Specific Features of the Persian Syntax : The Ezāfe Construction, Differential Object Marking, Complex Predicates

Three aspects of Persian syntax have received a great deal of attention for more than 30 years: a) the Ezāfe construction; b) differential object marking with the enclitic =rā; c) complex predicates. The reason for this persistent interest is the way each of these phenomena involves both language specific empirical facts, which need to be accurately described and accounted for, and cross-linguistic issues for which the Persian data can be of a crucial interest. The Ezāfe construction, a specific feature of the noun phrase in many Western Iranian languages, sheds a new light on the way dependency relationships, i.e. complementation vs. modification, are realized within the NP and the morphological correlates of these relationships with respect to head vs. dependent marking patterns. It also contributes to the debate on the nature of linkers in a variety of languages. Differential object marking, realized by the enclitic =rā, clearly highlights the way specificity and definiteness are related to topicality, since in colloquial Persian =rā also endorses a topic marker function, reviving thus its ties with its functions in Middle and Classical Persian. Finally, complex predicates (compounds verbs or light verb constructions), which constitute the main device of verbal lexeme formation in Persian, raise the issue of how syntactic and morphological lexeme formation resemble and diverge at the same time and shed a new light on the manner idiomaticity and compositionality can cohabit.
In this talk I will, I will address the issue of how studies on these three specific features of Persian have contributed to more general theoretical debates in formal linguistics and language typology.