Sharifi, Hassan

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PERSIAN VERBS A CHAFEAN ANALYSIS Hassan Sharifi The University of Nebraska Most students of Modern Persian grammar have recognized at least two types of verbs simple and compound The simple verbs, whese n~ber is relatively small, 1 consist of one word such as dastaen "to have", xordaen "to eat", zaedaen "to hit", etc Compound verbs consist of a combination of one of a number of simple verbs and one or more lexical items baer dastaen "to lift, to take", zaemin xordaen "to fall", haerf zaedaen "to speak", etc Furthermore, most grammarians have sub-clctssified the compound verbs on the basis of the part-of-speech, inherent or derived, classification of the lexical item (i e noun, adJective, preposition, or adverb) that combines with the simple verb 3 Rubinehik (1971) divides the compound verbs into what he calls prefixed and compound verbs Prefixed verbs are formed by Joining different dependent words, mainly preposition to a simple verb baer dastaen "to take, lift '1 , baer-xordaen "to be offended", etc Compound verbs, however, are formed by a combination of nouns or adJectives with simple verbs zaemin :xerdaen "to fall down", baz kaerdaen "to open", haerf zaedcten "to speak", etc The main reason for differentiating a simple verb (with a complement) from a compound verb seems to lie in the fact that the meaning of a compound verb differs from the meaning of each element in that verb For example, 1n sentence (1) 1 maen sam xordaem I ate supper .Sam "supper" is a noun that functions as the obJect of the verb xordaen But in sentence (2) 2 maen zaemin xordaem. I fell down the noun zaemin "earth" is not an obJect for the s11nple verb xordaen "to eat11 , rather zaemin xordaen is a unitary semantic 459 460 1975 MID-AMERICA LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE concept, an intransitive verb, only distantly related to the meaning of its verb constituent. The most recent studies on various aspects of Persian syntax are a few unpublished PhD dissertations (Palmer (1970), Moyne (1970), Stilo (1971) In their attempts to deal with Persian within the framework of Generative grdIDIDar, they have recognized the simple-compound distinction between verbs. They have tried to generate the two types of predicate constructions through formalized rules While each of these studies has provided us with valuable bits of information on various aspects of Persian syntax, they have hardly any insightful thing to say about the actual syntactic-semantic processes involved in the formation of compound verbs Moyne differentiates the simple transitive verb predicate construction from that of a compound verb by considering the latter as frozen structures in lexicon They are not generated by any base rule (Moyne 1970 81) For example, he differentiates between sentences (1) and (2) by generating (1) through the base rules but not sentence (2) To consider the process of compound-verb formation as "frozen" is to disregard the productive nature of this syntactic phenomemon In Modern Persian, compound verbs are used to introduce new semantic concepts (e g , telefon kaerdaen "to telephone"), to replace verbs of Arabic origin (e g , daer xast kaerdaen for taelaebidaen "to ask"), or to provide new ways of expressing an already existing semantic concept (e g , gul zaedaen for f aeriftaen "to deceive") It is interesting to note how new compound verbs are formed for new concepts Not too long ago the concept of airplanes flying was introduced to the Persian community In their language, the Persians had a word for flying (paeridaen) as is seen in 3. kaebutaer aez deraext paer1d The pigeon flew from the tree But when they saw the planes flying, they did not use the simple verb paeridaen to express the action performed by the plane, rather they formed a compound verb,paervaz kaerdaen, a combination of paervaz, a nominal derivative from paeridaen, and a simple verb, kaerdaen "to do" Therefore, sentence (4) is grammatical but (5) is not 4 haevapeyma daer aseman paervaz mikonaed The plane flies in the sky 5 *haevapeyma daer aseman mipaeraed* PERSIAN VERBS A CHAFEAN ANALYSIS Examples like telefon kaerdaen "to telephone" and paervaz kaerdaen show the productive nature of compound verb formation 461 I maintain that the process of compound verb formation could be explained within Chafe's (1970) theory of linguistics This study is an attempt to demonstrate the applicability of his theory with some modification to a limited number of Persian verbs, however, further research is necessary to account for the formation of all compound verbs According to Chafe (1970) the verb which is the central and controlling element in a sentence could be specified by