A Semantic Study of Compound Verbs in Persian Language

This paper studies the nature of Persian compound verbs based on Lieber's lexical semantic representation theory. This theory, using seven semantic features and a principle called co-indexation principle, studies lexical entities and their contribution in compounding, derivation and conversion and presents one semantic skeleton and one semantic body for each lexical item even for affixes. The skeleton consists of one or more semantic features and one or more arguments and the body consists of two layers. It is claimed in this study that all sentences had been basically constructed on simple verbs; however, as a result of changes in the semantic body of simple verbs they have lost their event argument, and they cannot individually predicate an event; therefore, one argument of the simple verb in the sentence is co-indexed with one argument of the argument structure of the simple verb to from a compound verb. It is also shown that compound verbs in Farsi are syntactically subordinate compounds and semantically endocentric in which the verbal element is the head and pre-verb in the argument structure of the compound verb, is subordinate.