A Cognitive Approach to a Persian Polysemic Verb Assessment of the Simple Verb " Oftadan"

The aim of the present study is to assess the relation of the polysemic process of a Persian simple verb with cognitive factors. The present article evaluates the hypothesis holding that polysemy as a linguistic process in which a verbal element (here, a simple verb) takes diverse meanings, is not an accidental process, but is based on cognitive abilities, and methodological differences affect the semantic assessment of words. This research can be considered as a theoretical study regarding its aim, and as a descriptive (non-experimental) and causal-comparative study regarding data collection. The samples of the study were randomly chosen from among classical and modern literature as well as colloquial language. A characteristic of the present Persian language structure is having a very limited inventory (about 115 to 130) of simple verbs while there are many such verbs in languages such as French and English. Polysemy or in other words the presence of various meanings for a single verbal element can appropriately compensate for this shortcoming. In this study the polysemy of the verb “oftadan” is assessed based on concepts such as categorization, image schemas, prototypes and radial networks, which are central to cognitive linguistics. After assessing the samples, the hypothesis was approved and it was shown that humans’ physical and material experiences and tendencies influence their manner of conceptualization and understanding of polysemic verbs. Also, it was revealed that the best function of prototype is in polysemy. Semantic relations in a word are graduated and not absolute.