A Syntactic and Semantic Investigation of Static Verbs in Persian

زبانشناسی و گویش های خراسان

Article 2, Volume 4, Issue 7, September 2013   

Document Type: علمی - پژ‍وهشی

DOI: 10.22067/lj.v4i7.24958

Author

Vali Rezaee^*

Abstract

The category of Verb as the nucleus of sentence has a significant importance in grammar. This grammatical category has specific semantic and syntactic characteristics in different languages. In Role and Reference Grammar as a functional grammar, predicates are classified into five classes including states, activities, achievements, accomplishments and active-accomplishments. These five classes are distinguished from each other on the basis of their temporal properties. States are non-dynamic and temporally unbounded; activities are dynamic and temporally unbounded; achievements are temporally bounded instantaneous changes, while accomplishments are temporally extended. Active accomplishments are activity predicates with an end point. This paper explores syntactic and semantic behavior of static verbs in Persian. First, I will establish some diagnostic tests for verb classification in Persian. Afterwards, the characteristics of static verbs will be demonstrated. It will be shown that static verbs are not used in progressive aspect. Moreover, two-place static verbs have no passive form since the object of such verbs is not considered as a prototypical object.

Keywords

Role and Reference Grammar; State; activity; Achievement; Aspect