An investigation into certain Persian Suffixes extracted from Tǎrix-ol-vozarǎ: natural morphology
Introduction The present paper is a corpus-based study of naturalness and markedness of some Persian subject suffixes: '-ǎ, -ǎr, -ǎn, -bǎn, -gar, -kǎr, -mand, and -ande', extracted from Tǎrix-ol-vozarǎ, within the Natural Morphology framework. To date, no studies have focused on presentin...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Persian |
| Published: |
Alzahra University
2025-02-01
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| Series: | زبان پژوهی |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://zabanpazhuhi.alzahra.ac.ir/article_6661_207f7d04d4733f58bdeadf4ef8e92a4e.pdf |
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| Summary: | Introduction
The present paper is a corpus-based study of naturalness and markedness of some Persian subject suffixes: '-ǎ, -ǎr, -ǎn, -bǎn, -gar, -kǎr, -mand, and -ande', extracted from Tǎrix-ol-vozarǎ, within the Natural Morphology framework. To date, no studies have focused on presenting a continuum of Persian subject suffixes according to their markedness and naturalness. This paper aims to rank the naturalness of some subject suffixes in Persian. Natural morphology is a cognitive-functional approach introduced in the 1970s. In this approach, naturalness and markedness are key terms that differ from frequency and simplicity. Naturalness is not a fixed concept; it can be represented on a continuum. There are four semiotic criteria for assessing the naturalness of any word formation process: 1. morphotactic transparency, 2. indexicality, 3. transparency bi-uniqueness, and 4. shape of signan. According to morphotactic transparency, there is a relation between form and meaning: each form has a corresponding meaning and concept. In forms with the highest transparency, stem and affix can be separated; However, in some cases, affixation causes some phonological changes in the stem, resulting in reduced transparency. Indexicality means that a signan should have only one signatum. Bi-uniqueness means that a signan should have just one signatum and vice versa. This criterion doesn’t allow for synonymy, homonymy, and polysemy. For example, whenever two words are synonyms, they violate bi-uniqueness. Additionally, productivity is important for this criterion. There are two sub-criteria for this parameter: Qualitative criterion and quantitative criterion. According to the qualitative criterion, the closeness of the meaning of a derived word to its stem, without any semantic change, is the focus. According to the quantitative criterion, new tokens of a process should be focused. The fourth criterion of naturalness concerns the number of syllables of each word or affix. One-syllable words and affixes are more natural than two-syllable ones. The data in this paper are analyzed according to these four criteria. Since Persian subject suffixes form a fairly large category, a corpus-based study of them is necessary. The present paper compares and contrasts a selection of such suffixes to discover which one is the most natural and the least marked within the Natural Morphology framework. A suggestion for future studies is to conduct a corpus-based analysis of subject suffixes in Persian language teaching coursebooks to determine whether these books teach subject suffixes, considering their ranking of naturalness and unmarkedness.
Materials and methods
As this paper is corpus-based, the data were made machine-readable. The book Tǎrix-ol-vozarǎ was digitized, and AntConc software was used to extract subject suffixes. After extraction, the data were copied into Excel, where unnecessary parts were filtered out. After filtering the data, all sentences containing the target derived words were examined. The following results were observed: the suffix –bǎn appeared in 352 instances, making it the most frequent, while the suffix –kǎr appeared the least.
Results and discussion
Based on the findings, -gar is the most natural suffix, while -ǎn is the least natural suffix in the corpus. In other words, the suffix –gar violated the fewest criteria, while -ǎn violates most of the four criteria mentioned above. It was also found that -ǎr is not used as a subject suffix in the corpus but functions as a gerund or object suffix.
Table 1.
The amount of naturalness of each suffix.
rank
Suffixes
Violation of morphotactic transparency
Violation of indexicality
Violation of bi-uniqueness
Violation of shape of signan
Average violation of 4 criteria
Average of suffixes' naturalness
1
-ǎ
%0
%33.33
%29.69
%0
%15.75
%84.24
2
-ǎn
%0
%81.35
%37.33
%0
%29.67
%70.33
3
bǎn'
%0
%11.11
%51.11
%0
%15.55
%84.44
5
-kǎr
%0
%0
%19.99
%0
%4.99
%95.002
6
-gar
%0
%0
%12.94
%0
%3.23
%96.76
7
-mand
%0
%33.33
%19.99
%0
%13.30
%86.69
8
-ande
%0
%0
%9.092
%50
%14.77
%85.22
Conclusion
The study concludes that -gar is the most natural suffix, while -ǎn is the least natural in the corpus. It also proves that -ǎr is not a subject suffix but rather serves as a gerund or object suffix. |
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| ISSN: | 2008-8833 2538-1989 |