Syntactic, Semantic, and Pragmatic Representations of Adjacent Verbs in Persian Language: An Analysis Based on Role and Reference Grammar (RRG)

In our ordinary and everyday speech and in the informal and colloquial contexts in general, we encounter the use of constructions, in which two verbs appear in a “verb-verb” situation, thus making a complex predicate construction, such as "kešid bordeš", "gereft xabid", and "daram miravam". All these three constructions have a common feature of adjacency of verbs, in which one verb has a matrix function and the other has a dependent function. Thus, in the present study, they were studied under the title of "adjacent verbs". The authors believed that the “Role and Reference Grammar (RRG)” would provide a useful theoretical framework for better understanding of the “construction of adjacent verbs”. In RRG, all linguistic constructions are explained in three dimensions: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic (focus structure). Accordingly, in the present paper, we first classified the different types of adjacent verbs and then discussed their features. It starts by identifying the syntactic, semantic, and focus structure representations will be discussed and then, the constructional scheme of adjacent verbs in Persian will be represented.