محمول نامفعولی

Expletives, or the so-called dummy subjects, are syntactic objects that contribute nothing to the semantics. For many linguists, these elements constitute the strongest argument of the requirement for propositions to be built from a subject and a predicate, that the subject necessitated by the syntactic motivation, not by semantic one. While referential subjects may optionally be overt or null in pro-drop languages, it is well-known that they generally lack overt expletives. Whether expletive insertion rule applies to some derivations has been a rather controversial issue in the Persian syntax. Some linguists argue that non-referential pronoun exists in Persian, however, some others claim that there are no overt or covert expletives in this language. Based on the categorial-selectional features of predicates and within the framework of minimalism, I argue that in Persian the Spec of TP is obligatorily filled by a noun or pronoun, so expletive constructions are found with some unaccusative predicates, where there is no theta marked Noun Phrase. More importantly, and at a more theoretical and empirical level, I attempt to provide a kind of generalization about the application of expletive insertion rule within certain constructions. According to this generalization, the subject position of an unaccusative predicate may be filled by an expletive pronoun if and only if a NP with an unchecked case feature is not accessible. In this case, if there is no null expletive subject, then the EPP will filter the sentence out. While the referential nouns and pleonastic pronouns are in complementary distribution, such an account which requires that a predicate be able to select different kinds of categorial features explains why in some unaccusative derivations, including raising constructions, an overt NP can apparently be inserted in the position occupied by a covert expletive pronoun.

Whether or not there is a verbal passive construction in Persian has been ýhighly controversial. Traditional grammarians and most linguists have ýargued that there is a structural passive construction in Persian, similar to ýthat observed in English. Within the framework of the Minimalist ýProgram, but more in the spirit of Emonds’s (2006) division of analytic ýpassives into verbal and adjectival, it will be argued that the Persian ýso-called verbal passive construction is just an instance of adjectival ýpassive, or indeed, unaccusative CPr with a past participle serving as ýits NV element. In line with what holds for verb movement in simplex ýand complex predicates, it will be discussed in detail that Modern ýPersian lacks verbal passive constructions and hence passive ýprojections, and in contrast to the grammatical verb budan ‘to be’ ýwhich can be used either as a light verb in complex predicates or as a ýperfect auxiliary in present/past perfect tenses, the grammatical verb ýšodan ‘to become’, which is traditionally considered as a passive ýauxiliary, is indeed a light verb hosted by an NV element. According ýto this line of analysis, in Persian adjectival passives, the head [A-en] is ýpresent in both LF and PF and the past participle is obligatorily ýinterpreted as an adjective.

Traditional work on pro-drop languages identified a set of parametric values ‎associated with the availability of null subjects, including the presence of null ‎expletive subjects. In the same vein, but more within the framework of Minimalist ‎Program, I will discuss while referential subjects may optionally be overt or covert ‎in the Persian, expletives are obligatorily null. In this regard, a covert pronoun ‎expletive will be claimed to have merged in the surface subject position of all zero-‎place predicates and some unaccusative structures where the internal argument is a ‎PP or CP, satisfying the EPP feature - a requirement forcing some DP to appear in ‎the specifier of the clausal head. This analysis is empirically supported by a number ‎of facts arguing against the idea that pronoun in (this) can freely appear as an ‎expletive subject.‎

The grammatical verb bayyen ‘to become’ is found in two apparently different structures in Saravi dialect, i.e. unaccusative structures and passive sentences. Adopting a minimalist perspective, in the former structures, traditionally called copula sentences, the light verb bayyen is preceded by a non-verbal element which could be nominal, adjectival, or prepositional, and in the latter structures the auxiliary verb bayyen, appearing in the head of functional PassP, follows the past participle form of a transitive verb. Based on the empirical and theoretical evidences, the present study shows that these two structures are identical and there is no passive structure and passive projection in Saravi. This conclusion means that the light verb bayyen ‘to become’ cannot be considered as an auxiliary verb in Saravi. In sum, this grammatical verb is only used as a light verb in an unaccusative complex predicate, headed by a non-verbal element.