A Cognitive and Pragmatic Analysis of Persian Conditionals

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
S. Ghaderi 1
M. Amouzadeh 2
V. Rezaei 3
1 Ph.D Candidate in General Linguistics at the University of Isfahan, Isfahan. Iran
2 Professor of Linguistics ,University of Isfahan, Isfahan. Iran
3 Associate Professor of Linguistics , University of Isfahan, Isfahan. Iran
Abstract
The current study will be focused on the analysis of modern Persian conditionals based on a cognitive-pragmatic approach.

The study proceeds to answer three questions: 1) Can Sweetser's (1990) theoretical model elucidate the different cognitive and pragmatic dimensions of Persian conditionals? 2) What are the conventional readings of agar (‘if’, the common particle in Persian for the conditionals) in Farsi, and in which conditionals are they most present? And finally 3) Can we draw a relationship between subjectivity / intersubjectivity and conditionals?

The study assumed a pure and descriptive research whose data were largely derived from contemporary spoken Persian over a period of three months.

To answer the questions, the investigation is comprised of three parts. The first part includes the analysis of triple classification of conditionals (e.g. content, epistemic, and speech act conditionals) in Persian sentences based on Sweetser's model (1990) and upholds the efficiency of this model to a great extent.

The second part deals with the ways in which 'agar' construes several readings in Persian conditionals and classifies them as necessary and sufficient condition, topic marker, and concessive readings.

Finally, the discussion focuses on the subjectivity and intersubjectivity aspects in relation to hypotheticality of conditionals and it argued that the hypotheticality of conditionals can be fairly explained in terms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Accordingly, we can propose the grammaticalisation of agar in Persian conditionals.

Moreover, this paper furthers the issue by looking at the ways in which conditional insubordinate clauses are triggered by cooptation (in Heine’s term); this happens by foregrounding the components of discourse situation, in particular, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In fact, it can be asserted that subjectivity and intersubjectivity can account for the various conditional sentences applications in Farsi

Keywords

Subjects

Persian References
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Language Related Research
Volume 10, Issue 6 - Serial Number 54
January and February 2019
Pages 233-260