A New View on Relative Clause in Persian from the Viewpoint of Cognitive Grammar

Among the multi-clausal constructions in Persian, in this research the relative clause has been studied within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. Relative clause in Persian is a compositional structure consisting of three component structure (noun phrase – the connector 'ke' – relative clause). On the basis of CG principles this construction is a linguistic unit in which the semantic pole relates to the phonological pole symbolically. Regarding the relative clause, this paper considered two main questions: 1) how it is conceptualized, and 2) the types of dependency and the way, it is accounted. Having introduced the theoretical meta-language of CG which relates to these questions, the author tried to answer the questions. The results indicate that the main role of the conceptualization of relative clauses is on the shoulder of two constructs: correspondence and profiling. The dependent nature of relatives is characterized by profiling and the direction of elaboration. The relation between main clause and subordinate clause is "head-modifier" whereas the one between the noun phrase and the relative clause is "head-complement".