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Cleft Constructions in Persian Cleft Constructions in Persian A Role and Reference Grammar Analysis Farhad Moezzipour Department of Linguistics Institutes for Humanities and Cultural Studies Tehran, Iran 1 CLEFT CONSTRUCTIONS IN PERSIAN A ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR ANALYSIS Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Dabir-Moghaddam Advisor: Dr. Mostafa Assi By Farhad Moezzipour A Thesis Submitted to Postgraduate Faculty of Linguistics of the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts March-2010 2 To my father for his wisdom and my mother for her love ii 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT No pleasure could taste more than when I learned I could be honoured the help which came from Professor Robert Van Valin. I don’t really remember what it was which first drew me toward the theory of RRG. Maybe it was a quite accidental visit to the great Website. Just a review triggered all my interest toward the contents and I managed to have a perfect digest. Now the time was ripe for a formal visit to the great scholar himself. Formality brings cautiousness. But soon I learned it was to be an intro to a mutual friendly scientific transaction. Now I have a very short statement for him. Thanks many many times for all you gave me personally and for all you gave me through the many uncountable harvests others have been able to appropriate before I had my turn. Just one person, in my own particular environment, was competent enough to put his energies to disambiguate the complexities I came across now and then, Professor Mohammad Dabir-Moghaddam. He was so great and benevolent to help me find my way through all the ups and downs of the scientific research. My very sincere thanks to him. And I cannot finish this acknowledgement without appreciating the friendly gesture, the many profound helps of, and the unceasing moment-to-moment encouragement of another friendly figure, Professor Mostafa Assi. I had to follow the light which came from the lamp he was holding before my trembling legs so that, little by little, I learned quite well to take my firm unswerving steps. iii 4 ABSTRACT This thesis is concerned with the study of Persian cleft constructions within the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework. RRG, a structural- functional theory of language, intends to investigate the interaction of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics through the constituent, logical, and focus structure as independent, but interrelated domains of the paradigm. In this thesis, both the literary corpus-based and intuition-based data of Persian will be analyzed in order to display the specificational nature of the construction throughout the syntactic, semantic and informational domains. In Persian clefts, despite the fact that the clefted constituent is the semantic argument of the predicator of the relative clause, it bears the role of pragmatic predicate assigned by the matrix predicator and also the optional presence of the cleft pronoun (in case of clefted constituent being an NP). This fact originates from the non-isomorphic property of the cleft construction which expresses a single proposition via biclausal syntax. The agreement feature of copula with the clefted constituent and the focalizing function of matrix grammatical elements give rise to the consideration of the so-called demonstrative as emphatic pronoun which is projected in the PERIPHERYN. The distinction between the syntactic in ‘this’ in the extraposed sentences and the discoursally-interpreted in ‘it’ in the cleft sentences proves inevitable in this thesis. iv 5 CONTENTS PAGE Acknowledgement iii Abstract iv List of tables ………………………………………………………………………viii List of figures ……………………………………………………………………...ix List of abbreviations ……………………………………………………………….xii 1. Chapter One: Introduction ………………………………………………………... 1 1.1. Scope and purpose ……………………………………………………............1 1.2. Data collection methodology …………………………………………………3 1.3. Organization of the thesis …………………………………………………….3 1.4. Definitions of key terms ……………………………………………………...4 1.4.1. Cleft construction ……………………………………………………...4 1.4.2. Role and Reference Grammar …………………………………………4 1.4.3. Information structure …………………………………………………..5 1.4.4. Given-new information ………………………………………………...6 1.5. Summary 2. Chapter Two: An overview of it-cleft constructions …………...………………… 10 2.1. It-clefts and wh-clefts ………………………………………………………. 10 2.2. Characteristics of it-clefts and wh-clefts …………………………………… 13 2.2.1. Pragmatic and informational characteristics ………………………… 13 2.2.2. Semantic characteristics ……………………………………………... 19 2.2.3. Syntactic characteristics ……………………………………………... 