Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Ph.D Candidate of Liguistics, Linguistics Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
2 Associate Professor of Linguistics Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
Abstract
One of the word formation processes in Persian language is the compounding process, which speakers use in a productive way to create words with new meanings. This process contains at least two components, both of which are involved in the construction of meaning. The aim of this article is to analyze the polysemy of compound words ended to “negar” stem in Persian with a cognitive approach. This analysis is done in the framework of Booij's construction morphology theory (2010, 2016), and the data of the research is extracted from the Zansu Persian dictionary (Keshani, 1993), the dictionary of Farhangistan authorized vocabularies, and Bijankhan's corpus. According to Booij's construction morphology theory (2010, 2016), language words are linguistic constructions and these linguistic constructions are the unit of construction morphology analysis. In Booij's construction morphology theory (2010, 2016), construction schemas are patterns that clarify the form and meaning of a construction and determine how other constructions are derived from this pattern. In order to investigate the polysemy of compound words ended to the "negar" stem, first the construction schemas and sub-schemas related to these words are identified, and then their polysemy network in drawn. The results of the research show that at the lowest level of the schema network of the compound words ended to "negar" stem, there are eleven different sub-schemas, seven of which have a nominal base, and four have an adjectival base. Also, the frequency of the sub-schema with an adjective base is much lower than the frequency of the sub-scheme with a nominal base. According to the study of the body of research, the combination of a noun with the "negar" stem creates different meanings such as "writing", "describing", "studying", "depicting", and "measuring" and the meanings of "writing" and "depicting" is realized with both human and non-human agents. The combination of an adjective with the "negar" stem also creates the "depicting" meaning which is realized with two human and non-human agents. Finally, four subschemas with the meaning of "depicting with a special instrument", "depicting a person with special characteristics", "depicting with a special manner", and "depicting from a special location" are results of the hierarchical classification of the subschemas of compound words with an adjective base that ends to “negar” stem. The polysemy of compound words ended to the “negar” stem can be explained at the level of these construction schemas which are more or less abstract.
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