Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Assistant Professor in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Despite being transitive, possessive verbs are characterized by a lower level of transitivity due to their non-action nature. As a result, the semantic roles of the arguments of such verbs, which pertain to the possessor and the possessed rather than the agent and patient, significantly impact their transitivity. This reduced transitivity is evident in the encoding of grammatical relations. Specifically, the present research demonstrates that in Persian, the possessive verbs “to have” and “to be” treat their subject and object as non-prototypical arguments, employing different strategies in the agreement and case-marking systems. Consequently, the syntactic structure mirrors the semantic markedness of these arguments. Notably, despite their synonymous meanings and equivalent argument structures, “to have” and “to be” exhibit divergent behaviors in terms of grammatical relations. The explanation lies in the non-prototypical semantic roles of syntactic arguments, allowing either argument the potentiality to occupy the syntactic subject position. Additionally, the two hierarchies of the agreement and case-marking systems, which operate in opposing directions, influence each verb’s preferred strategy for marked encoding. Partial agreement of the verb with the subject (i.e., according to person, but not to number) also serves as a complementary tool for reflecting the marked structure.
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