Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Mohammad Dabirmoghaddam ¹
• Vida Shaghaghi ¹
• Mojtaba Monshizadeh ¹
• Hussein Piri ²

¹ Linguistics Department, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba'i University

² Linguistics Department, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba'ii University

Abstract

Persian is a verb-final language; that is, its basic unmarked word order is SOV. Clauses in Persian, like other languages, have both the core- elements and non-core elements. The lack of the non-core elements or adjuncts in a clause does not make it ungrammatical but a speaker or writer use these elements to express his/her intentions. This study aims to investigate the post-verbal position of the non-core elements in colloquial Persian and the contributing factors in taking pre- and post-verbal positions of these elements. To this end, 893 leftward scrambled clauses were studied. The results show that only the non-core elements of location and destination take the post-verbal position, which is mainly the position of given information and non-focused part of a clause. Also, there are some contributing factors, so that non-core elements do not take the pre- and post-verbal positions accidentally. In addition, the core elements of a clause do not take the post verbal position.

Keywords

• "non-core elements"
• "scrambling"
• "post verbal position"
• "information structure"
• "prominence"