Cover not available
Part of
Advances in Iranian Linguistics
Edited by Richard K. Larson, Sedigheh Moradi and Vida Samiian
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 351] 2020
► pp. 119–136

Chapter 7
The meaning of the Persian object marker rā

What it is not, and what it (probably) is

The Persian object marker rā is called many things, among them: marker of specificity (Karimi 1990), definiteness (Mahootian 1997), secondary topics (Dabir-Moghaddam 1992), and presuppositions (Ghomeshi 1996). These accounts capture the core of what rā is, yet also include a lot of what rā is not. I report novel examples that show rā is not an (exclusive) marker of specific or definite referents. It is also not an (exclusive) marker of (secondary) topics. Instead, rā’s core contribution is something shared by all these accounts: old or presupposed information. I show that the information presupposed by rā is an existence implication. A marked object like sandali-ro (“chair”-rā) implies that there is one or more chairs in the conversational context. This account captures several novel observations on the distribution of rā such as its optional presence on proper names in some contexts. I provide a formal and compositional analysis of simple Persian sentences with definite and indefinite objects.
Keywords: rā , specificity, definiteness, presupposition, topic, information structure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What rā is not
    • 2.1Topics
    • 2.2Specificity
      • Epistemic Specificity
      • Scopal Specificity
      • Partitive Specificity
      • Definiteness
  • 3.What rā (probably) is
  • 4.Formal analysis
  • 5.Discussion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 22 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.351.07jas
References (27)
References
Abbott, Barbara. 2006. Definite and indefinite. Encyclopedia of language and linguistics 3. 392–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beaver, David & Emiel Krahmer. 2001. A partial account of presupposition projection. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10(2). 147–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro & Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1990. Meaning and grammar: An introduction to semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coppock, Elizabeth & David Beaver. 2012. Weak uniqueness: The only difference between definites and indefinites. In Proceedings of SALT, vol. 22.Google Scholar
Dabir-Moghaddam, Mohammad. 1992. On the (in) dependence of syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from the postposition-ra in Persian. In Dieter Stein (ed.), Cooperating with written texts: The pragmatics and comprehension of written texts, 549–574. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dalrymple, Mary & Irina Nikolaeva. 2011. Objects and information structure, vol. 131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Enç, Mürvet. 1991. The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22(1). 1–25.Google Scholar
Farkas, Donka F. 1994. Specificity and scope. In Lea Nash & George Tsoulas (eds.), Proceedings of Langues et Grammaire 1. 119–137. Paris: University of Paris 8.Google Scholar
Farkas, Donka F. & Adrian Brasoveanu. 2013. A typology of specificity. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 58(4). 355–369.Google Scholar
Fodor, Janet D. & Ivan A. Sag. 1982. Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philosophy 5(3). 355–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ghomeshi, Jila. 1996. Projection and inflection: A study of Persian phrase structure. Toronto: University of Toronto dissertation.Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1991. Artikel und Definitheit. In Arnim von Stechow & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), Semantik: Ein internationales Handbuch der Zeitgenössischen Forschung, 487–535. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. & Angelika Kratzer. 1998. Semantics in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Jasbi, Masoud. 2014. The semantics of differential object marking in Persian. Manuscript Stanford: Stanford University.Google Scholar
. 2015. The semantics of differential object marking in Persian. Talk given at the 2015 annual meeting of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA 2015). Portland, OR.
. 2016. Three types of indefinites in Persian: Simple, complex, and antidefinite. In Mary Moroney, Carol Rose Little, Jacob Collard & Dan Burgdorf (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 26. 244–263. Ithaca, NY: CLC Publications.Google Scholar
Karimi, Simin. 1990. Obliqueness, specificity, and discourse functions: Râ in Persian. Linguistic Analysis 20. 139–191.Google Scholar
. 1999. Specificity effect: Evidence from Persian. Linguistic Review 16. 125–142. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. On object positions, specificity and scrambling in Persian. In Simin Karimi (ed.), Word order and scrambling, 91–124. Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mahootian, Shahrzad. 1997. Persian. Routledge.Google Scholar
Montague, Richard. 1973. The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English. In Jaakko Hintikka, Julius Moravcsik & Patrick Suppes (eds.), Approaches to natural language, 221–242. Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nikolaeva, Irina. 2001. Secondary topic as a relation in information structure. Linguistics 39(1). 1–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partee, Barbara. 1986. Noun phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles. In Jeroen Groenendijk, Dick de Jongh & Martin Stokhof (eds.), Studies in discourse representation theory and the theory of generalized quantifiers, 115–143. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand. 1905. On denoting. Mind 14(56). 479–493. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert C. 1978. Assertion. In Peter Cole (ed.), Pragmatics (Syntax and Semantics 9). Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strawson, Peter F. 1950. On referring. Mind 59(235). 320–344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tonhauser, Judith, David Beaver, Craige Roberts & Mandy Simons. 2013. Toward a taxonomy of projective content. Language 89(1). 66–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Moezzipour, Farhad & Neda Moezzipour
2024. RA-marking, delimitation, and TA-headed directional PPs in Persian. Review of Cognitive Linguistics DOI logo
Smith, Ryan Walter
2024. Mental states via possessive predication: the grammar of possessive experiencer complex predicates in Persian. Natural Language Semantics DOI logo
Karimi, Simin, Narges Nematollahi, Roya Kabiri & Jian Gang Ngui
2023. Introduction. In Advances in Iranian Linguistics II [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 361], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Moezzipour, Farhad & Seyyed Ali Ostovar-Namaghi
2023. Ra-centric constructions at Persian left-periphery: an RRG account. Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 59:2 ► pp. 407 ff. DOI logo
Goldstein, David
2022. Correlated grammaticalization. Diachronica 39:5 ► pp. 658 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.