In this article, word order in syntactic structures of the mixed Turkish-Persian language of Baft was studied through the 24 correlation pairs of Dryer (1992, 2009 & 2013) to determine the typology of this language compared to Europe-Asia and world genera. Other purposes of this research were to study the efficiency of Head-Dependent Theory, Branching Direction Theory and Cross-Category Harmony Principle to investigate whether they can explain the typological behavior of this language. The findings showed that this mixed Turkish-Persian language compared to Europe-Asia languages had 16 elements of strong object-verb languages (verb follows object) and 15 elements of verb-object languages (verb precedes object). This language in comparison with world languages also had 15 elements of strong OV languages and 14 elements of strong VO languages. These results prove that this language variety compared to Europe-Asia and world languages corresponds with OV genera. Having the elements of strong VO languages compared to Europe-Asia and world languages indicates that this variety is moving toward the strong VO languages and typologically is not a consistent OV or VO language, but a mixed one and this property is for a broad bilingual social environment. Moreover, the evidence of this language showed that Head-Dependent Theory, Branching Direction Theory and Cross-Category Harmony Principle cannot explain the typological word order behavior of this mixed Turkish-Persian language.
1. Introduction
Typology is a branch of linguistics using parameters like word order to discover the shared characteristics of languages and to represent the functional explanations. The purpose of this article is to study the word order in syntactic structures (phrases and clauses) of the mixed Turkish-Persian language of Baft through the 24 correlation pairs of Dryer (1992, 2009 & 2013) to determine the typology of this language compared to Europe-Asia and world genera. This research was to study the efficiency of Head-Dependent Theory, Branching Direction Theory, and Cross-Category Harmony Principle to investigate whether they can explain the typological behavior of this language as well. Moreover, the typological word order of this Turkish- Persian language in comparison with monolingual languages like Turkish and Persian will be clarified. For this purpose, we compared the data of 24 correlation pairs of this language with the corresponding elements in Europe-Asia and world genera. The framework for this study was Dryer (1992), the most comprehensive experimental study regarding word order, correlations, and the number of languages. This database includes 625 languages identified based on genera.
2. Literature Review
Greenberg (1963) was the first figure studying word order typology. He presented 45 universals through investigating 30 languages. Then Lehman (1978a) based on the findings of Greenberg (1963) introduced the fundamental principle of placement and reduced his three typological components into two elements including verb and object. Vennemann (1974) indicated the unimportance function of subject in word order typology as well but he used all word order universals of Greenberg (1963) based on categorical analogy. He showed that heads and dependents are placed in the same direction. That is, the dependent was placed before the head or the head was placed before the dependent. He maintained that the dependent was before head in OV languages and head was before dependent in VO languages. Hawkins (1983, p. 116) rejected the word order typology of Greenberg with the help of 236 languages. He based adposition to study word order typology and referred to the importance of frequency and quantity of word order correlations (Song, 2018 p. 237). Dryer (1992) indicated genera and statistical universals compared to the individual languages against Hawkins (1983) who studies for finding universals. Dabir-Moghaddam (2014) studied the word order typology of Farsi, Balochi, Davani, Larestani, Taleshi, Vafsi, Kurdish, Aramaic Laki, Delvari, Nayini, Shahmirzadi and Tati languages based on the correlation components of Dryer (1992). He concluded that the 24 correlational elements of the mentioned languages have been influenced by Persian as the superstratum language having a strong middle verb. The findings of Rezapoor (2015) in Semnani and Rezapoor, E. & Abdollahi (2019) in Sangesari languages compared to Europe-Asia and world languages are strong verb final languages.
3. Methodology
The data of this descriptive-analytic research was collected by the researcher as a native speaker and other native speakers by comparing these structures with 24 correlation pairs. After analyzing the clauses and phrases into morphemes, they were transcribed and compared to two columns related to corresponding elements in both Europe- Asia where this variety itself was located, and world genera where all other languages in the world were placed. The correlation pairs are adposition (preposition and postposition) and a noun phrase, noun and relative clause, noun and genitive, adjective and standard in comparative construction, verb and adpositional phrase, verb and manner adverb, copula verb, and predicate, want and verb phrase, adjective and noun, demonstrative and noun, adjective and intensifier, tense/aspect particle and verb, question particle and clause, adverbial subordinator/ subordinate conjunction and clause, article and noun, verb and subject, number and noun, tense-aspect affix and verb stem, noun and possessive affix, the sequence of an auxiliary and content verb, complementizer and sentence, question particle and sentence, verb and object and negative particle and verb.
4. Results
The result of data showed that this mixed Turkish-Persian language compared to Europe-Asia languages had 16 elements of strong object-verb languages (verb follows object) and 15 elements of verb-object languages (verb precedes object). This language in comparison with world languages also had 15 elements of strong OV languages and 14 elements of strong VO languages. These results prove that this language variety compared to Europe-Asia and world languages correspond with OV genera. Having the elements of strong VO languages compared to Europe-Asia and world languages indicates that this variety is moving toward the strong VO languages and typologically is not a consistent OV or VO language, but a mixed one and this property is for a broad bilingual social environment.
According to the Head- Dependent Theory, languages tend towards one of two ideals: head-initial languages, in which heads consistently precede their dependents, and head-final languages, in which heads consistently follow their dependents. One of the goals of this paper is to investigate this theory based on Turkish- Persian language. The findings showed that this Turkish-Persian variety is a strong OV language. Based on Head-Dependent Theory, it is predicted that heads occur after dependents, but contrary to the prediction of this theory that verb patterners are heads and object patterners are dependents, the relative clause is head and noun is dependent. This finding proves that what HDT predicts is not correct. Moreover, the correlation data of this variety does not prove and explain what Cross-Category Harmony Principle predicts. Based on CCHP, head-initial languages have consistently initial head and head-final languages consistently possess final head, but the correlation pairs of adjective and standard in comparative construction, the order of article and noun, and the order of verb and object in this head-final language showed that the standard in comparative construction, noun, and verb in these pairs are not heads and the structure type determines the head. This finding is consistent with Dryer (1992: 89) that claims that HDT and CCHP in identifying head and dependents are inefficient.
Based on the Branching Direction Theory (BDT) of Dryer (1992: 90), languages tend towards one of two ideals: right-branching languages, in which phrasal categories follow nonphrasal categories and left-branching, languages in which phrasal categories precede nonphrasal categories. That is, head-initial languages are right-branching and head-final languages are left-branching. Based on BDT, the Turkish-Persian language is head-final language and therefore it must be left-branching, but its data, specifically the adjective and the standard of construction does not follow this theory. Moreover, the BDT theory cannot predict the correct occurrence of the verb and object correlation pairs. In general, the evidence of this language showed that Head-Dependent Theory, Branching Direction Theory, and Cross-Category Harmony Principle cannot explain the typological word order behavior of this mixed Turkish-Persian language.
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