various selectional semantic and inflectional units Selectional units, that is, state, process, action, process-action, state-ambient, and action-ambient, determine not only the presence of accompanying nouns but also the choice of a verb root These units may be inherent in a particular verb or derivationally added to it I believe the structure of compound verbs in Persian cannot be accounted for without an understanding of the function and the structure of simple verbs In fact, I would claim that the process of compound verb formation is but a surf ace realization of the underlying semantic units and processes involved in the structure of simple verbs Therefore, I will begin my analysis by describing the structure of a few simple verbs with the frame-work of Chafe (1970) Throughout this paper I will assume some familiarity with his theory Let us examine the different forms of the verb suxtaen "to burn" in the following sentences 6 7 8 ketabaem suxt morad ketabaemra suzand ketabaem suzteaest My book burnt Morad burnt my book My book is burnt In (6) suxt, the 3rd person singular of the past tense of suxtaen, denotes the process that occurred to its patient, to ketabaem "my book" In' (7) suzand "burnt" is the 3rd person srngular form of the past tense o"fSU'Zandaen "to burn", the so-called causitive form of suxtaen It requires an agent, Morad, to perform the action and a patient, ketabaem "my book":-tO'°undergo the process The difference between the meaning of the verb in (6) and (7) is due to a semantic process that Chafe (1970 129) characterizes as 462 Rule 1. process root 1975 MID-AMERICA LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE - ..__)) process action root + causative 11lat is, a verb root which is process can optionally become a process-action verb through the addition of the derivational semantic unit causative. 11lis new semantic unit will require, in addition to a patient, the presence of an agent. In the English translations of (6) and (7) there is not any morphological difference between burnt as a process verb and as a process-action. But in the Per~sentences, suxt and suzand are morphologically different, perhaps an indicat~of th_e ____ _ derivational relation characterized by Rule (1). However, this semantic change is not always accompanied by some overt morphological marking. In sentences (9) and {10), lekaestaen "to break" does not exhibit any change, but in (11) and (12) one finds two different words mord and ko~t corresponding to the semantic units of process and process::i'ctipn respectively. 9. paen)ere S'ekaest. 10. morad paenrerera Xekaest. 11. morad mord· 12 Mehdi moradra koJt. 11le window broke. Morad broke the window. Morad died. Medhi killed Morad. In sentence (8) above, suxte "burnt" is a state, it indicates the state of the patient ketati&e'Di "my book". 11le change of the verb in (6) to that of (8) is characterized by Chafe (1970 124) as Rule 2. process root -- --:'>) state root + resultative It should be noted that in (8) suxte is the past participle of suxtaen and is accompanied by the third person singular present fonn of the verb budaen "to be". Rule (2) could account for the difference between the verbs in (9) and (13) and in (14) and (4) 13 14 ., .., paenJere sekaeste aest morad morde aest• 11le window is broken. Morad is dead Now let us examine some examples of verbs that are inherently process-action PERSIAN VERBS A CHAFEAN ANALYSIS 15 16 17 morad nan-ra borid nan be asani borid nan boride aest Morad cut the bread The bread cut easily The breat is cut 463 In (15) borid, the 3rd person singular past tense of boridaen, is a process::action verb with Morad the agent In (16) borid has derivationally become a process verb Chafe (1970 13-1)~­characterizes this semantic derivation by Rule 3 process action root -->> process root + deactivative That is, a process-action verb root could be converted into a pro-cess root by the addition of a derivational semantic unit, deactivative Now if we apply Rule (2) to the result of (3) the result will be a derived state verb Sentence (17) has precisely such a verb, and its semantic structure could be characterized by (18) 18 v state root + deactivative + resultative The following sentences contain action verbs where the noun Morad acts as the agent of the verb 19 20 morad daevid morad xaendid Morad ran Morad laughed Chafe's treatment of action verbs is rather sketchy Besides the obligatory agent noun, he claims, some of these verbs may require the presence of other nouns such as, beneficiary, and complement As far as the main selectional semantic units of state, process, action, and process-action are concerned, Chafe does not change the action verbs into any other verbs He does not think that the