A Comprehensive Analysis of Simple Verbs in Persian

Abstract

This dissertation is an analysis of the internal construction of simple verbs in Persian within the Distributed Morphology (DM) framework. Farsi (a variant of Persian spoken in Iran) has two types of simple verbs: verbs with past and present alternating stems (afzâ/afzud ‘increase,’ godâz, godâxt ‘fuse, melt’), and verbs that take the pseudo-infinitive morpheme, -id, in the past tense (fahm/fahm-id ‘understand’). Either verb type may causativize with the morphological causative affix, -ân-, (fahm-id/fahmând ‘understand/make understand’). This work, argues for a unified analysis of simple verbs, in which an acategorical root combines with a verbalizer to form a verbal stem. In the past tense, this verbalizer can be either null or overt. I show (in chapter 2) that the null verbalizer triggers alternations to the final phoneme of the root, and that this alternation is systematic. This is a unique and up-to-date analysis of these alternating past/present stems and one that is supported by evidence from synchronic and diachronic language change. In chapter 3, I argue against a mono-morphemic analysis of the pseudo-infinitive morpheme and claim this affix is in fact composed of an overt verbalizer, -i-, and the voiced version of the past tense affix, -d. In chapter four, I propose that the causative affix, -ân-, is a root attaching little-v. Following Folli and Harley’s (2002, 2004) ‘flavor of v’ analysis, I claim that the causative affix is blocked in verbs that take a vDO flavor during numeration. Verbs that specify a vDO flavor in their structure are verbs that have certain restrictions on their agent, which do not permit subject demotion. The restrictions on the external arguments of these verbs is specified in the feature bundle in little-v. When Vocabulary Items (VI) compete for insertion in the structure, the VIs that are overspecified for the terminal node are blocked from insertion; hence, the blocking of the causative little-v, -ân-, from these verbs. This work not only provides a comprehensive list of simple verbs in Persian which includes their archaic, formal forms and the current colloquial forms, but also makes exciting predictions about the direction of verb changes over time, as simple verbs are being replaced with complex predicates (CPrs) in the language.