Persian Relative Clauses in HPSG: An Analysis of Persian Relative Clause Constructions in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar - Softcover

Taghvaipour, Mehran A

Softcover

ISBN 10: 384335443X ISBN 13: 9783843354431

Publisher: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

This book explores relative clauses (RCs) in Persian and provides an account for these constructions in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). Persian RCs are unbounded dependency constructions, all containing the invariant complementizer 'ke'. They also have gaps or resumptive pronouns (RPs), licensed by a higher structure. In some positions only gaps are allowed and in some position only RPs. There are also some positions where both gaps and RPs are allowed. The proposed analysis shows that despite distributional differences between gaps and RPs in Persian RCs, the two show striking similarities. Examples from coordinate structures, parasitic gaps, island constraints, and crossover phenomena provide support in respect of this similarity. Some existing transformational analyses of Persian RCs are reviewed and their shortcomings highlighted. Then, in the constraint-based framework of HPSG, an analysis is proposed that can handle the dependency and the pattern of distribution of gaps and RPs in Persian RCs with a single mechanism which is easily extendable to other types of Persian UDCs, e.g., wh-interrogatives and free relatives.

About this title

About the Author

Born in West Bromwich in 1969, Mehran lived and educated in Iran until 1998. He then moved to London and started his career as a Persian translator, registered with the Chartered Institute of Linguists. He holds a BA in English Literature (SBU), an MA in English Language Teaching (ATU), and a PhD in Computational Linguistics (Essex).

Edition details

• Publisher: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 384335443X
• ISBN 13: 9783843354431
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300