A comparative study of Grammaticalization and Degrammaticalization in Persian (A case study: change of some inflectional affixes into derivational ones)

زبانشناسی و گویش های خراسان

Article 5, Volume 3, Issue 4, January 2011   

Document Type: علمی - پژ‍وهشی

DOI: 10.22067/lj.v3i4.18457

Author

Mehrdad Naghzguy Kohan^*

Abstract

Degrammaticalization is regarded as a process in which grams lose their grammatical properties. This process is attested in many languages of the world. Its related findings have evidently weakened the claim of unidirectionality in grammaticalization. Degrammation, deinflectionalization and debonding are among the major types of degrammaticalization established for this process of change (Norde2009:3). In this article, based on the evidence from prose texts of New Persian, it is illustrated that the verbal prefixes of be- and ne- in their development in the process of grammaticalization passed through the stages of function words and clitics, and finally have been used as inflectional verbal prefixes. In an evidently recent development, these two prefixes in some of their occurrences have changed into derivational prefixes. In this process of deinflectionalization, be- and ne- , unlike their inflectional counterparts, are no longer stress-bearing prefixes and they can change the class of the bases they are attached to. The whole picture of change in be- and ne- suggests that the two processes of grammaticalization and degrammaticalization cannot be considered as mirror image of each other, since be- and ne- in their degrammaticalization do not move back to the same path of change through which they became more grammaticalized

Keywords

degrammaticalization; deinflectionalization; grammaticalization; New Persian; verbal prefixes