The Structure of Conditional Construction in Persian Language

Conditional constructions are complex sentences containing subordinate clauses mostly with the conditional connector and the main clauses. The present descriptive and typological study provides a survey of some issues in the syntax of the “if clause” and “conditional connector” according to the corpus-based approach. The findings of the syntactic role of “if clause”, show that, the subordinate clause can act either as an adjunct modifying the matrix verb or as a complement of the matrix verb. Accordingly, when the if-clause is the complement element of the matrix clause, the deletion of the subordinate clause leads to the unacceptability of the sentence. The evidence suggests that in addition to adverbial if-clauses, the time clauses and relative clauses may act as a conditional clause. On conditional connectors, the different connector of antecedent clause like “čenɑnče” /if/, “čon” /because/, “ce’ /that/, and etc. have been introduced according to research data. Connectors of the main clause in conditionals including consequential, causal, and contrastive connectors, which classify three types of conditionals have been presented as well. Introducing the “concessive conditionals” and “negative conditionals”, discussing the conditioning a part of the main clause are also other issues that have been considered in this study.