Syntactic Account of Persian Relative Clauses: Extraposition

In this article, the formal structure of the Persian relative clauses (restrictive and nonrestrictive) is examined. This study focuses on the possibility of extraposition of the relative clause to the right of its canonical position and it’s adjunction to TP or FocP. In general there are three approaches to extraposition in languages: rightward movement account, late merge analysis by which the relative clause should be late mereged with the constituents which they modify, leftward movement of the non-clausal part of an argument and stranding the clause. Based on some syntactic considerations in Persian such as having multiple clauses at the end of the sentence, movement of result clauses to the final position of the sentence, movement of relative clause with coordinate antecedent; relative clauses can moved to the right of the sentence and the extra posed element would be adjoined to TP or FocP and hence out the c-command domain of its trace.