The study of conversion in Persian language

Conversion is one of the most important word formation processes in languages. In conversion a word of one grammatical category becomes a word of another grammatical category without any changes to spelling or pronunciation. The present research studies conversion in Persian language with Ferenc Kiefer’s model (2005). The goal of this study is to determine the categories in Persian language which conversion is employed. First، 228 words are classified in different syntactic categorieswhich are obtained from Moaser Persian Dictionary by GholamHosein Sadri Afshar (2002)، then the words are analyzed and classified into six syntactic categories. Each category is studied to see if the existence of the words in different syntactic categories is as a result of conversion process or not. In this regard the three criterion of Kiefer’s model in Conversion areused; word class، lexicalization and direction; According to Kiefer’s three Criteria; there are three conversion processes in Persian language: Adjective to Noun، Adjective to adverb and Verb to Noun.