The Study of Semantic Contribution of -ār and -andeh Suffixes in Persian

This paper examines the semantic contribution of -ār and -andeh suffixes in Persian based on Lieber’s (2004) lexical semantic representation. This framework using six semantic features ([material], [dynamic], [Location], [IEPS], [B] and [CI] and a principle called coordination principle studies the semantic contribution of lexical items including affixes and their functions in compounding, derivation and conversion. In this theory all lexical items including affixes have semantic skeleton, grammatical sub-categorization and arguments; but affixes have little or nothing of semantic body. This paper studies different functions of -ār and -andeh suffixes in the process of morphological derivation, their polysemy nature and, in general, the origins of their similarities and differences. Using this theory, it is shown that these affixes do not contribute to the semantic roles of agent and patient or the syntactic roles of object and subject but they, like other lexical items, add semantic features to the lexical bases and their polysemy is the result of different application of coordination principle, not their semantic contribution.