Aspect shifting in Persian: A feature-based approach

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Abstract

This paper aims at investigating aspect shifting in Persian language. To this aim, we investigate the semantic interaction of temporal adverbs (completive, durative, frequency, and locating ones), grammatical aspects (perfective and imperfective), and tense with aspectual meanings of verbs in the sentential level. The results show that aspect shifting occurs in favor of resolving the semantic conflict between semantic features of sentential operators and aspectual features of the verbs. In other words, coercion is actualized for removing this semantic anomaly. In this paper, all kinds of aspect shiftings triggered by the combination of verbs and sentential operators are explained, and their syntactic combinations are illustrated in a formal way. Finally, the general rules and procedures of coercion in Persian are presented. The proposed rules can predict any kind of coercion in different syntactic contexts. Finally, the scope of sentential operators in determining the sentential aspect in Persian language is presented.

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