Aspect in Persian; a new perspective based on the Cognitive Metaphorical Extension Approach and aspectual features

Aspect is a grammatical category which along tense and mood, appears in grammatical structure of the clause and affects its whole meaning. The available works conducted on Persian aspect have mainly no theoretical frame work and proper classification for this category. In this paper, attempts are made to conceptualize grammatical and lexical aspect on the basis of appropriate frame works. At first, by utilizing the metaphorical extension approach as a branch of grammaticalization theory and by introducing diachronic studies conducted on old and middle Persian, grammatical aspect is conceptualized within a cognitive framework. Then, in terms of aspectual features derived from Vendler (1967) and by a bottom-up approach, five lexical aspects are introduced and three others are predicted to be found in Persian. Finally, the effect of context on the type of aspect is brought under consideration. Finding a new lexical aspect, predicting to have three other lexical aspects, and conceptualizing the grammatical and lexical aspect in Persian are among findings of this investigation.