inherently action verbs undergo any derivational processes similar to those of other verbs In this section I would like to show that such 1s not true with Persian Sentences (21) and (22) seem to be clearly derived from (19) and (20) respectively 21 22 morad mehd1ra daevand morad mehd1ra xaendand Morad made Mehdi run Morad made Mehdi laugh 464 1975 MID-AMERICA LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE Sentences (19) and (20) each have one noun Morad which bears an agent relation to the verb. Both sentences cou1d be appropriate answers to· 23. morad te kard kaerd. What did Morad do? Sentences (21) and (22) which contain two nouns, Morad and Mehdi, could also be answers to sentences (23). While these sentences look like process-action ones, Mehdi does not seem to be a patient as one expects in process-action verbs. Sentences (21) and (22) suggest that Chafe's outline of semantic structure for verbs needs some modification. Besides the fact that action verbs undergo some derivational changes, the resulting changed sentences seem to have two nouns, both of which could be considered to be agents. I have made certain suggestions to extend Chafe 1s proposal elsewhere.4 These modifications are necessary if one wants to account for the following English sentences 24. Morad walked across the stage. 25. Morad walked the queen across the stage. The Persian data clearly indicates that there is a difference between the role of Morad and Mehdi in (21) and (22). While Mehdi is the person who "ran" and "laughed", Morad is the person who caused Mehdi to undertake the action. Morad may or may not have participated in the same action, but he certainly caused or instigated the action. We are forced either to change our concept of the semantic unit "patient" or postulate an additional semantic unit cdlled instigator besides those proposed by Chafe. The action verbs do not seem to undergo any further deriva-tional changes. Now let us examine the state verbs. In all the above examples which dealt with state verbs, the verb WdS a derived one. They were the so-called past participle .form of ~the verb followed by some form of the verb "to be". In Persian like those in English, except for a few experiencial and benefective verbs, most state verbs are what the traditional grannnar1ans call adJective and participle, and are always accompanied by the verb "to be". PERSIAN VERBS A CHAFEAN ANALYSIS 26 27 28 daer baz bud daer baz ~od morad daerra baz kaerd The door was open The door opened Morad opened the door 465 Most grdl11lllars of Persian consider sentence (26) to contain a simple verb, but (27) and (28) each contain a compound verb rodaen "to become" and kaerdaen "to do" are called auxiliar1es' expecially in sentences where instead of an adJective, such as baz "open" a participle like ~ekaeste "broken" or raevan "going, flowing" is used ---29 30 paen)ere sekaeste bud morad be maenzel raevan bud The window was broken Morad was going home It is not at all clear why one should consider sentences (26), (27), and (28) to contain two different classes of verbs, in fact, they all seem to have the same class of verbs If (26) contains a simple verb, (27) and (28) must also contain simple verbs, too The verbs in these sentences differ from one another in the same way that verbs of the sentences (6), (7), and (8) differ If we accept Chafe's hierarchical system and consider state as the highest semantic selectional unit, sentence (26) would then be the basic semantic concept from which sentence (27) could be derived by Rule 4 Rule 4 state root -->> process root + incohative This rule changes a state verb into a process verb Sentence (28) is further derived from the application of the Rule 1 to the verb of sentence (27) Sentences (26), (27), and (28) are similar to (6), (7), and (8) or to (15), (16), and (17) in t~at in each set there is a verb intrinsically state (26), process (6) and process-action (15), and the other two sentences in each set are derived from them by the appropriate application of Rules 1, 2, 3, or 4 The difference between these sets of sentences lie in the fact that intrinsically state verbs, which have surface marker, budaen "to be", regularly use Jodaen and kaerdaen when they undergo semantic derivation This is not always true of other types of verbs, even though when ~odaen and kaerdaen appear with the latter, they definitely indicate the derivative nature of that particular verb 466 1975 MID-AMERICA LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE v It is then reasonable to postulate that budaen, sodaen, and kaerdaen are surface representations of the seiilaii'ti"c units, state, process, and process-action respectively. They appear with the so-called simple verbs as they