6. 1 Persian Auxiliaries
In clauses with simple verbs, different auxiliaries in Persian appear in different fixed
positions. The perfect auxiliary budan (“to be”) must appear after the main verb. On the
other hand, the future tense auxiliary, used in formal contexts, is expressed by adding the
auxiliary verb xastan ( “to want”), inflected for person and number immediately before
the verb stem:
(16)
B.
A. (man) raft budam
I went be-1.sg
“I had gone”
(man) xâham
I
FUT-1.sg
“I will go.”
(budam after V0)
raft
went
(xâham before V0)
The modal bâyad (“should”) and the aspectual auxiliary dâStan (“to have”) also appear
before the verb stem but need not appear immediately before. They may alternative
appear before the DO if a verb is transitive.
The Persian auxiliary facts clearly cannot be captured by a single generalization; at the
same time, there is at least one subregularity. The auxiliary always carries agreement. DI
allows us to capture both the morphologically specific facts and the generalization about
agreement. Since particular auxiliaries require one or the other order, two distinct
constructions are posited, differing in word order. An abstract construction is also
posited, that serves to relate both auxiliary constructions. The more abstract construction
is unspecified for order. It specifies that the agreement should appear on the auxiliary.
The individual auxilaries with their attended meanings are given as subconstructions,
with word order generalizations being inherited. The difference between the future
auxiliary, which must appear immediately before the verb and the modals which must
appear before but not necessarily immediately before is captured by the “<” vs. “<<”
notation. These facts are represented in Figure 2.
{Aux-agr, V0}
V0participle < Auxps-agr
Aux-agr < V0
Modal
bâyad < V0
future
xâstan < V03rdpast
Perfect
V0 < budan
Figure 2: Auxiliary Constructions in Persian
When a CP is involved, there is no effect on postverbal auxilaries such as budan, since
the verbal element of the CP is on the right edge of the CP. That is, the perfect
construction with budan is an instance of the Aux construction that specifies that
auxiliaries appear after the main verb, and nothing special needs to be stipulated about
the interaction of budan with complex predicates.
Other auxiliaries such as the continuative dâStan may appear before the CP or earlier in
the clause. No more specific construction specifying how these auxiliaries and the CP
will interact is needed.
{Aux-agr, V0}
V0 < Aux
Aux < V0
Continuous
dâStan < V0
Perfect
V0participle < budan
Future
xâstan < V0past-stem
Future-CP
X0 < xâstan <V0
Figure 3: Persian auxiliary constructions including the future-CP construction
This account makes certain predictions about which auxiliaries will appear with future
and negation markers. In the future tense, the imperfective and negative prefixes are
attached to the future marker. This is not unexpected since the future marker, xâstan, is a
polysemous extension from the main verb xâstan, “to want,” which frequently appears
with the imperfective and negative prefixes. Thus na-xâstan and mi-xâstan are stored.
Also as predicted, the continuative auxiliary dâStan (“to have”) may not appear with the
imperfective prefix. Instead, in the case of these auxiliaries, the imperfective prefix
appears on the verbal root:
Ali kar
dârad
Ali work
contin-aux
“Ali was working.”
mi-kard
imperf-DO
This is because as a main verb meaning “to have,” dâStan this is not compatible with
the meaning of the imperfective prefix. Thus no verb mi-dâStan is stored, and the miattaches instead to the verbal root.
1
Since dâStan as a main verb does readily appear with the negative morpheme, it can
appear with a negative morpheme in its use as an auxiliary as well:
Ali kar nadarad
6. 3 Additional motivation for differences amongst the auxilaries and imperfective
prefix
Bybee (1985) describes a cline of verbal relevance, with mood less relevant than tense,
which in turn is less relevant than aspect:
(A)
mood < tense < aspect
-> greater verbal relevance
Bybee motivates this ordering semantically. Aspect determines the way in which the
internal temporal constituency of an action or state is viewed (Comrie 1976:3). It is
so semantically relevant to the verbal meaning that differences in aspect are often
expressed by distinct lexical items, for example, know/realize, be/become. Tense is less
relevant in that it situates the event in time, but does not change the internal character of
the event. Mood is the least relevant of the three, since it serves to code the speaker's
attitude toward the event or proposition (cf. Bybee 1985:196-200, Hopper & Traugott
1993:143-145 for discussion).
In Persian, the hierarchy in (A) is born out by the three types of grammatical morphemes
discussed above. While the progressive marker is a dependent morpheme on the verb
root, the future auxiliary is an independent word before the root. Modals may
alternatively appear before the complex predicate or earlier in the sentence. Thus, the
relative likelihood of the Persian aspect, tense and modal markers to appear next to the
verbal root, thus intervening between the host and light verb is predicted by Bybee's
cline.
modals such as bâyad (“must”) and In the case of bâyad this is because it does not have
a main verb use.
1
They may appear before the DO, after the DO before the CP, or between the host and
light verb of a CP.
Ali (bâyad) Bâbak-râ (bâyad)