Relative clause extraposition in Persian narrative text with a functional approach: Evidence from fifth to seventh volumes of Tārix-e Bayhaqi

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Abstract

Relative clause extraposition happens whenever relative clause moves from its normal position - near the head - to the final position of the sentence. Analyzing relative clause extraposition has taken great attention since the functional grammar appeared. Due to the fact that Persian sentences remain grammatical in the case of occurrence or non-occurrence of this process, most linguists believe that this movement has a non-syntactic motivation. The goal of the present research was to study the relative clause extraposition in Tārix-i Bayhaqi as a historical text of modern Persian. So, the comparison between the results of this process in narrative and literary Persian texts with formal ones could be possible. Tārix-i Bayhaqi narrates the Ghaznaviyān dynasty events and it is one of the most valid Persian historical texts. Having hypothesized that extraposition has functional reasons such as informative structure, relative clause length, having the same verb in the main and relative clause and the kind of verb, 150 relative clauses were selected through random cluster sampling from fifth to seventh volumes of Tārix-i Bayhaqi. From the 150 relative clauses, there were 66 extraposed ones which were investigated according to the four functional reasons. Findings of this research showed that except the first one, the other three functional reasons have direct effect on the relative clause extraposition. Actually, the relative clause length was the most effective factor in relative clause extraposition in bayhaghi history. This verifies the Howkins’ claim on the tendency of the heavy constituents in verb final languages to move to the end of the sentence and occur after the verb. Comparing these results with Rāsekhmahand et al (1391), it becomes clear that there is not a significant difference between the function of the relative clause extraposition in modern formal Persian and in the historical Bayhaghi text.
 

