Relativization in Persian

The relative accessibility to relativization of NP position is the first evidence for defining the Accessibility Hierarchy. According to this Hierarchy the subject is the most accessible and if a language can relativize just one position this is subject. The next accessible position to relativization is direct object, indirect object, oblique, genitive and object of comparison. This corpus-based study provides some evidence that show Persian language can also relativize the position of the nonverbal element of compound verbs but it cannot relativize the subject and object complement positions. Moreover this study shows that the pronoun retention or deletion in the direct object position relativized is not optional in some cases and even the pronoun retention or deletion in these cases makes the sentence ungrammatical. As another novelty in this study it can be mentioned that the pronoun deletion in the indirect object position is possible under specific conditions. Also we concluded that the relative particle ‘ke’ is not, contrary to the common assumption, obligatory.