24 2.3. Copula construction ………………………………………………………….30 2.3.1. Specificational sentences ……………………………………………...30 2.3.1.1. Variable and value in specificational sentences ……………....32 2.3.2. Predicational sentences ………………………………………………...33 2.4. Theoretical approaches to the analysis of it-clefts constructions……..............38 2.4.1. Extrapositional approach ………………………………………………38 2.4.1.1. Jespersen’s analysis (1927) ……………………………………38 2.4.1.2. Akmajian’s anlysis (1970) …………………………………….39 2.4.1.3. Gundels’s analysis (1977) ………………………………..…….45 2.4.2. Expletive approach …………………………………………………….48 2.4.2.1. Jespersen’s analysis (1937) .…………………………………...49 2.4.2.2. E.kiss’ analysis (1998) ………………………………………...50 2.4.3. Alternative approaches ………………………………………………...54 2.4.3.1. Hedberg’s analysis (2000) …………………………………….54 2.4.3.2. Lambrecht’s analysis (2001) ………………………………….58 v 6 2.4.3.3. Davidse’s analysis (2000) ……………………………………..61 2.4.3.4. Pavey’s analysis (2004) ……………………………………….66 2.4.3.5. Hedberg’s analysis (2008) …………………………………….73 2.5. Summary ………………………………………………………………...78 3. Chapter Three: An overview of Role and Reference Grammar …………………80 3.1. Theoretical foundation of RRG ……………………………………………….80 3.2. Syntactic representation ………………………………………………………84 3.2.1. Layered structure of clause …………………………………………….85 3.2.2. Operators in the LSC in RRG ……..…………………………………...88 3.2.3. The layered structure of adpositional and noun phrases ……………….91 3.3. Semantic representation ………………………………………………………95 3.3.1. Verb classes ……………………………………………………………96 3.3.2. Logical structure ……………………………………………………….98 3.3.3. Semantic roles …………….…………………………………………..100 3.3.3.1. Thematic relations …………….……………………………..101 3.3.3.2. Semantic macroroles ………………………………………...102 3.3.4. Semantic representation of adjuncts ………………………………….106 3.3.4.1. Adpositions …………………………………………………..106 3.3.4.2. Adverbs ………………………………………………………108 3.3.5. Semantic representation of nouns and noun phrases …………………108 3.3.6. Semantic representation of clausal operators …………………………111 3.4. Information structure …………………………………………………………111 3.4.1. Topic, focus, presupposition and assertion …………………………….112 3.4.2. Focus taxonomy ………………………………………………………..115 3.4.3. The formal expression of information structure ……………………….117 3.5. Grammatical relations …………………………………………………………119 3.6. Complex sentences ……………………………………………………………122 3.6.1. Nexus relations …………………………………………………………122 3.6.2. Juncture ………………………………………………………………...123 3.6.3. The interaction of nexus and juncture ………………………………….124 3.6.4. Symmetrical vs. asymmetrical linkage …………………………………127 3.6.5. Interclausal semantic relations ………………………………………….128 3.6.6. Focus structure in complex sentences …………………………………..131 3.7. Linking algorithm ……………………………………………………………...134 3.7.1. Semantics-to-syntax linking …………………………………………….137 3.7.2. Syntax-to-semantics linking …………………………………………….140 3.8. Persian RRG literature …………………………………………………………144 3.8.1. On RRG treatment of Persian simple sentences (Rezai 2003) ………….145 3.8.2. Scrambling in Persian: an RRG approach (Roberts 2005a) …………….156 3.8.3. RRG treatment of postposition in Persian discourse r (Roberts 2005b)..161 3.9. Summary ……………………………………………………………………….164 vi 7 4. Chapter 4: Role and Reference Grammar analysis of Persian cleft constructions ….. 166 4.1. An introduction to Persian clefts and pseudoclefts …………………………..167 4.2. Syntactic structure of Persian clefts ………………………………………….169 4.3. Semantic structure of Persian clefts ………………………………………….183 4.4. Focus structure of Persian clefts ……………………………………………..189 4.5. Information structure-syntax interface of cleft-like sentences in Persian ……196 4.6. Grammatical relations in Persian clefts ………………………………………207 4.7. Linking algorithm in Persian clefts …………………………………………..209 4.7.1. Semantics-to-syntax …………………………………………………...209 4.7.2. Syntax-to-semantics……………………………………………………213 4.8. Summary ……………………………………………………………………..217 4.9. Concluding remarks ………………………………………………………….218 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………..…221 vii 8 List of Tables PAGE 2.1 Relational givenness in it-clefts and reverse wh-clefts 14 2.2 Relational givenness in basic wh-clefts 14 2.3 Relational givenness categories (Hedberg and Fadden 2007) 15 2.4 Components of an it-cleft sentence 24 2.5 Components of a wh-cleft sentence 25 3.1 Semantic units underlying the syntactic units of the LSC 86 3.2 Verb classes 98 3.3 Lexical representation for Aktionsart classes 99 3.4 MT in some of the English verbs 105 3.5 Defaults in accusative and ergative systems (Van Valin 2005: 100) 134 3.6 Typology of syntax and focus structure (Van Valin 1999b) 154 3.7 Syntax-focus structure interface in Persian intransitive sentences (Rezai 2003: 205) 155 3.8 Syntax-focus structure interface in Persian transitive sentences 155 3.9 Subject NP placement possibilities 156 3.10 DO. NP placement possibilities 157 3.11 IO. Placement possibilities 158 4.1 Classification of NPs in (28), based on Pavey (2008) 185 4.2 Referential and relational
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