A Semantic Study and the Deletion of First Component of Complex Prepositions in Persian

This paper, adopting Sadeghi’s (1970/1349) viewpoint (the complexity of items such as bar ruye (on), dar kenāre (beside), etc.) explores the process of forming complex prepositions in Persian, the reason(s) for omission of simple prepositions, the properties of the nominal part for the complex prepositions before and after participating in word-formation process as well as their semantic contribution based on the semantic framework of Lieber (2004, 2009). To study the semantics of lexical items, this framework presents seven semantic primitives and a principle (co-indexation) and assumes one semantic skeleton and one semantic body for each lexical item. The co-indexation principle coindexes two or more arguments of lexical items and creates a unified item with one signified or identity. The research results show that complex prepositions are made up of two/more parts: the arguments are connected with each other via co-indexation principle and with the participation of semantic body of the parts and leads to creation of a unified lexical item that contributes in the syntactic structure as a single unit. The main reason for the omission of simple prepositions in the complex prepositions are the poor semantic body of the simple preposition and the semantic redundancy of common features of simple preposition and the nominal part, on one hand, and verb, on the other hand.