor Laurence Horn (Yale), and Professors Stanley Insler (Yale) and Gernot Windfuhr (University of Michigan). However, all the errors and lapses are mine alone.

References

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11 SM stands for the Specificity Marker of Objects and Topics as argued for in Parviz Parsafar, “The Persian /ra/” (Unpublished qualifying paper presented to the faculty, Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1990). This morpheme is represented by /-ra/ which has two other allomorphs in the colloquial language: /-ro/ and /-o/.

12 Jackendoff, R., X-bar Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure, Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 2 (Cambridge, MA, 1977).Google Scholar

13 The only apparent exception to this claim is that the color adjectives can be modified by a restrictive group of adjectives, a phenomenon that also exists in English, as in /qermez-e ro∫æn / “light red” and /abi-ye kæmræng / “pale blue.” However, as will be seen later, an adjective carrying an ezafe is not an anomaly.

14 Sami'ian, “Structure of Phrasal Categories in Persian,” 37–38.

15 Simin Karimi and Michael Brame, “A Generalization Concerning the Ezafe Construction in Persian” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Conference of Linguistics, Canada, 1986).

16 For a more detailed discussion of this and other sections, see Parsafar, “Spatial Prepositions in Modern Persian,” Ch.1.

17 Parsafar, “Spatial Prepositions in Modern Persian”.

18 Rubinchik, Yu. A., The Modern Persian Language (Moscow, 1971)Google Scholar; Lazard, Grammaire du Persian Contemporain; Sami'ian, “Structure of Phrasal Categories in Persian”; Karimi and Brame, “A Generalization Concerning the Ezafe Construction in Persian.”

19 Parsafar, “Spatial Prepositions in Modern Persian.”

20 Parsafar, “Spatial Prepositions in Modern Persian”.

21 See Klavans, Judith L., “The Independence of Syntax and Phonology in Cliticization,” Language, 61, no. 1 (1985): 95–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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24 Parviz Parsafar, “The Morphology of Modern Persian Suffixes” (Unpublished qualifying paper presented to the faculty, Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1990), 49. He illustrates that “this /i/ is unspecified for definiteness in the sense that when it is used in isolation, it is ‘unspecific indefinite’, but when used in context, it can be ‘specific indefinite’ or ‘definite’ .”

25 In what follows, PL stands for the plural markers, ID for Indefinitizer /-i/, and POSS for the possessive pronominal suffixes (or, as will be shown, enclitics).

26 Parsafar, “The Morphology of Modern Persian Suffixes,” 40–48.

27 Assuming the principles of Chomsky's (1981) GB theory, Karimi (“Aspects of Persian Syntax”, 100) argues that /ra/ “follows a specific NP if the latter is not marked [+NOM] and is not in the minimal government-projection of α (=N, A, or P). Independently, and based on the theory of Relational Grammar developed by Perlmutter, David, “Relational Grammar,” Syntax and Semantics, 13 (1980): 195–227Google Scholar, Parsafar (“The Persian /ra/”) argues that /ra/ is “a Specificity Marker of Objects and Topics.”

28 Parsafar, “The Morphology of Modern Persian Suffixes,” 23–24.

29 Analyzing certain Italian data, Scalise (Generative Morphology, 126) refers to Kiparsky's mechanism of “inflection blocking” which states that “sequences of consecutive inflectional elements are prohibited.” However, this “mechanism” has been illustrated to be ineffective in Persian by Parsafar (“The Morphology of Modern Persian Suffixes”), as in the following:

It should also be mentioned that Parsafar (Ibid) considers the ID /-i/ as an inflectional suffix, whereas the analysis in the present work will propose that /-i/ is probably more word-like.

30 Aronoff, “Word Formation in Generative Grammar,” 3–4.

31 Zwicky, Arnold M., On Clitics, Indiana University Linguistics Club publication (1977)Google Scholar; Zwicky, Arnold M., “On Clitics,” in Phonologica, ed. by Dresser, Wolfgang U. and Pfeiffer, Oskar E. (Innsbruck, 1976)Google Scholar. This is a shorter version of the 1977 paper.

32 His examples are “Je vois Jean” (“I see John”) and “Je le vois” (“I see him”).

33 Zwicky and Pullum, “Cliticization vs. Inflection: English n't.”

34 M. Mo'in, Mofrad-o Jam' [Singular and Plural] (Tehran, 1340/1961), presents a nearly exhaustive list of the types of bases for /-ha/ and /-an/ which need not be mentioned here. Parsafar (“The Morphology of Modern Persian Suffixes,” 31) claims that “almost any base that can be pluralized by /-an/ is also pluralizable by /-ha/, but not vice-versa.”

35 Zwicky, Arnold M., “Clitics and Particles,” Language, 61, no. 2 (1985): 283–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Zwicky, On Clitics, 7.

37 Zwicky, Arnold M., “Stranded to and Phonological Phrasing in English,” Linguistics, 20 (1982): 3–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Zwicky, Arnold M., “Stranded to,” Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 24 (1980): 166–173.Google Scholar

39 Zwicky, “Stranded to,” 171.

40 Klavans, “The Independence of Syntax and Phonology in Cliticization.”

41 Marantz, Alec, “Clitics and Phrase Structure,” in Alternative Conceptions of Phrase Structure, ed. by Baltin, Mark R. and Kroch, Anthony S. (Chicago, 1989): 99–116.Google Scholar

42 Klavans, “The Independence of Syntax and Phonology in Cliticization,” 104.

43 Sami'ian, Structure of Phrasal Categories in Persian, 39 and 78.

44 Radford, Andrew, Transformational Grammar (Cambridge, 1988): 89–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Klavans, “The Independence of Syntax and Phonology in Cliticization.”

46 I owe this analysis to Professor Laurence R. Horn, my teacher and adviser.

47 Quirk, R., Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, and Svartvik, Jan, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (London, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Lyons, Christopher, “The Syntax of English Generative Constructions,” Journal of Linguistics, 22 (1986): 123–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar