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Aspect is one of the most important structural and semantic features of the verbs. The ‘durative phrase’ and its effect on the aspectual interpretation of different verbs is amongst important issues in surveying lexical aspect too. In order to determine the effect of durative phrase on the aspectual interpretation of sentences which include achievement and accomplishment, the present research aims to analyze aspectual interpretation of telic predicates (achievement and accomplishment) in the presence of the durative phrase in Persian. The results of the analysis based on MacDonald’s (2008) approach and within the Minimalist Program framework showed that appending durative phrase to reversible achievements and cyclic achievements leads to end-time interpretation while its presence in overthrowing irreversible achievement leads to atelic single event interpretation. The analyzing of accomplishment predicates showed that, like achievement predicates, the effect of the presence of durative phrase not only depends on the quantitative and non-quantitative feature of the object but also it depends on the nature in terms of reversibility or irreversibility.

Based on the phasal approach of Croft (2012), the present research has analyzed state and activity aspects in Kalhori. According to Croft's (2012) classification of aspect types, there are four types of transitory state, inherent permanent state, acquired permanent state, and point state in Kalhori language. Activity aspects are divided into two types of direct and undirect aspects. The results showed that the common feature of the four state aspects in Kalhori is that their profiled phase is punctual in the qualitative dimension, and the aspects differentiate in the expansion and extent of their profiled phase in the time dimension. The profiled phases of the activities are expanded in both time and quality dimensions, in this sense, they are different from state apects. In addition, the phasal analysis determined the difference between direct and indirect activity aspects in such a way that in the direct activity aspect there is a continuous change along the quality dimension, but such a situation in the indirect activity aspect is not observed. Finally, it is concluded that phasal analysis can provide an appropriate explanation of the differences and characteristics of lexical aspects, especially two types of state and activity aspects in Kalhori Kurdish.

The present study investigated the tense and aspect from morphological and phonological perspectives in the Bakhtiari dialect as a linguistic variety of the Persian language. This dialect is used in four provinces of Charmahal and Bakhtiari, Isfahan, Kohgiloye and Boyerahmad, and Khuzestan. The method of the study is descriptive which has been conducted through field study. Data were collected in Charmahal and Bakhtiari provinces and the north of Khuzestan province. About 10 hours of peoples' daily conversations were recorded and analyzed based on Katamba and Stonham (2007). Results showed that the future and past tenses of this dialect have attached auxiliary verbs of "be "pronounced as "bid", "vi" or "bi". The bound morpheme of /e/ is initially attached to the verb stem which shows no perfect aspect of this structure. Thus, the perfect aspect cannot be seen in this dialect; therefore, simple past or past perfect tense is used interchangeably. Past perfect aspects can be seen as a frequent structure in this dialect. The results of this study can help linguistics arrive at a complete picture of Bakhtiari's verbal constituents. It also may be a guide for investigating other Persian language dialects regarding their grammatical structures.

This present research studies ergativity in the Taleshi dialect. This dialect is spoken in some parts of Guilan and appears in three main different types including Central, Northern, and Southern. The type of dialect surveyed in this article is the southern one. It is spoken in Sehsar village. The data are collected in a field study and by interviewing thirty native speakers of this dialect. Ergativity is a grammatical pattern in which the subject of an intransitive clause is treated in the same way as the object of a transitive clause, and differently from the transitive subject. This dialect follows a split-ergative system. This means that, in a present clause, it takes advantage of the nominative-accusative pattern, hence in a past transitive clause it takes advantage of the ergative-absolutive pattern. This research has been done to answer these questions: Is the ergative marker -i the only indicator of ergativity and ergative constructions in this dialect? Which constructions can be considered ergative ones? And on what factors is ergativity based on? After surveying language witnesses of this dialect, these findings have been achieved: Ergativity is not limited only to ergative marker -i , but oblique pronouns and plural nouns ending with -un in a transitive clause and past tense as well as perfect aspect can be the other indicators of ergative constructions. And finally, ergativity is based on past tense and perfect aspect.

Various forms of enunciation can be examined in the works of Paul Valéry, French poet and author of the twentieth century, and Yadollah Royaee, the Iranian contemporary poet. The specific characteristic of two poet’s discourses expressed by “me” can be observed, as well as some perceptual and emotional specificities in the enunciation, which are imposed on the reader. In this study, our corpus is La Jeune Parque by Paul Valéry and the booklet Le Moi en Prétérite, Signature (The Me in the Past, Signature) by Yadollah Royaee. Analyzing the different strategies of “vision” and “perception” in the mentioned poems, takes place with the help of the semiotic theories, in particular, the theory of engagement, disengagement, and enunciating instances. The aim of this research is to show that “discourse” is all under the control of “I.” “I” in both poets’ works is dealt with the plurality, and there is a rivalry between various forms of enunciation in search of “identity” as an object of value. “Self” is in the process of becoming and evolving, and to achieve an identity, different instances are in conflict and make tension in the discourse. It is also worth mentioning that the tension is more complicated in Valéry’s discourse compared to Royaee.

Present- and past perfect paradigms are commonly thought of as having the perfect aspect. Examining the concept of tense and aspect along with their definitions, the present study argues that what is often referred to as the perfect aspect in Persian is essentially a temporal concept. Taking into consideration the reference-, event-, and speech points, the study shows that the reference point comes necessarily after the event point in the case of the present- and the past perfect as well as their variants. In other words, this indicates the continuing relevance of a previous situation. Since this concept does not entail the completeness of the event, referring to it as “perfect” would be inaccurate. For this reason, the present study proposes the term the anterior tense as a substitute for the perfect aspect. The authors emphasize the significance of the reference situation in determination of grammatical tenses by referring to the function of temporal adverbs and participles. Participles, as independent words, are present in the structures of deverbal adjectives, perfect verbs, passive verbs, complex predicates, and attributive expressions. In all these functions, the morpheme of “-te/-de” represents the anterior tense. Reexamining the previous approaches, the present study reveals that tense, in addition to representing the reference and speech situations in the form of the trichotomy of present/past/future, represents the reference and event situations as well. In other words, tense of a verb encompasses both the trichotomy of past/present/future and the dichotomy of anterior/non-anterior.

Lexical aspect is a semantic feature that concerns how the event described by the verb develops along a timeline. It has two independent features: object-to-event mapping and event feature. The interaction of these two features form a syntactic space within the verb phrase called ‘domain of aspectual interpretation’. The main question of the research is: which syntactic elements affect the formation of domain of aspectual interpretation in Persian eventive predicates. To answer this question, the syntactic derivation of achievement and accomplishment verbs and the formation of their domain of aspectual interpretation have been analyzed according to Mac Donald’s approach (2006, 2008). The results of the study show that if internal argument is quantified noun or bare plural noun, underspecified event feature will co-index with AspP and finally extended domain of aspectual interpretation is formed. But if internal argument is mass noun, it will co-index with vP and minimal domain of aspectual interpretation is formed. The results also indicate that not only the presence or absence of the [quantity] feature is determinative in defining the aspectual domain of interpretation, but also the existence of AspP and the location of internal argument after moving in tree diagram are effective in defining this domain.

Aspect has always been one of the interesting subjects for many studies in different scientific fields. This notion is neglected and sometimes confused with other grammatical categories such as tense and mood in the early works on Persian language. Using a descriptive-analytical method, in this study, Aspect in Persian is investigated thoroughly, based on the theoretical assumptions of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) (Hengeveld and Mackenzie, 2008). FDG, with its typological basis, and multilayered mode of description of formulation and encoding operations will permit more reliable comparisons of language systems. The results of the present study show that in Persian there are some distinctions between quantitative and qualitative aspects which belong to two different layers inside the representational level. The qualitative aspects which deal with the frequency of occurrence of an event have no operator in Persian and their notion is mainly conveyed by using quantifiers in the modifier slot of an SOA layer. On the other hand, for different types of qualitative aspects (phasal distinctions and perfective-imperfective) except for the continuative/durative aspect, there are specific operators in the Configurational Property layer. This paper shows how these facts can be accounted for within the Functional Discourse Grammar approach to analyzing Aspect in Persian language in order to propose a uniform description of the ways of representing aspectual notions.

In addition to grammatical and intrinsic aspects, aspectual readings may also arise from other factors like tense. Past Participles (PP) consist of the root of the verb and the suffix “-de/-te”. The suffix represents the anterior tense, which is the common semantic-grammatical core function found in all paradigms containing PP. Historical studies, on the other hand, show that PPs are originally made up of transitive verbs and their function has been to remove the subject from the argument structure of the verb and serve as the foreground of the object instead. They are well-known as “sefat maf’uli” (lit. accusative adjectives) and this arises from the fact that they participate in passive constructions and merely refer to the object of the underlying transitive verbs in some of their functions. The omission of the subject has made the transitive verbs similar to un-accusative ones in terms of their argument structure. For this reason, in addition to transitive verbs, PPs are derived from un-accusative verbs and analogically from the un-ergative ones. Removing the subject has another consequence too: The interaction of the anterior tense and subject omission has subsequently created an aspectual interpretation called “established stative”. There are two reasons why we consider this aspectual concept to be the fruit of the aforementioned features: First, when the underlying verb represents an event, creating an established stative interpretation requires the event to have taken place and secondly, in the absence of the subject, the actionality of the event decreases and subsequently makes the underlying verb (of any kind) stative because there is no actor left to do an action. In this way, the impossibility of deriving PPs from the verbs with the intrinsic aspects of “permanent inherent state” and “point state” can also be explained.

Some Iranian languages spoken in the shares of the Caspian Sea or their origin was the region, also in Balochi and Bashgardi spoken in southeastern Iran, there is a specific construction for progressive aspect not seen in other Iranian languages. This paper deals with the morphological and syntactic features of the progressive form, the constituents, and their functions; and shows how this construction relates with the most common source of progressive aspect. The results show that the progressive form derives from a locative expression comprised of three basic elements: the main verb in the form of the infinitive, verbal noun, present participle, or imperfect; a copula usually used as enclitic and attached to the other constituents; and a locative adposition express the locative meaning, omitted in some varieties. A fourth element may be seen in some varieties meaning ‘in the act of, busy’ that originally is a noun form of a postural verb used to denote postural notion in the construction. The meaning of the locative construction which gives rise to the progressive is ‘be at doing something’

Due to the fact that the grammatical sources of the Azerbaijani Turkish language are generally based on traditional grammar and no distinction is made between the elements of tense and aspect in this approach, so the present study examines and compares these two elements in the Turkish and English languages based on the Halliday’s systemic functional grammar. In the first stage, the conjunctions of tense in Turkish language and then aspect in the form of English sentences with their Turkish equations were compared and examined and the following results were obtained: in all sources of traditional Azerbaijani Turkish grammar conjunctions -'ir ', "ar / әr And - miş, which actually represent the process of occurrence of the verb, are considered as representatives of tense. In other words, in the Turkish traditional grammar we are faced with a kind of fusion of tens and aspect. On the other hand, in the systemic functional grammar, the aforementioned morphemes are not included in the tens group, but, in the residue part, they play the first role of the predicators, i.e., they express the temporal aspect of the occurrence of the verbs. Also it was found that present tense morpheme in the Turkish language – contrary to the traditional grammar - is represented by the absence of the morpheme ‘- di’, that is, with a zero morpheme which according to the systemic functional grammar is placed in the 'predicator section. Tens morphemes in Turkish, unlike in English, which in some cases appear in the form of integration with lexical verbs, are always connected to the lexical verb base in the form of dependent morphemes.

Polygrammaticalization is a type of multiple development where a single form develops distinct grammatical functions in different constructions. The verb ‘xāstan’ is an instance of this phenomenon which conceptualizes specific notions of tense, aspect and modality in modern Persian. Xāstan, as a lexical verb and with the meaning “to want something”, falls in “Volition” basic event schema. Since different parameters of grammaticalization are applied on the verb in the grammaticalization process, the verb xāstan transforms to a complex schema. As an auxiliary verb and in serial complex schema, xāstan conceptualizes the future tense. In the same complex schema but in different contexts, the verb expresses proximative and avertive aspects. When the verb xāstan falls in evaluative complex schema, it conceptualizes a new notion of modality in which the speaker requests addressee the permission of actualizing the verb by proposing a suggestion; as a result, it is called proposal modality. The main explanation of polygrammaticalization of the verb xāstan in Persian seems to be filling the functional gaps and satisfying the need of conceptualizing the grammatical functions not met by other grammatical forms.

One of the most puzzling facts about human language is also one of the most basic: Words occur according to a famously systematic frequency distribution such that there are few very high-frequency words that account for most of the tokens in text and many low-frequency words. In his pioneering research, G. K. Zipf observed that more frequent words tend to have more meanings, and showed that the number of meanings of a word grows as the square root of its frequency. One aspect that all dynamical models of grammar emphasize is that frequency of occurrence is an important determinant of linguistic structure and language use. This paper surveys the effects of frequency on Aspects in Persian and considers the correlation between Frequency and the numbers of different types of Aspect member in Persian. Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time. Based on Bybee (1985, 1995, 201, 2003, 2006, 2011) and Haspelmath (2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2014) and Croft (2003), we try to clarify the frequency effect in decreasing numbers of different types of aspects in Persian. frequency-based form minimization, is probably the most important economy effect that shapes grammatical systems. Since Greenberg(1966a) and Croft (1990), this economy effect has been widely known, and has often been discussed under the heading of markedness. We conclude that There is a Reverse Relationship between the number of different types of aspect members and the frequency.

The purpose of this study is to describe tense, aspect, and mood in Khezeli a member of the South-Western Iranian languages family. The data was retrieved from a corpus of audio files and transcribed notes gathered from native speakers living in Karezan district of Ilam province. Like many languages, in Khezeli, the tense, mood, and aspect categories are coded fusionally. Thus, these three categories were investigated as one category called tense-aspect-mood category. The results showed that the future tense is not coded in this dialect. As a result, the context and time adverbials are the only devices to differentiate the future tense from the present tense. In addition, the past and present tenses as well as five aspects are inflectionally coded: perfective, progressive imperfective, non-progressive imperfective, perfect and non-perfect aspects. Khezeli also consists of five moods: indicative, indicative/injunctive, subjunctive, imperative, conditional/optative. It was revealed that perfect/non-perfect and perfective/non-perfect dichotomies are not the same in Khezeli; because, perfect/imperfective and non-perfect/perfective aspects can co-occur in this dialect. On the whole, Khezeli consists of 15 tense-aspect-mood categories. Four of them are in the present tense and the remaining eleven are in the past tense. All of the categories have subject-object case marking system.

In the present study, grammatical and lexical aspects and their types were studied in synthetic compounds of modern Persian. The research data was derived from the dissertation of Ghonchepour (2014) and includes 8579 synthetic compound words taken from Farhang-i-buzurg-i soxan (Anvari, 2007). The study of this corpus showed that grammatical and lexical aspects which have been reported in verbs and sentences are observed in synthetic compound words. The internal structure of Persian synthetic compound words showed time range and action or state phases of doing. Grammatical aspect in synthetic compound words is of two perfective and imperfective types. The perfective aspect includes the persistence, non-persistence, resultative and experiential types. Iterative, habitual and progressive aspects are subtypes of imperfective aspect. Based on [±durative], [±dynamic], [±scalar] and [±telic] features, two stative and dynamic synthetic compound nouns in Persian were differentiated. The dynamic lexical aspect includes non-scalar (action and semelfactive) and scalar categories. The scalar aspect was also classified into closed (two-point and multi-point) and open types.

State verbs, with the characteristic of non-dynamicity, denote no action and usually describe internal feelings, possession and place. They lack internal structure, stages and end point. The present study, within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), investigates the interaction of state verbs and different grammatical aspects in Persian to see whether the interaction of subdivisions of state verbs with the grammatical aspects is the same. The subdivisions of state verbs in the current paper include Existence, Cognition, Emotion, Possession and Perception verbs. Data are gathered from the Internet, books, newspapers and daily conversations. Considering data indicates that the behavior of these subdivisions with different grammatical aspects is not the same. In perfect aspect all these verbs can be used without limitation. Although in most cases the progressive form of state verbs is regarded impossible, in cases such as “waxing or waning situation, agentivity and temporary state”, some of them can be used in progressive form. State verbs in perfective aspect, show functions such as experiential, universal, evidentiality and hot news. Positive form of the sentence and temporal adverbs denoting to some future time, pave the way for some state verbs to be used in prospective aspect.

This article is an attempt to illustrate a comprehensive functional-typological study of two perfect constructions in modern Persian. In regard to these forms, there has been a kind of intricate complexity and difficulty that have occupied the minds of the grammarians and linguists. Regarding the complexity of the perfect constructions, what can be seen is the consistency and heterogeneity of these constructions with the past, on the one hand, and with the present, on the other hand, as well as the characteristics of tense and aspect, and their functions with adverb expressions. In addition, since the nature of the sentences are not directly determined by grammatical tenses, the various features of textual, linguistic, and meta-linguistic features play a great role in this regard. Accordingly, the motivation for writing this essay is to provide an explanation of the various aspects and functions of the present perfect and present perfect progressive in the contemporary Persian language, especially since their uses are widespread in their entirety compared with other perfect structures so that we can assume present perfect "the prototype" of these constructions. Therefore, we provide an explanation of these two perfect constructions, whose common elements are the past stem of the main verb plus the perfect aspect morpheme –e-, or the so-called “past participle. Also, the amalgamation of present perfect with the past tense, and its relation with definity, on then one hand, and the behavior of temporal adverbs towards the limitation of the perfect uses, along with aspectual and temporal nature of this construction and other perfect constructions as well as their relationship with the category of evidentiality on the other hand, have made this research more impressive.

This paper is conducted based on the framework of the functional-typological approach. In this approach, the structure of language depends on its role, in particular the role of communication. In other words, the most prominent principle in this approach is that the fundamental purpose of language is communication between human beings, and this role forms the structures in which the languages take. The claim of the role-oriented views is that, since language is a tool from the foundation, it is wise to think that language structures are best suited to refer to roles that they accept. Givon (2001, 293-297) puts forward that language and grammar are neither explained nor described as a separate device. He considers perfect structures the most complex and delicate categories in grammar. This linguist considers language a direct reflection of the human communication needs. He considers perfect constructs for an event that either occurred before a point of reference or at least before the speech time. He believes that perfect aspect is the most complicated grammatical category, giving it four characteristics of anteriority, perfectivity, counter-sequentiality and lingering relevance. A number of other authors also take benefit of the views of linguists such as Comrie (1976) and (1989), Bybee et al. (1994), Kyparsky (2002), Aikhenwald (2004), Vanvalin (2005), Duhan (2011), Craft (2012), and Haddlestone (2012, 1984).

To attain the goal of the study, the present authors have taken benefit from the application of functional-typological approach. The research data is collected mainly from current spoken Persian texts together with the content of television series, movies, talk shows, newspapers, periodicals, and in particular, the Bijankhan linguistic corpus, as well as classical Persian literature, in some cases, to support the claims. After evaluating the data, based on the phonetic, morpho-syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic criteria, the functions of the four perfect constructions are presented one by one, and their relationship with tense and aspect is presented. Also, the relationship between the evidentiality and the perfect constructions is determined.

In this paper the authors focused on two perfect constructions in Persian and tried to find out their tense and aspect relations, along with their different functions. As to the nature of tense or aspect regarding perfect constructions, it is concluded that, contrary to the claims of the grammarians and some linguists that placed these structures in the tense category, one can not draw the boundary between the two because both the nature of tense and nature of aspect can be seen in these constructions. Regarding the functions of the perfect constructions discussed in Farsi, it can be argued that for the present perfect, at least the functions of current relevance, hot news, resultative, experiential, mirativity, expression of the future event, tense projection, and dependence on the present and the past, for the present perfect progressive, as a combination of past and past continuous tense, functions of continuity, repetition, and habituation and evidentialty, and for the past perfect, actions preceding the past, the occurrence without precedence over the past, the continuous functioning and expression of the future can be mentioned. In addition, in the case of present perfect progressive, especially the first person and the second person do not have much use, and regarding the relationship between the two constructions and the category of evidentiality, it has been shown that both constructions show the function of the evidentiality. Furthermore, present perfect in the Persian language is one of the controversial grammatical constructs and is complex in terms of both form and semantics. In measuring other perfect structures, this construction is one of the most prominent grammatical categories: on the one hand, it relates to the past, and on the other hand, to the present. In addition, the reason why this complexity should be searched is for this feature, which can be used to construct a transcendental past to the entire period of time we talk about or link to any part of it.

In this paper, in the framework of the functional-typological approach and with the help of formal, phonetic, historical, semantic, applied, and function criteria, we have studied the functions of the present perfect, including indirect information or evidentiality, tense projection, resultative, hot news, and mirativity in Farsi, and discussed its behavior in relation to the tense, on the one hand, and to the past tense, on the other hand. We have also found out that the feature of current relevance locates on the top part of a hierarchical structure of present perfect functions and entails other functions. Regarding present perfect progressive, we came to this point that evidentiality is the most important function this form is used for in modern Persian.

The dialect of Tonekaboni differs from the dialects of the speakers in the East of Mazandaran and the West of Guilan where the native speakers of the three regions use Persian to communicate. During the implementation of a part of a research project and in order to find the reason for the lack of mutual understanding between the speakers of the east and west of Mazandaran and the difference between their dialects which both are taken into account as Mazandarani (Tabari) language, the author has concluded that the most important factor is the difference between the construction of their verbs due to the unusual stem in Tonekaboni verbs. The aim of this paper is to describe the verb stem and analyze its different structure in Tonekaboni dialect. In this research, a fieldwork for data gathering was applied through a targeted interview with 10 native speakers to obtain the different paradigms of verbs. The current study showed that verbs stems in this dialect were based on "aspect", while in most languages, like Iranian language family, the stems of verb are based on its tense (commonly present and past), to which inflectional affixes – including aspect of the verb – are attached. This study on one hand, introduces the distinctive feature of aspect -based stems in Tonekaboni, the most widely-used dialect of one of the Caspian language group, which is in decline; and on the other hand it may be useful for dialectology, typology and sociolinguistic studies.

