Pronominal Clitics in Persian: A Distributed Morphology Approach

Persian independent pronouns can be considered as the head of noun phrases) Shaghaghi, 2015). However, the head of the noun phrase with a prepositional phrase (preposition + pronominal clitic) can be occupied by a pronominal clitic. To deal with this dual behavior, we adopt distributed morphology, developed by Halle & Marantz (1993), to analyze the internal structure of dependent pronouns or pronominal clitics. This research draws upon descriptive-analytical method, and the data come from Persian language. In this paper, theoretical arguments as well as linguistic evidence will be employed to examine the hypotheses. We suggest that the so-called “pronominal clitics” are actually different elements with different semantic features and structural relationships. Finally, we argue that the (M) index, as a secondary product of morphological merger (Merger) between the two heads, is supposed to be the distinctive element of the dependent pronouns, not of the independent pronouns.