Semantic study and classification of Persian prepositions based on Lieber

Lieber (2004, 2009) is a decompositional approach with seven semantic features and a principle called coindexation principle. In this theory each lexical item has one semantic skeleton and one semantic body. The skeleton may consist of a hierarchical arrangement of functions and arguments and the semantic body contains two layers: the first one, like semantic skeleton, is relatively stable and can be formalized but the second layer consisting of general information and encyclopedic knowledge, varies a lot. Coindexation principle identifies the arguments of two or more lexical items and makes another item that denotes one unified lexical item. This paper studies the semantic contributions of prepositions in Persian, and then, based on semantic features, classifies them. The conclusion of the paper is that prepositions like other categories as a result of semantic skeletons and weak semantic bodies, own semantic contributions and they have some common semantic features with verbs. Lastly, based on the semantic contribution/features of prepositions, they can be classified.