Referential predictability of event participants and the choice of referential forms in Persian discourse

Document Type : Research Paper

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Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

10.22084/rjhll.2024.28722.2299

Abstract

Referential predictability refers to the next-mention likelihood of event participants which plays a crucial role in discourse comprehension. This article aims to explore referential predictability of participant roles such as agent, recipient and theme, their referential forms and the effect of grammatical aspect on predictability in Persian discourse. To this end, 75 Persian speakers participated in a story completion task in which they read transfer-of-possession sentences in one of three conditions of perfective, imperfective, and progressive imperfective aspects and provided a continuation to the sentences. The data were collected and analyzed using Chi-square test. Results showed that grammatical aspect had a significant effect on the predictability of event participants. Also, it was found that the recipient role had a greater predictability in transfer-of-possession events in Persian, but it was the agent role (in the subject position) the enjoyed greater accessibility given that it was mostly referred to by null-pronouns.

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