The Discourse Functions of Non-canonical Order of Arguments in Persian

Persian has a canonical word order. However, there are some sentences with non-canonical word order which are considered marked. Studies on such sentences have shown that a number of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic factors affect the word order in sentences. Marked word order is used to fulfill discourse and pragmatic functions, including giving prominence, creating contrastive emphasis or emphatic prominence. Such functions are sometimes fulfilled by moving the arguments out of their unmarked position. By analyzing data from literary and scientific Persian texts, as well as stories and newspapers, the discourse functions of the marked orders were identified as follows: non-contrastive emphasis by postposing subjects, prominence or contrast by preposing direct objects and putting them in the position of focus by postposing them, and also contrastive functions by postposing indirect objects.