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This paper concerns with one of the untouched areas of Persian grammar; the case of sequence of tenses. Since this case mainly takes place in discourse, the paper will focus on the functions and changes of tenses in discourse. In order to do so, after introducing our theoretical framework and the notions of "Absolute" and "Relative" tenses, Persian absolute and relative tenses will be intro-
Lingua, 2019
The present study aims at investigating tense interpretation in Persian complement and relative clauses and determining whether Persian is subsumed under the label of sequence of tense (henceforth SOT) or non-SOT languages. To achieve these aims, Persian past-under-past, present-under-past, and present-under-future constructions were examined. However, given that there was not a unanimous consensus between the researchers as to the interpretation of past-under-past constructions (which is one of the criteria for distinguishing SOT languages from non-SOT languages), 32 Persian native speakers were interviewed. Furthermore, since the nature of present tense and the SOT phenomenon are intertwined, an attempt was made to study the nature of Persian present tense. The in-depth analysis of the interview results and Persian data were indicative of the non-indexical nature of Persian present tense. Moreover, the results revealed that Persian, on account of exhibiting some SOT-like and some non-SOT-like behaviors, is a hybrid language defying the commonly-held SOT/non-SOT classification. Finally, using the de re theory, as proposed by Abusch (1997) and further developed by Ogihara and Sharvit (2012), a comprehensive analysis was provided for the simultaneous past reading of Persian past-under-past complement clauses.
Article , 2013
Grammatical tense, as the time of action occurrence, locates a situation in time to indicate when the situation takes place, which in many languages is indicated in three basic categories of past, present and future. The present study is aimed to analyze the tense system in Lari language, a language of Larestan Township in the Southern part of Iran, which is also spoken by more than a million people in other parts of Iran, Oman and the UAE. Based on a contrastive-descriptive methodology, the research illustrates the tense system of Lari in comparison to that of English and in case in Persian. Following a brief explanation of Lari tenses, their applicability and features are explained comparatively in English and Lari via tables. Finally, differences and similarities among the two languages are demonstrated together with the unique features of Lari. The results illustrate Lari's specific features in past, non-past, and especially future tenses.
Studia Linguistica, 2006
Abstract. The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the Persian past tense form is projected into the future to designate events, states, and processes. While it must be admitted that the phenomenon under consideration is by no means confined to Persian, its examination in this language will reveal certain characteristics which are likely to contribute to a better understanding of how temporal deixis, together with aspectual and modal meanings, interact with contextual factors to yield socio-culturally relevant utterances. Of special theoretical interest in this respect are the semantic-pragmatic constraints levied, in varying degrees, on the projected tense in terms of negation, pronominal choice, speech act assignment, aspectual character, modal status, and pitch contour. Fundamental to the present study are three assumptions. First, the deictic projection at issue has pragmatic motivations, and, in addition, stems largely from the ontological asymmetry between pastness and futurity. Second, it has an indisputable edge over the other future-indicating devices available to Persian speakers in that it denotes factivity with respect to the occurrence of a situation. And third, it is stylistically marked as it digresses from the normal function of the past tense.
Grammatical tense, as the time of action occurrence, locates a situation in time to indicate when the situation takes place, which in many languages is indicated in three basic categories of past, present and future. The present study is aimed to analyze the tense system in Lari language, a language of Larestan Township in the Southern part of Iran, which is also spoken by more than a million people in other parts of Iran, Oman and the UAE. Based on a contrastive-descriptive methodology, the research illustrates the tense system of Lari in comparison to that of English and in case in Persian. Following a brief explanation of Lari tenses, their applicability and features are explained comparatively in English and Lari via tables. Finally, differences and similarities among the two languages are demonstrated together with the unique features of Lari. The results illustrate Lari’s specific features in past, non-past, and especially future tenses. Keywords: Lari language, Grammatical te...
Dialectologia Revista Electronica, 2013
This study deals with contrasting three languages, namely English, Farsi (Persian), and Mazandarani (Tabari). The study followed two main goals: first, providing Mazandarani and Farsi teachers with pedagogical implications in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL); and second, taking a step toward preventing the Mazandarani (Mazani) language from gradual extinction. By comparing the word order, verbs, and tenses of the three aforementioned languages, it was concluded that in some cases Mazandarani, and in other cases Farsi, is more similar to English. With respect to word order, Mazandarani and Farsi are SOV but English is SVO. Regarding verbs and tenses, contrary to English, Mazandarani and Farsi are inflected. This inflection plays an important role in forming different tenses in the conjugation process.
