| The present study deals with syntax and semantics of causative constructions in Persian. The major points of focus in this study may be summarized as follows: (1) Chapter 2 describes periphrastic causatives in Persian. In particular, the categories of (a) Nominative-Subjunctive Causatives, and (b) Accusative-Subjunctive Causatives are discussed in detail. The members of the former category are further divided into (i) 'Unmarked Causatives', and (ii) 'Permissive Causative', and it is shown that the members of the latter category constitute 'Coercive Causatives'. (2) Chapter 3 discusses lexical causatives in Persian. In this chapter, on a purely morphological basis, lexical causatives in Persian are classified into the three classes of (a) root, (b) morphological, and (c) auxiliary causatives. In this chapter, it is argued that only a lexicalist analysis can adequately account for the facts of the lexical causatives in Persian. A slightly modified version of Jackendoff's Proposal (1975) is introduced to capture the morphological, grammatical, and semantic regularities between non-causal and their associated lexical causal verbs in the lexicon. (3) Chapter 4 focuses on a side by side study of the periphrastic and lexical causatives in Persian. In this chapter, the similarities, differences, and the interactions between these two levels of causation in Persian are spelled out. (4) Chapter 5 addresses the question of passive in Persian. The question of passive has been a controversial issue in the transformational treatments of Persian. While a group of scholars have postulated (with very little discussion) the existence of passive in Persian, Moyne (1974) has called this construction inchoative. In this chapter, these two approaches are discussed and a new proposal for the treatment of passive in Persian is suggested. In particular, it is claimed that a distinction should be made between unambiguous/transparent passives and ambiguous/opaque (i.e., ambiguous between an inchoative and a passive reading) passives in Persian. It is argued that the transformational rule of passive in Persian is a governed rule in the sense that it applies to a semantically definable class of verbs--i.e., verbs that express a volitional act. |
