Derivational Morphemes in Persian: A Distributed Morphology Approach

Articles in Press

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
H. Hosseini 1
S. tafakkori rezayi 2
A. gheitury 3
1 PhD student in Linguistics, Department of English Language and Linguistics, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
2 Assistant Professor, Department of English language and Linguistics, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
3 Associate Professor of Linguistics, Department of English Language and Linguistics, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran
Abstract
Affix-like morphemes can be used both as derivational and free morphemes. This dual behavior leads us to investigate the internal structure and the content feature of morphemes in general and, in particular, Affix-like morphemes in Distributed Morphology (DM). Contrary to the recent approaches in Distributed Morphology adopting a rootless structure for derivational morphemes, the present study showed that the obviation of Roots provided a situation in which all the Persian derivational morphemes were identical and consequently they could not receive their phonological exponents. Then, we proposed that the derivational morphemes also contained the root features and supported this proposal with empirical evidence and conceptual considerations. This proposal could capture the dual nature of affix-like morphemes. Furthermore, this view has important consequences for word-formation and allows us to recast Harley’s (2009) definition of compounds.

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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 13 July 2025