Keywords


استاجی، ا. 1389. «بررسی تاریخی کارکردهای چندگانة «که» در فارسی امروز». زبان­شناسی و گویش­های خراسان، (3): 1-13.
اسماعیل­پور، و. 1389. «مقایسۀ سبک­شناسانه بین نامه­های تاریخ بیهقی و متن روایی». علوم ادبی، 3(5): 235-260.
افراشی، آ. 1388. ساخت زبان فارسی، تهران: سمت.
بیهقی، م. ح. 1383. تاریخ بیهقی، تصحیح ع. ا. فیاض، به اهتمام م. ج. یاحقی، مشهد: دانشگاه فردوسی.
بهار، م. ت. 1373. سبک­شناسی، تهران: سپهر.
راسخ‌مهند، م.، م. علیزاده صحرای، ر. ایزدی­فر و م. قیاسوند. 1391. «تبیین نقشی خروج بند موصولی در زبان فارسی». مجلۀ پژوهش­های زبان­شناسی، 4(1): 21-40.
شفایی، ا. 1362. مبانیعلمیدستورزبانفارسی، تهران: نشر نوین.
صفوی، ک. 1373. «برخی از ویژگی­های بندهای موصولی زبان فارسی». مجموعه مقالات دومین کنفرانس زبان­شناسی نظری و کاربردی، دانشگاه علامه طباطبایی تهران. 181-197.
غلامعلی­زاده، خ. 1374. ساختزبانفارسی، تهران: احیاءِ کتاب.
ماهوتیان، ش. 1387. دستور زبان فارسی از دیدگاه رده­شناختی، ترجمة م. سمایی. تهران: مرکز.
محمودی، س. 1394. «بررسی نحوی بندهای موصولی در زبان فارسی: فرایند حرکت بند». جستارهای زبانی، 3(24): 241-269.
مشکوه­الدینی، م. 1384. دستور زبان فارسی (واژگان و پیوندهای ساختی)، تهران: سمت.
نعمت­زاده، ش.، ب. روشن، م. ا. غیاثیان، و م. غفاری. 1392. «سطوح پیچیدگی بندهای موصولی فاعل- فاعل و فاعل- مفعول در کودکان فارسی­زبان 3 تا 6 ساله». جستارهای زبانی، (4): 221-244.
Ahangar, A. A. 2000. The Subordinate Clause Construction in Persian based on Government and Binding Theory. PhD Dissertation. Tehran University, Iran.
Anderson, R. 2009. Grammar Teaching Unit - Relative Clauses. 215C, Helt, CSUS. Retrieved 2012. form  http://pdfsb.com/grammar, teaching unit relative clauses running head grammar.
Annas, V. 2004. Relative Clauses: Introducing Relative Clause Types According to Order of Difficulty and Frequency. Descriptive Linguistics, EFL503 final paper.
Baltin, M. 2006. Extraposition. M. Everaert, H.C. Riemsdijk, van, (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, vol. 2. Blackwell, Malden, MA. 237-271.
Bever, T. G. 1970. The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In J. R. Hayes (ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York Wiley.
Chien-Jar, C. L. & T. Bever. 2006. Subject preference in the processing of relative clauses in Chinese. In D. Baumer, D. Montero, & M. Scanlon (eds.), Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. 254–260. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Chomsky, N. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Comrie, B. 1996. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology: Syntax and Morphology. Blackwell Publishers: Oxford.
Culicover, P. & M. Rochemont.1990. Extraposition and the Complement Principle. Linguistic Inquiry, (21): 23-47.
Dik, Simon C. 1997. The Theory of Functional Grammar, Part1: The Structure of the Clause. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Fukui, N. 1993. Parameters and optionality. linguistics inquery, (24): 399-420.
Francis, E. J. 2010. Grammatical weight and relative clause extraposition in English. Cognitive Linguistics, (21): 7-35.
Gibson, E., T. Desmet, D. Grodner, D. Watson & K. Ko. 2005. Reading Relative Clauses in English. Cognitive Linguistics (2-16): 313- 353.
Givón, T.2001. Syntax: An Introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John BenjaminsPublishing Company.
Göbbel, E. 2013. Extraposition of relative clauses: Phonological solutions. Lingua 136. 77-102.
Halliday, M & C. Matthiessen. 2004. an Introduction to Functional Grammar. Britain: Arnold.
Hawkins, J. A. 2004. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars. Oxford: Oxford University.
Huck, Geoffrey J. & Na. Younghee 1990. Extraposition and Focus. Language 66 (1): 51-77.
Inaba, J. 2003. extraposition and directionality of movement (in Japanese).  Yoshida, M., & J. Okamoto (eds.). Japanische Gesellschaft für Germanistik, Tokyo: 35-49.
Jahani, C. 2008. Restrictive Relative Clauses in Balochi and the Marking of the Antecedent –Linguistic Influence from Persian?” The Bloch and others: linguistic, historical and socio-political perspectives on pluralism in Baluchistan, Wiesbaden: Reichert, pp 139-166.
Izumi, S. 2003. Processing difficulty in comprehension and production of relative clauses by learners of English as a second language. Language Learning, (53): 285-323.
Karimi, S. 2002. Persian Complex DPs: how mysterious are they?. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, (24): 63-96.
ــــــــــــــــــــ. 2005. a minimalist approach to scrambling: Evidence from Persian. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin, Germany.
Keenan, E. & B. Cormier. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry, (8): 63- 89.
Kiss, T. 2005. Semantic constraints on relative clause extraposition.  Natural language and linguistics, (23): 281-334.
MacDonald, M. C. & M. Christiansen. 2002. Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1999).  Psychological Review, (109): 35-54.
Müller, G. 1995. On extraposition & successive cyclicity.  U. Lutz & J. Pafel (eds.): 213-243.
O’Grady, W., M. Lee, & M. Choo. 2003. A subject- object asymmetry in the acquisition of relative clauses in Korean as a second language, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, (25): 433-448.
Rahmany, R., H. Marefat & E. Kiddbc. 2010. Persian speaking children's acquisition of relative clauses. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, (8): 367-388.
Richards, J. & R. Schmidt. 2002. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching And Applied Linguistic. Longman: London.
Rochemont, M. 1985. A Theory of stylistics rule in English. Garland: New York.
Rochemont, M. S. & P. W. Culicover. 1990. English Focus Constructions and the Theory of Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Suarez-Casielles Eugenia. 2004. The syntax- Information structure Interface. Routledge Publication.
Soheili-esfahani, A. 1976. Noun phrase complementation in Persian. Doctoral dissertation. university of Illinois, Urbana.
Taghvaipur, M. 2005. Persian Relative Clause in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar. PhD Thesis. University of Essex.
Wasow, T. 2002. Postverbal Behavior. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Windfuhr, G. L. 1978. Persian Grammar: History and State of its study. Mouton Publishe: USA.