Quasi noun incorporation in Persian
Fereshteh Modarresi, Alexandra Simonenko · 2007
Abstract. This paper investigates the status of Persian bare nouns (BNs), which coexist in Persian with an indefinite marker-i, in the framework of Chierchia 1998. We claim that Persian BNs may undergo Quasi Noun Incorporation (Quasi-NI) in the object position, and propose that this process involves the semantic operation Restrict (introduced in Chung & Ladusaw 2004) followed by the Existential Closure (EC) in the domain of VP. We show that this mechanism accounts for the fact that the verb can compose with 1) another bare noun 2) an argument marked with the direct object suffix-ro. 1 BNs and an indefinite marker-i1 Both BNs and nouns marked by –i can occur in direct object positions (Persian is an SOV language) and both allow for existential reading: (1) Ketab kharid-am Book buy.PAST-1SG ‘I bought books.’ (2) Ketab-i kharid-am Book-IND buy.PAST-1SG ‘I bought a book.’ We analyze –i marker in (2) as an existential quantifier in line with the treatment of indefinite articles in Chierchia 1998. As a BN functions as an argument in (1) we might be tempted to conclude that there is a covert type-shifting operation of the type ∃ creating generalized quantifiers out of properties (Chierchia 1998). Then the function of –i would be the same as that of null morphology on BNs: in both cases the application of ∃ is enforced. In the following sections we will show why this is problematic for the semantic paradigm developed in Chierchia 1998 and how the contradiction can be resolved. 1 Persian has yet another indefinite marker, ye(k) ‘one’, as another use for –i. The numeral yek ‘one ’ is used as a marker of indefiniteness. Yek can also co-occure with –i or replace it. We are not concerned here with the differences between the two which is an interesting subject in itself.