undergo the semantic derivations. There is no reason to believe that their presence with other lexi-cal items should be called compound verbs. In fact I would like to claim that the appearance of budaen, fodaen, and kaerdaen with othen lexical items such as nouns, participles, adJectives, etc. indicate the selectional semantic units of the sentence. If the lexical item is an adJective, the verb budaen would show the inherent feature and the others the derived features. If it is non-adJective, the presence of these verbs indicates the semantic selectional feature of process, process-action, action, etc Consider the following sentences 31. in aenjomaen daer New York tae'sis sod. This association was established in New York. v 32. morad in m nJomaenra dm r New York tae'sis kaerd. Morad established this association in New York. Wlnle the noun tae' sis "establishment" can form both a process and process-action, the following noun cannot 33. morad sabr kard Morad waited. In fact (33) is an action verb It should be noticed that the meaning of these verbs is the meaning of the noun, adJective, etc Jodan or kaerdaen determine the semantic relationship between various parts of the sentence. The same arguments could be made for English sentences like 34. Morad md.de d. speech. 35 Morad did a dance for us. There are a number of other compound verbs where the verb used in their formation is not one of the so called auxiliaries They are simple verbs with their own semantic content such as 36. morad kd.ebab xord. 37 morad zaemin xord. 38 morad q9ae--xord. 39. Morad ke~owra ke~id. 40. Morad j' 1q ke~ id 41 Morad sigar k~Jid. Morad ate kabab Mord.d fell down. Morad felt sorrowful Morad pulled the drawer. Morad shouted. Morad smoked a cigarette PERS IAN VERBS A CHAFEAN ANALYSIS 4b7 I have discussed the above sentences in Sharifi (1973a, and 1973b) and we shall discuss similar sentences in connection to 12:ereftaen "to get" in the next paper (Sheik and Sharifi) in this volume The simple verbs, xordaen "to eat" and ke~idaen "to pull" seem to change their original meanings in sentences (37, 38) and (40 and 41) when they appear in a compound form It is this seeming disparity between the meaning of the simple verb and their meaning as they appear in the compound form that has given the strongest motivation to divide the verbs into two groups of simple and compound I have argued that the basic meaning of the simple verb is present in all of the compound verbs To native speakers in (37 and 38) the notion of "consumption and absorption" and in (40 and 41) the idea of ''pulll~ and drawing" is present In addition, the verbs xordaen and kesidaen reflect the semantic selectional units of action which is necessary to change the nouns in each sentences through a derivational process into an action verb This is not much different from the function of the so-called auxilliary verbs, sodaen and kaerdaen If sentences (26, 28) in fact, contain simple verbs there is no Justification for considering (37, 38, 41, and 42) as different NOTES 1 For an example of the traditional classification see Elwell-Sutton, 1963, pages 94ff 2 These are the infinitive forms of the verbs The mark of an infinitive is the final -an of the word 3 See Lambton 1961, pages 85ff 4 "Chafe' s Action Verbs in Persian", a paper read before the Linguistics Section II of the 1974 Philological Association of the Pacific Coast, San Diego, California BIBLIOGRAPHY Chafe, Wallace L Meaning and the Structure of Language Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 1970 Elwell-Sutton, L P Elementary Persian Grammar Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1963 468 1975 MID-AMERICA LINGUISTICS CONFERENCE Jazayerey, M A. and Paper, H. H. A Reference Grammar of Modern Persian. Ann Arbor The University of Michigan, 1961. Lambton, Ann I. s. Persian Grannnar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Lazard, Gilbert. Grammaire du Persan Contemporain. Paris Klineksuch, 1957. Rastorgueva, V.S Bloomington A Short Sketch of the Granunar of Persian. Indiana University, 1964 Rubinshik, Yu. A. The Modern Persian Language. Moscow "Nauka" Publishing House, 1971. Sharifi, Hassan. "The Feature Compatibilities of Persian Xordan (to eat) with Nouns, AdJectives, etc. A Metaphorical Process." Meaning A Common Ground of Linguistics and Literature. In Honor of Norman Stageberg. Proceedings of a University of Northern Iowa Conference held April 27-28, 1973. "A Semantic Analysis of the Persian Verb Kesidm n "to pull" Papers from the Mid-America Linguistics Conference, 1973. 

PERSIAN VERBS: A CHAFEAN ANALYSIS

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PERSIAN VERBS: A CHAFEAN ANALYSIS

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