Idiomatic Expressions in the Frame Work of Minimalist Approach: Evidence from Persian

Idiomatic structures are of the forms which have been investigated to argue in support of some theories in Minimalist Program. In this regard the present study investigates the syntactic structure of Persian Idiomatic Expressions (PIE) in the frame work of minimalist approach. In this study a sample of 200 Persian idioms, selected randomly, have been studied to examine their flexibility in terms of their subjects, tenses and some other structures larger than Inflectional Phrase (IP). The study supported the idea that a phrase is formed by merging head ''X" and its complement, and X-bar with its Specifier to form X-bar and XP respectively. The analyses of the idioms shows that in the smallest form of idioms a verb is merged with its complement to form a "V-bar" and a V-bar is merged with a subject to form a VP. In this way the evidences from Persian support the idea of the Subject Internal Hypothesis. The study also shows that idioms in Persian are fixed in bottom up way in forming Phrase Structure as in V-bar, VP, IP(TP), CP respectively in clause structure level and even in larger ones.