Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Linguistics Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
2 Linguistics Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Abstract
The aim of this article is to analyze the polysemy of the three suffixes "-ani, -ayi and -al" in Persian language with construction morphology framework. This analysis is based on Booij construction morphology theory (2010, 2016) which is rooted in the cognitive linguistics school and especially the cognitive grammar theory (Langacker, 2008, 2009). In Booij’s (2010, 2016) construction morphology approach, language words are "constructions" whose meaning is the most important component in their structural analysis. Derivational affixes of Persian language, which include suffixes and prefixes and are numerous, have a good capacity to add new meanings to basic constructions and create a derivative word. The research data is extracted from Zansu Persian dictionary (Keshani, 1993). In order to investigate the polysemy of these suffixes, first we have designated the construction schemas and sub-schemes of the words containing the three mentioned suffixes, and then we have designed their polysemy network. Examining the research data showed that the words containing each of these three derivational suffixes, which are different from each other in terms of meaning and caused the polysemy of the named suffixes, are actually the result of different schemas and sub-schemas that are different in terms of form and meaning. The results of the research show that at the lowest level of the schema network of the "-ani" suffix, there are five different sub-schemas, two of which have a nominal base. Next two sub-schemas have prepositional base and at last, the last sub-schema has adjective base. At the lowest level of the schema network of the "-al" suffix, there are four sub-schemas which bases are from the categories of nouns, adjectives, or verb present stem. While the suffix "-ayi" has only two sub-schemes, one of which has a nominal base and the other has an adjective base. According to Booij’s (2010, 2016) construction morphology theory, the polysemy of these suffixes cannot be explained at the level of concrete words; Rather, this polysemy should be considered related to the level of constructional schemas, which are more abstract than the concrete words of the language
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