Argument (Direct Object) Left dislocation in Persian; an Optimality Theory study

Researchers have variously investigated Persian in generative, functional, and cognitive frameworks, although, failed to account for some structural changes and the emergence of marked structures such as Left dislocation. The main goal of this article is to investigate left dislocation baded on Optimality Theory. The present research is based on the descriptive-analytical method, and our corpus will include spoken Persian. The present paper aims to show that some constraints can be applied to form left dislocation in Persian, while ranking of the constraints represent the optimal form/forms. The constriants are based on constructional uints of Featurs and Conceptual Units which are properties of grammatical categories such as argument, or discourse-functioal ones, such as topic. The results show that applyind the constraints of precedence, adjacency, and faithfulness on one side, and more features or conceptual units on the other side, the applied theory can bring more appropriate concequenses analyzing the cases of Persian. In other words, Syntax First Alignment has proved to be a promising framework for modeling Persian Left dislocation and can offer an alternative for syntactic frameworks based on hierarchical structure. The results, also, indicates that the features of [NEW], [ABOUT], and [CONTRAST] have key roles in Persisn Argument Left Dislocation. In addition, violating the constraints of Subject and Topic brings about unoptimality.