The Efficacy of Lexical Morphology Model; An Analysis on the Basis of Persian Data

This paper attempts to investigate the Persian morphological system in the framework of Lexical Morphology Model (Kiparsky, 1982). The main goal of this research is to study the efficacy of the model in analyzing the Persian data. Having introduced the Lexical Morphology, some data which are counterexamples to the model at first sight, will be discussed. It will be shown that on the basis of different syntactic, semantic and cognitive criteria there is some kind of conformity between the data and the Lexical Morphology Model; although it is asserted that the efficacy of the model to analyze the English data (the language on which the model is designed) is more than its efficacy in Persian. In addition, the author suggests that in order to cope with some inadequacy that Kiparsky’s model encounters to analyze idioms (listed syntactic objects) the model should be revised by a loop connecting the syntax level to lexicon. Therefore, idioms are firstly formed in syntax, after lexicalization they will return to syntax. It seems that this loop makes the model much more efficient.