International Journal English Linguistics, 2020
The hypothesis upon which this paper is based is that in both Arabic and English the notion of tense underdetermines the notion of time, and some pragmatic enrichment is needed to the get at the correct temporal interpretation. In both languages, beside the normal unmarked tense usages, some marked usages of tense are available wherein the tense constructions do not refer to their equivalent temporal intervals; this is done for the sake of rhetorical purposes as illustrated and exemplified. Even the unmarked cases to tense are proven to require, for sound interpretation, the inclusion of pragmatic givens. Many examples are given in both languages showing the pragmatic nature of the temporal interpretive process of tense in terms of the SRE theory where the interrelationship of the three-time intervals speech, event, and reference times (S/TU, E/TSit, R/TT) is based primarily on rather pragmatic parameters within the process of temporal interpretation. Some new treatment is given concerning the theory of tense interpretation which is related to a pragmatic conception of the speaker's temporal projection or "virtuality" via which tenses' inherent three-time points are pragmatically interrelated and arranged in terms of the potential existence of multiple virtual and non-virtual speakers.
Mohamed Abdelmaged Omer Musa, 2019
This paper entitled the functions of tenses and verb-forms in English and Arabic language. It aimed at pinpointing how tenses and forms of verbs act in the two languages. For the purpose of this paper, the researcher has employed descriptive-analytical method because it is appropriate with the nature of study. A number of results were reached; some of the most important ones were: tenses in English language are the main approaches to express time, while tenses in Arabic language function as large modules for the verbal patterns and verbal single units to indicate different time variations. Verb-forms in both languages operate differently. With reference to the study's results, the researcher recommends that further studies should be conducted by other researchers. Likewise, more concern should be given to investigate the functions of verb-forms in Arabic language particularly.
2018
1INTRODUCTION Distributed Morphology (DM) introduced in Halle and Marantz (1993, 1994) in the early 1990s is a grammatical model that has emerged within the framework of Principles and Parameters. DM which represents a set of hypotheses about the interaction among components of grammar, including Morphology, syntax and phonology claims that the complex structure of a word is created in the same way as is the complex structure of a phrase or sentence. It is important to say that Distributed Morphology is a framework within the Minimalist Program (MP) which rejects the Lexicalist hypothesis and the notion of a generative lexicon (Siddiqi 2009). In this linguistic model, there is only one generative component of the grammar (the syntax) whereas in Lexicalist Minimalism, there are two (the syntax and the lexicon). The four fundamental differences between DM and Lexicalist Minimalism to be mentioned here are categorization, late-insertion, morphosyntactic decomposition, and underspecific...
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2017
The aim of this article is to establish the present perfect functions syntactically and semantically in Persian. Taking the definition of perfect, typically functioning to express anteriority or perfect aspect, the authors analyzed this construction in Persian in terms of function, meaning, and usage. Using functionaltypological approach, the category of perfect was analyzed in regards to form, composition, meaning, expression, and its specific uses in Persian in order to determine its fundamental functions and meanings. From a synchronic point of view, the resultative, experiential and current-relevance meanings of this construction could be covered from the compound verb form. The discussion on the meanings of the Persian compound form of present perfect was based on the analysis of its occurrences in contemporary spoken standard texts, including movies, talk shows, and TV serials as well as written texts and the authors' intuitions, in rare cases. Fundamental to the present study were three assumptions: First, a closer look at the data indicates that there are both temporal and aspectual tendencies in this construction. Second, the findings lend support to the claim that indirect information, usually described under the label of evidentiality in many contexts, is a part of their functions. Third, a modified version of Kyparsky's theory of event structure is used and we promote the idea of "hierarchical structure" for the Persian perfect functions where the current relevance of a prior event is the main function and other functions are entailed from this.
Language Sciences, 2009
The present paper sets out to focus on an aspect of the modal system of Persian which, despite its crucial role in interactive discourse, has not received the treatment it deserves. More precisely, the paper seeks to investigate how the simple past is deployed to express subjective epistemic and deontic modality within a future-oriented framework. This apparent clash between tense and time can be explained in terms of a set of recognition criteria: tense-distinction, interrogation, conditionality and modal harmony. The clash is also explicable pragmatically in that it is heavily context-dependent. In both cases, the underlying assumption is that the modality under consideration is invariably construed as indicating certainty, disbelief, challenge, nonchalance or obligation with respect to a particular state of affairs.
