The Polysemous Study of ‘Standing’ and ‘Sitting’ in Tarikh-i Bal'ami (Comparing it with Evidence from Middle and Contemporary Persian)

The present study is a historic-semantic research that seeks to overview the meaning of two verbs of ‘standing’ and ‘sitting’ in Tarikh-i Bal'ami (A book by Bal'ami about the History of the Prophets and Kings). To achieve a comprehensive conclusion, the results of this study were compared with various meanings of these two verbs in the texts of middle Persian from one hand and the contemporary Persian on the other hand. The results showed that from two main components of ‘standing’ (be upright and immovable) that are derived from the Iranian Ancient root of this verb, the second one (immovability) is common in most of its semantic aspect whether in concrete or abstract forms. Also, the verb ‘standing’ in Tarikh-i Bal'ami has undergone semantic extension compared to the middle period while this verb faced semantic reduction in contemporary period compared to Tarikh-i Bal'ami. From semantic component approach, the verb ‘sitting’ showed that two of its components (stay downward and immovable) that are derived from the Iranian Ancient root of this verb can be seen in most of its meaning whether in concrete or abstract forms. The comparison of the verb ‘sitting’ in different periods showed that this verb undergone extension in each period than the previous ones. Due to the common semantic components that exist in various meaning of each of these two verbs, sitting and standing can be called Polysemy.