A Functional Analysis of Present Perfect in Persian

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.

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.

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.

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.

Iranian Studies, 2006

Diachronica: International Journal for Historical Linguistics, 2018

Modern Persian, also known as Farsi, has recently developed a periphrastic verbal construction to express the progressive and prospective aspects which uses the auxiliary dāštan(inf.)/dār- (pres. stem) ‘to have’. This construction was first reported in colloquial Persian by Zhukovskij (1888), and according to Windfuhr & Perry (2009:461), it has not “yet fully integrated into literary Persian”. This construction, in which both the auxiliary and the main verb get subject agreement, is syntactically limited in that it can be used only in the indicative mood and only in affirmative sentences. Bybee et al.'s (1994:128) study of progressive in various language families shows no case of possessive HAVE functioning as the auxiliary verb of progressive constructions, and therefore, the source of this construction in Persian has been the topic of a few studied. In this paper, we evaluate one of the few proposals made in the literature for the source of this construction, namely, the one which proposes borrowing from Mazandarani, an Iranian language spoken on the northwest shores of the Caspian Sea, into Persian (Pistoso 1974 and Shokri 2015). In this proposal, it is hypothesized that the phonological similarity between the present stem of the progressive auxiliary in Mazandarani, i.e., [dær] ‘(locative) to be’, with the present stem of ‘to have’ in Persian, i.e., [dɑr], has led the bilinguals of Mazandarani and Persian to replicate the Mazandarani progressive construction, which originally involves the auxiliary ‘locative be’, as a new construction in Persian which involves the auxiliary ‘to have’. We put this hypothesis in the context of current theories of pattern replication, particularly the framework of ‘pivot-matching’, as described in Matras & Sakel (2007), and evaluate the hypothesis against some diachronic data from Mazandarani. We argue that both the social status of the two languages and Mazandarani’s diachronic data suggest an influence on the other direction, i.e., from Persian to Mazandarani, which means that the source of HAVE-progressives in Persian needs to be sought somewhere else.

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.

ensani.ir

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...

Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Central Asian Languages and Linguistics (ConCALL) , 2015

Since its first mention in 1888, Modern Persian progressive construction with dāštan “to have” has received little attention as far as its tense domain and source are concerned. Based on an analysis of 143 cases of present and past progressive tenses collected from several literary works between 1907 and 2010, this paper presents an account of the development of this newly formed yet ever-increasingly used construction in Modern Persian. Applying Vendler’s (1967) framework to classify the situations, this analysis shows that the progressive construction is used with achievement, accomplishment and activity situations, mostly denoting an imminent action in the case of achievements, and an ongoing action in the case of accomplishments and activities. Furthermore, in the light of the distinctive structure of this construction, which is identified as a Serial Verb Construction (SVC), the SVC with bar dāštan “to set off” is proposed as the source of the construction in question.

1980

An exam of the occurrences of the PRESENT PERFECT in English was made in such a way as to establish the prevailing semantic features of this verbal form. It was verified up to what an extent the meaning of the PERFECTIVE thus characterized is expressed in the corresponding Portuguese sentences in the PRETÉRITO PERFEITO. It was found that in Portuguese the verbal inflexion itself characterizes in a much smaller degree the PER-FECTIVE ASPECT.

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.

2016

In the present study, we investigate the aspectual properties and the syntactic nature of Persian ‘become’. Based on the careful examination of degree-achievement predicates (including motion verbs and gradual change-of-state predicates), we show that Persian ‘become’ is not inherently telic (contra what has been proposed in the literature) and that resultativity, brought about by the preverb or a secondary predicate, gives rise to telicity in Persian complex predicates with ‘become’. Further, we argue, based on the so-called passive form of Persian complex predicates, that Voice and little v are two distinct projections and that Persian ‘become’ is a Non-Active Voice head above vP.

World Englishes, 1999

Observation of actual sentences shows that the expected incompatibility of the present perfect in English and adverbs`of finished time' may be set aside by speakers whose focus of attention is on the current relevance of the event to the moment of speaking. The criterion of`current relevance' has also led to a recent new usage. Communicational problems and conflicts here appear to be resolved pragmatically with reference to the principal purpose of communicational activity. This suggests a significant amount of flexibility in linguistic processing with grammatical form subordinate to communicational function.