Iterative Aspect in Persian: A New Perspective on the Basis of Reduplication

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Assistant Professor in General Linguistic, University. of PNU, Theran, Iran.

Abstract

Extended abstract
 
1. Introduction
"Aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation" (Comrie, 1976:3). In this definition, "the internal temporal constituency" refers to stativity, progression, repetition, internal change and telicity of the situation from speaker's perspective. The aspect that is inherent in the semantics of some content words like verbs is called lexical aspect or situation aspect. Iterative aspect is an interesting type of situation aspect that stands for the repetitive occurrence of an action in current situation. In this article, attempts are made to find out if there is any distinctive iterative aspect in Persian, how it is constructed, and what the aspectual features of iterative aspect are.
 
2.Theoretical Framework & Methodology
This is a descriptive-analytical research that has been conducted on the basis of Comrie's (1976) and Bybee, Perkins and Pagliuca's (1994) ideas.
 
3. Results and Discussion
Iterative aspect refers to the successive occurrence of several instances of the given situation; in other words, it denotes a single event that occurs repeatedly in a more or less short period of time. The most frequent method of expressing iterative aspect in various languages is the mechanism of reduplication. By studying verbal reduplicates in Persian, a relatively new type of reduplicated verbs was found that convey the exact meaning of iteration; verbs like "qeime qeime kardan" (slice slice to make: to mince), "miu miu kardan" (mew mew to make: to mew), "bepar bepar kardan" (fly fly to make: to gambol).
    The aspectual features of iterative aspect is another issue that has been taken into consideration. The foregoing verbs that bear the notion of iteration have internal structure, their internal structure is continually changing, and the continuation of the verb requires effort and input of energy. In this respect, iteratives seem to fall in the category of activity aspect; but the other features like being telic and repetitive distinguish iteratives from other situation aspects like state, activity and habitual aspect. It seems that by introducing the new aspectual feature "±Iterative", iterative aspect can be distinguished from the other situational aspects and conceptualized exclusively as: dynamic, durative, telic and iterative.
 
4. Conclusions and suggestions
Referring back to the questions posed in the introductory part, it revealed that iterative aspect which is defined as successive repetition of an event in a current situation has a distinctive structure and is expressed by some full verbal reduplicates in Persian. The aspectual features of the above mentioned verbs that distinguish them from other situation aspects are: dynamic, durative, telic and iterative. 
 

Keywords

References

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Persian Language and Iranian Dialects
Volume 3, Issue 1 - Serial Number 5
Serial 5
September 2018
Pages 75-91

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