In this contribution, we aim to analyze the architecture of "verb" in Anaraki, a central dialect of Iran, regarding the morphosemantics categories and the split agreement system. We argue that in Anaraki the past tense is expressed through both the affix marker and the split agreement system.Through this slit system, the position and the form of the agreement marker changes according to the tense, in other words it is encoded tense-sensitively. Anaraki data show that the agreement markers in preset tense are agreement affixes while proclitics in past. This rare condition is of importance because the agreement markers are often represented in suffix form. This portrays the linguistic reality that the less a category is related to the root, the more distant it stands to the root. Based on this principle, agreement markers are expected to be positioned at the end of the verbal root, as they are not semantcally reated to the root, but syntactically. Anaraki rejects this universal tendency.

This paper studies the imperfect aspect of verbs in Persian based on the prototype theory. Cognitive semantics holds that language is part of a more general human cognitive ability. Cognitive linguists believe that neither form nor content can be regarded as having priority over the other; so it is vain to analyse grammatical units without referring to meaning. Moreover, in cognitive studies, semantic values do not rely solely on linguistic knowledge, but it requires extralinguistic knowledge as well. Aspect is a multidimensional category and indicates a semantic attitude towards the verb structure. According to definitions presented in various proceedings, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time; it denotes the reflection of the static state, continuity, movement, or a completed action pertaining to verb, from the speaker's point of view. Prototype is the most prominent example of each category, and indeed the closest member to its implicit concept. Löbner (2013: 181) states that the prototype is the best example and specimen or definition of a classifier that introduces its members and their attributes. Prototype examples, on the one hand, are considered as semantic concepts by means of which human beings classify categories of the outside world. On the other hand, the prototype samples contain new and unfamiliar units. All members of a category are classified according to the number of their distinctive features. This research sheds more light on imperfect aspect in Persian based on the prototype theory within the framework of cognitive semantics. The definitions proposed in different texts for the state of continuation of Persian verbs, (not necessarily the prototype aspect), are more or less identical and refer to the presence of the prefix <-می> pronounced as "mi" in the beginning of the verb indicating continuity. Considering cognitive semantics and the prototype theory, the question that arises here is whether to examine continuity on the basis of formal aspect, or formal and semantic aspects simultaneously. Another question is: what form can be presented as a prototype for the imperfect aspect in Persian? First the present study examines the imperfect aspect in Persian, then investigates it from the prototype point of view. Unlike current view, in traditional perspectives, the concept of continuity was merely referred to as a verb structure carrying the prefix "mi"; there were two kinds of structures indicating continuity of the verb: absolute or simple continuous aspects, while in cognitive terms it is impossible to study the syntax of language without considering the meaning and the original message. Aspect, that is the structural and semantic property of verbs, existed in Old Persian too and has been noticed and studied by Parviz Khanlari (1986). The main aim of this study is to achieve a comprehensive definition and criteria for imperfect aspect in Persian that can be useful in teaching Persian language. For this purpose, the authors present the prototype of this verb property from a cognitive perspective by considering four criteria selected from the presented materials. What is presented in this study is based on the analysis of 200 compound structures, written and sometimes spoken, from which 15 sentences were extracted to be analyzed. Then the sentences that called for semantic criteria for their aspect analysis were chosen to be scrutinized, because the formal criteria as well as the traditional grammar were unable to describe the continuity aspect pertaining to the mentioned sample. The analysis of the sample is based on both formal criteria of continuous representation (i.e. adding the prefix "mi" or the linking verb "dashtan" to the beginning of the verb) and semantic criteria (including the inherent meaning of the verb and context). So some of the sentences, despite having a sustained formal criteria, were excluded because of the absence of semantic criteria to indicate continuity. According to the results, the imperfect aspect cannot be defined and studied only based on the form but contextual meaning should also be considered simultaneously to determine this property.
In this paper, while referring to the history of the imperfect aspect in grammar books and linguists’ works, we showed that the prefix "mi" - especially in the present tense- can not be considered as the only imperfective marker in Persian. The meaning of the verb is the combination of the inherent meaning and the contextual one