A Typological Study of Causative Constructions in Persian

زبانشناسی و گویش های خراسان

Article 2, Volume 3, Issue 4, January 2011   

Document Type: علمی - پژ‍وهشی

DOI: 10.22067/lj.v3i4.18452

Author

Vali Rezai

Abstract

Causative constructions play an important role in the mental and linguistic system of human beings. The methodology that is used in this paper for studying causative constructions in Persian is the combination of the Morphology-based approach and Song’s model (1996, 2001). Emphasizing the causer NP and the causee NP, we draw the semantic map of the causer NP (based on the animacy hierarchy). In addition, we studied the position of the causee NP in Case hierarchy. The iconicity of the linguistic distance and conceptual distance between the causer NP and the causee NP were also studied. The results of this study show that the position of the causee NP in Case hierarchy is not always fixed and sometimes it has a flexible position. Also the linguistic distance between the causer NP and the causee NP in lexical causatives usually reveals the conceptual distance between them, so it is iconic. But in syntactic causatives this linguistic distance is not always iconic.

Keywords

Typology; Causative constructions; Causer NP; Causee NP; Animacy hierarchy; Iconicity