The Nature of Present Tense in Persian

The present study aims at investigating the nature of Persian present tense. To achieve this aim, the (non)indexicality of Persian present tense, the interpretation of relative and complement clauses with present-under-past and present-under-future constructions, and the absolute and relative components of Persian present tense were scrutinized. The results show that Persian cannot be considered as absolutely indexical and non-indexical. Hence, if the indexicality of the present tense of different languages is construed along a continuum with languages with indexical present tense on one extreme and languages with non-indexical preset tense on the opposite extreme, Persian falls somewhere in between. Furthermore, it was revealed that Persian present tense has both relative and absolute functions. Present-under-past constructions reveal the absolute reading of Persian present tense, since the present tense, in addition to the concurrence with the matrix clause past tense, can be synchronized with utterance time (double reading). Present-under-future constructions in complement and relative clauses reveal that Persian present tense has a relative reading because, in these sentences, the embedded present tense is not required to be simultaneous with the utterance time. Finally, it was shown that the relative and absolute parts of the present tense have ‘inside’ meaning, meaning that the event expressed with the present tense is evaluated within time.