Object Clitics and Basic Word Order in Persian

Carried out in the framework of Transformational Grammar and Typology, this research aims at determining the generation place of Persian Object Clitics, and examining the effects their synchronic-diachronic analyses may have on typological studies. The underlying order ‘Object Clitic + Verb’ was consequently considered to be at work in correspondence to SOV order; And, it’s the Move-α Transformation that drives the clitic out to surface elsewhere, i.e. mostly in Postverbal Position. Moreover, syntactic, morphological, and prosodic alignments were introduced to be influencing in cliticization in Persian as a trio of criterions which may change by the passage of time; Grammaticality of encliticization to the nominal part of Complex Predications in Classic New Persian and the ungrammaticality of the same process in some CPs of Standard NP was mentioned as an example; Referring to the UG Principle of ‘Minimal Link Condition’, this duality in behavior was argued to be an approval of the interaction between cliticization and incorporation processes. Finally, to explain the possible effects of the above results on the typological analyses, the hypothesis of Persian’s type change from OV to VO suggested by Dabir-Moghaddam (1997) was reformulated by keeping an eye to the diachronic change in the Clitic System; it was put forward that the historically-growing inconsistencies of this language to some of the Dryer’s (1992) criteria and specially to the Greenbergian 25th Universal are mostly applicable to the change stated. It was therefore concluded that the synchronic-diachronic behavior and placement of these elements testifies the aforementioned type-change hypothesis.