Polysemous Compounds Ending in “puʃ (wear.PRES)” in Persian: Construction Morphology Approach

The purpose of the current research is to investigate the compound words ending in “puʃ” in Persian language within the construction morphology framework (Booij, 2010, 2015). In this regard, the constructional schemas and subschemas related to words ending in “puʃ” were identified and analyzed, their polysemous network was drawn and their semantic variations were explained. Research data have been extracted from various sources, including Dehkhoda dictionary, Sokhan dictionary (Anvari, 1381), Zanso ditionary (Keshani, 1372) and Persian orthography dictionary (Sadeghi and Zandi-Moghadam, 1391). The results of the research showed that the present tense stem “puʃ” can be combined with words from grammatical categories including nouns, adjectives and adverbs. In these compounds, “puʃ” can be the present tense stem of two different verbs “puʃidan (to wear)” and the other is its causative form “puʃãndan (to cover)”. Compounds ending in “puʃ”, meaning “puʃidan”, are placed in the two semantic categories of agent and property (human, non-human creature, thing and place). Compounds ending in “puʃ”, meaning “puʃãndan”, are placed in three semantic categories: agent, property (human, thing and place) and instrument. The results of the investigations also show that the polysemy of words ending in “puʃ” is caused by 4 different factors. The first factor is the two-facedness of “puʃ” (the infinitives of two separate verbs of “puʃidan” and “puʃãndan”). The second factor is the metaphorical expansion of the meaning of “puʃãndan”, which in some words is equivalent to hiding and not revealing, and not physical covering. The third factor is descriptive deletion, which causes the accompanying adjective to become a noun. The fourth factor is borrowing, which can be seen in many words approved by the Persian Language and Literature Academy.