Persian Adverbs in the Typological Prototype View of Parts of Speech

Adverbs are among those complicated subjects different aspects of which have been investigated throughout history. However, linguists have not reached an agreement on the diverse issues related to adverbs, from its definition to the fact that whether it should be considered as a lexical category in addition to nouns, adjectives and verbs. This research is aimed at determining the place of Persian adverbs based on the typological prototype theory. Hence, according to the typological criteria, a number of adverbs used in everyday speech of standard Persian speakers as well as adverbs used in various Persian texts were analyzed. On the basis of the research results, considering the adverb as a lexical category, the unmarked adverb place in the Persian language was defined in the Croft’s semantic map of parts of speech in the lexical class of property the same as the unmarked adjectives, and it was shown that despite of the unmarked adjectives denoting the propositional act of modification within reference, the unmarked adverbs describe the propositional act of modification within predication. Moreover, the places of PPs on verbs and converbs, both of them as marked adverbs, were determined as words of object showing the propositional act of modification within predication and words of action showing the propositional act of modification within predication, respectively, in the Croft’s semantic map of parts of speech.