A Historical View to the Structure of Reduplication with their Medial Adjuncts and their Explanation in the Construction Morphology Approach

There are many words in Persian that are formed through the two processes of reduplication and medial adjuncts bearing a flat structure. This means that the two processes of reduplication and medial adjuncts are not performed step by step; rather they are formed by the operation of these two processes simultaneously. This flat structure can be explained in Construction Morphology. Construction Morphology is a cognitive and structure-based approach toward the process of word formation. Based on this theory, the patterns of forming new words in a language are based on abstract schemas. These flat structures are produced through the unification of schema of reduplication and the schema of medial adjuncts simultaneously. To show the starting point of forming such schemas in the mind of Persian speakers, we chose a historical view over the evolutionary period from Old Persian to New Persian. Our findings show that these structures are formed in Middle Persian. In this regard, the medial adjunct was merely the preposition /be/ which means ‘to’.The mentioned words transferred only the meanings of enhancement and sequence. However, during the next periods of Persian, other kinds of prepositions were also used in this structure on the basis of analogy. 

Many words in Persian are generated through the two important processes of reduplication and medial adjuncts that are considered as flat structures. flat structures are structures in which the processes of combination are not performed step by step. Regarding the structures in our focus through this paper, they are formed by the operation of the two reduplication and medial adjuncts processes simultaneously. This flat structure can be explained in Construction Morphology. Construction Morphology is a theory of word structure in which the complex words of a language are analyzed as constructions, that is systematic pairings of form and meaning. Based on this theory, the patterns of word formation in a language are based on abstract schemas. The flat structures are produced through the unification of schema of reduplication and the schema of medial adjuncts simultaneously. In order to specify the starting point of forming such schemas in the mind of Persian speakers we had a historical view over the evolutionary period from Old Persian to New Persian. Our findings demonstrate that these structures are made in Middle Persian. In this regard, the medial adjunct was only the preposition be which means ‘to’. The mentioned words transferred only the meanings of enhancement and sequence. However, during the next periods of Persian, other kinds of prepositions were also used in this structure on the basis of analogy.

Construction Morphology is a word-based perspective in which words are the starting point of morphological analysis (Aronoff, 2007). This is carried out by comparing sets of words like: (1) buy buyer eat eater shout shouter Regarding the set of words listed in (1), we discover a formal difference between the words in the left column and those in the right column. This difference correlates systematically with a meaning difference: the words on the right have an additional sequence /-er/ compared to those on the left, and denote the agents of the actions expressed by the verbs on the left. Words like “buy” and “buyer” stand in a paradigmatic relationship, as opposed to the systematic relationship that holds for words combined in a phrase or a sentence. This paradigmatic relationship between pairs of words like /buy/ and /buyer/ can be projected onto the word /buyer/ in the form of word-internal morphological structure: (2) [[buy]v er] N In the mind of the English speakers, the set of words listed in (1) may give rise to an abstract schema of the following form: (3) [[x] v er] N ‘one who Vs’ A new word is formed by replacing the variable x in the schema with a concrete verb. This is the operation of unification. One of the properties of such a schema is embeddability which is interesting for morphological analysis. Given the existence of word formation schemas as abstractions over sets of complex words, such schema can be unified into more complex schema (Booij, 2015). 

The particular constructions studied in this research are extracted from the following corpus: Grammar, Texts, Lexicon by Kent (2005); Old Persian by Razi (1988); Pahlavi texts by Jamasp (1992); A concise Pahlavi dictionary by Mackenzie (1992); Historical Grammar of Persian by Abolghasemi (2010, 2016); Persian Pahlavi dictionary by Faravashi (2001). Thousand years of Persian Prose by Keshavarz (2009))it includes texts from early New Persian from primary centuries to near the end of 7th century). Through a review over the Old Persian to New Persian, we could verify the appearance of these constructions in Persian. Then we would be able to explain such complex constructions on the basis of abstract schemas described in Construction Morphology.

Regarding Old Persian and since Old Persian is an inflectional language, no structure of reduplication with the medial adjuncts was documented. That is, nouns, adjectives, and pronouns were inflected for gender, number and case and verbs were conjugated. Reviewing the texts of Old Persian, it is observed that the adverb duveii tā prānām with the meaning of ‘generation after generation’ is an inflectional word and the structure reduplication with medial adjuncts is not used for such kinds of concepts. With regards to Middle Persian, the only example for the construction of reduplication with medial adjuncts, was the word sarāsar. The medial formative is /ā/ and the meaning of this word is ‘throughout’. Other different words with this kind of formative formed through the next periods of Persian bear the structure of reduplication like gōnag gōnag with the meaning of ‘different’. Besides, in Middle Persian there are some words documented with the structure of reduplication and the preposition be meaning ‘to’ which is the only preposition in this era. The other words with the structure of reduplication and different prepositions in the next periods of Persian, are formed on the basis of analogy. It is noteworthy to mention that the meaning of all these constructions refer to quantity enhancement and sequence. Concerning Early New Persian to New Persian, it is observed that there are many words with the construction of reduplication and medial formatives and prepositions. On the basis of construction morphology, we have shown here the unification of the schema of reduplication and the schema of medial adjunct as an example: adj،adv [X preposition "be" [adjunct medial] X] medial adjunct]”be”preposition =] + reduplication ofNs,ADJs,advs [X X] (4) 5. Conclusion We studied about the constructions of reduplication with medial adjuncts in Persian to specify the co-occurrence of word formation patterns in the coining of complex words. To show the starting point of forming such schemas, we had a historical view from Old Persian to New Persian. Our findings showed that these structures are formed in Middle Persian. The medial adjunct was only the preposition /be: to/. Such words transferred only the meanings of enhancement and sequence. However, during the next periods of Persian, other kinds of prepositions were also used in this structure on the basis of analogy.