Lingua Posnaniensis (The Poznań Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences), 2018
The purpose of this paper is to outline the fundamental grammaticalization and degrammat(icalizat)ion processes observable in the restructuring of the tense/aspect/mood systems of the West Iranian languages during their historical development. Their core aspectual systems will be presented as consisting of three categories: Imperfective, Perfective and Perfect. Special attention will be paid to the rise of the analytic Perfect in Middle Persian and its further development in Early New Persian and other West Iranian languages. It will be shown that the degrammation of the copula played a significant role in the formation of compound temporal (Perfect, Pluperfect) and modal categories (Evidential, Conjectural) in New Persian, Kurdish, Balochi and Tajik. The Evidential mode of New Persian is based on the analytic Perfect rafte ast 'he is gone' and it is found in all the three aspectual categories (Imperfective, Perfective and Perfect) and both voices. It is usually claimed that it developed in the Iranian languages probably under Turkic influence. We intend to address the contentious issue of syntactic borrowing in terms of language contact in another paper.
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2011
In this paper I examine the semantic properties of the Indo-Iranian Perfect which was associated with the anterior or perfect aspect, of the simple Future, the Desiderative and Voluntative which were all associated with a futurate meaning as well as participial and periphrastic categories. In addition, I will highlight some open questions in this area.
Abstract In this article I defend the view that many central aspects of the semantics of tense are determined by independently-motivated principles of syntactic theory. I begin by decomposing tenses syntactically into a temporal ordering predicate (the true tense, on this approach) and two time-denoting arguments corresponding to covert a reference time (RT) argument and an eventuality time (ET) argument containing the verb phrase.
2016
Our objective in this paper is to compare and contrast the English and KurdishKurmanji verb tenses. Though both languages are in the same language family, the similiarities and the differences between them do exist. When a learner initiates learning one of the languages mentioned above, with no doubt, the similarities facilitates the learning, whereas the differences complicate the learning period and the process. The paper starts with the definition of the concepts related to the comparative and contrastive studies. It then goes on to discuss the history of the comparative and contrastive studies in English and Kurdish studies. The comparison will be implemented in terms of syntax and the usage of the tenses. First, the common samples will be chosen and be compared. It can be said that as a method definition, comparison, evaluation and guess stages will be used. Even though Kurmanci dialect has been used, examples obtained from Sorani and other Kurmanji dialects have also been deal...
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2011
The oldest attested Indo-Iranian languages, Vedic Sanskrit, Avestan and Old Persian, indicate that Proto-Indo-Iranian possessed a rich inflectional verbal system with a great variety of temporal and aspectual categories. This paper discusses the semantic properties of some of the inflectional forms belonging to two of the most central inflectional stems in the Indo-Iranian languages, the Present and Aorist which were associated with the neutral aspect and the perfective aspect, respectively. A comparison with other Indo-European languages, most notably Ancient Greek clearly shows that this morphosyntactic opposition was inherited from Proto-Indo-European.
It has long been observed that a Past complement clause embedded under a Past attitude verb (Past-under-Past) in English can have either a simultaneous or a backward-shifted reading with respect to the attitude time, but it cannot have a forward-shifted reading. This phenomenon is known as Sequence of Tense (SOT). Additionally, a Present complement clause embedded under a Past attitude verb (Present-under-Past) has only the double access reading (DAR). Three main (non-exclusive) accounts were proposed in the literature: (i) deletion-rules; (ii) pragmatic approaches; (iii) a de re mechanism. I focus on two de re approaches (Ogihara 1989 and Abusch 1997) and show that they yield problematic results either for tenses embedded under universal quantification over individuals or times or with ellipsis, or for simultaneous readings of Past-under-Past in 'non-SOT languages' like Hebrew. However, the latter issue also serves as an argument in favor of de re approaches over pragmatic ones, leading to a new de re account. I claim that the de re interpretation of tenses in attitude contexts should be restricted such that the event-time of the embedded clause include the local evaluation time (i.e., the `now' of the attitude holder). I further claim that this is predicted if we assume that tenses are generalized quantifiers that quantify over the set of times that include their local evaluation time and that the Trace Conversion rule suggested by Fox (2002) applies to temporal quantifiers.
Journal of Linguistics and Social Sciences
The information inside sentences is conveyed from different perspectives. Tense, which becomes the primary source of information in sentences, is the different categories of verb inflection (Mahwi Aziz,2018). Sentence structures are the various and also specific components of the speakers' intended Syntax and Semantics situations (Gharib Ismail, 2019). The information of time inside a simple sentence concerns the contents of time of a single verb. On the other hand, complex sentences require two sources of information about the tense of the verbs. Tense agreement in sentences depends on the structure and elements inside complex sentences. Thus, all of the (complex sentences, tense, tense agreement) will be the analysis source in this research paper. For this purpose, special attention is given to each of the three mentioned ones, and the nature of their sequences in the language is analyzed with examples in the Kurdish language.
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