Analyzing Markedness in Modern Standard Persian

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Author
M. sabzevari
Assistant Professor of Linguistics- Payame-Nour University – Tehran- Iran
Abstract
When a form is more complex or more marked, the meaning will be more complex consequently. A sentence could be said to be marked if it does not follow the conventional or unmarked word order pattern of a language. Changing word order is done by the syntactic processes which make a sentence marked. The typical function of an unmarked sentence is to show focus on some elements. Markedness can be represented as binary or as a cline which begins with unmarked, and it ends in the most marked one .For markedness, what is mainly considered is that complex or marked form has more morphemes than the unmarked form. Moreover, the occurrence frequency of the unmarked form is much higher than its marked counterpart. Therefore there is a direct relation between the markedness of a form and its semantic variety and complexity. Different syntactic processes in a language can change an unmarked sentence to a marked one mostly to represent more focus on one of the elements of the sentence. Among others also we find that serial verb construction(SVC) is an unmarked sentence. Serial verb construction or verb serialization is defined as a string of verbs or verb phrases that are not separated by a connector and the verbs in this construction share the same grammatical information and sometimes the same arguments, and finally this construction describes a single event. This paper will analyze some samples of the unmarked sentences of the standard modern Persian which are the result of the syntactic processes and, it could be seen in topicalized, clefting, scrambled and SVC sentences among others. The main hypothesis of this paper is that the standard word order change of Persian sentences which are the result of the syntactic processes is related to the concept of markedness. A different type of markedness will be introduced in this paper. In Persian we mostly find this new recognized type of markedness which is movement markedness. Beside movement markedness, the formal markedness is also seen in the syntactic structures of Persian among others. Movement markedness is found in syntactic structures and specifically word order because movement is a key issue in syntax. The function of this markedness is to focus the moved element. Markedness is not a process but it is an abstract phenomenon which is revealed by syntactic movements but it is not a process by itself. When a syntactic process like passivization works in a language, the state of sentence changes from unmarked to marked. This formal markedness beside the distributional markedness are often at work when there is movement markedness in the structure. This paper will show that this type of markedness is very frequent in creating new syntactic structures. It is predictable that the movement markedness is a universal concept and it works in other languages too, since there is no language without syntax. The movement markedness shows how syntax with syntactic processes employs markedness to create diversity and different functions.

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Language Related Research
Volume 10, Issue 2 - Serial Number 50
May and June 2019
Pages 99-122