Motivating factors of postposing in Persian

زبانشناسی و گویش های خراسان

Article 2, Volume 5, Issue 9, July 2013, Pages 27-47   

Document Type: علمی - پژ‍وهشی

DOI: 10.22067/lj.v5i9.37335

Authors

Mohammad Rasekhmahand^* ; Maryam Ghiyasvand

Abstract

Postposing is a feature of spoken language. It is a process that postposes a preverbal constituent to a position after the verb, without changing the overall meaning of the sentence. In this study we focus on this linguistic phenomenon and its relation to factors such as grammatical weight, definiteness, animacy and information structure. To investigate the occurrence of this process and its interaction with the mentioned factors, a spoken corpus of over 1900 sentences was analyzed. Data from this corpus showed that all mentioned factors except the animacy had some effects on postposing. In other words, the more definite and the longer the constituents are, the more postposing occurs.

Keywords

postposing; grammatical weight; information structure; animacy; definiteness