Prepositional Phrases Order in Persian

Document Type : Research Paper

Abstract

Prepositional phrase is a group of words with a preposition and a noun phrase. In this study, we examine the order of prepositional phrases in Persian, considering factors: grammatical weight, MPT (manner+ place+ time), lexical dependency, lexical matching, ambiguity avoidance and information structure. To investigate, a written corpus over 500 sentences having two prepositional phrase are gathered. Lexical dependency and lexical matching are the most important factors in determining the prepositional phrase order in Persian. Considering the effect of prepositional phrases’ semantic class, Persian language like verb-initial languages prefers Manner+ Place+ Time generalization. Relating to information structure, phrases with new information precede phrases with given information. Grammatical weight and ambiguity avoidance have no role in the order of prepositional phrases, since there is a little difference between two “short before long” and “long before short” sequences.

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References

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