Mahsa PahlevanZadeFini; Mohammad Dabirmoghaddam
Abstract
In the present study, the subject of “passive voice in Persian language” has been analyzed and studied in a minimalist approach Bowers (2010; 2018). This approach is one of the latest adjustments made in the framework of the minimalist program, in which the shortcomings of the previous theories ...
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In the present study, the subject of “passive voice in Persian language” has been analyzed and studied in a minimalist approach Bowers (2010; 2018). This approach is one of the latest adjustments made in the framework of the minimalist program, in which the shortcomings of the previous theories have been eliminated and the most important achievement is to provide the universal order of merge; An arrangement that, according to Bowers, can be used to organize the merge process in different languages. In this article, with reference to the linguistic data extracted from “the corpus of syntactic dependency of Persian language”, while showing how this universal order of merge works; we will examine a part of the corpus with the label “passive sentences”. Also, by using Bowers’ latest theoretical framework, which is also effective in Persian, we analyze the active constructions that are present in the corpus as a passive sentence. Determining the syntactic position of noun phrases according to their distinct semantic roles, the position of by-phrase in passive sentences, examining the floating quantifier category and differentiating in the way of merging of predicate sentences and passive sentences in Persian are the results of this research in the framework of the minimalist program.IntroductionIn the present study, the subject of “passive voice in the Persian language” has been analyzed and studied with a minimalist approach Bowers (2010; 2018). This approach is one of the latest adjustments made in the framework of the minimalist program, in which the shortcomings of the previous theories have been eliminated and the most important achievement is to provide the universal order of merge; an arrangement that, according to Bowers, can be used to organize the merge process in different languages. Among the questions we would like to answer are the following questions: 1. based on Persian language data and relying on the theoretical framework of the Minimalist Program, apart from active voice, is passive voice available in today’s Persian language? 2. Does the process of syntactic merging of the passive construction in Persian (if such a structure is observed) follow ‘the universal order of merge’ proposed by Bowers? 3. What is the distinction between passive and middle constructions in Persian?Literature ReviewIn many researches about passive voice, it has been acknowledged that this construction may not exist in some languages, while in some other languages, more than one type of passive construction is observed. The studies conducted on the Persian language are also indicative of this fact. Moein (1974), Sadeghi and Arjang (1978) do not believe in the existence of such a structure in the Persian language. Their justification is based on the fact that although the indefinite article existed in ancient Persian and was a common construction, it disappeared in the Middle Persian period in the form of a lexical process. After that, with the writing of an article by Dabir Moghaddam (1985) entitled 'Passive in the Persian Language', the construction of passive in this language was more considered. In this article, which is actually a criticism of certain opinions, the course of the historical evolution of the passive construction is described and it is suggested that in the ancient and middle ages, the nonmorphological form existed in formal and informal forms, but with the passage from the middle period to the modern classical period due to Historical transformations that have led to the change of the language from inflectional to analytical type, morphological passive is no longer observed, but passive is very widely used in the form of past participle or adjective and the auxiliary verb ‘to be’. MethodologyIn this article, with reference to the linguistic data extracted from the “Persian Syntactic Dependency Corpus”, while showing how this universal order of merge works, we will examine a part of the corpus with the label “passive sentences”. Also, by using Bowers’ latest theoretical framework, which is also effective in Persian, we analyze the active constructions that are present in the corpus as a passive sentence. Determining the syntactic position of noun phrases according to their distinct semantic roles, the position of by-phrase in passive sentences, examining the floating quantifier category and differentiating in the way of merging of predicate sentences and passive sentences in Persian are the results of this research in the framework of the minimalist program. ResultsBased on the later approach of Bowers (2010; 2018), we analyzed the sentences with a passive tag in the “Persian Syntactic Dependency Corpus”. There were some mistakes in the corpus that were described in the article. What is known as a passive sentence according to Bowers’ minimalist approach has special characteristics, only one of which is the presence of an auxiliary verb in the sentence. Among the mentioned usages of the verb “to become” in the Persian language, only the use of this verb as an auxiliary verb in personal and impersonal constructions can be accepted with the tag of passive in the corpus.In the present article, after describing the background of the studies conducted on the passive voice in the Persian language, we discussed the theoretical foundations of the minimalist program in the investigation of voice. Then we showed that what has been introduced as the minimalistic approach of Collins (2005) to solve how to form the passive construction, basically demonstrates the weakness and inability of this approach in analyzing some constructions ConclusionDetermining the syntactic position of noun phrases according to their distinct semantic roles, determining the position of by-phrases in passive sentences, examining the category of floating quantifiers and creating a distinction in the way of merging middle sentences and passive sentences in the Persian language are possible based on Bowers' minimalistic approach.
