Mental states via possessive predication: the grammar of possessive experiencer complex predicates in Persian
Ryan Walter Smith
TL;DR
This paper explores how Persian uses a grammatical structure to express mental states, linking it to broader linguistic theories about possession and property concepts.
Contribution
The paper provides a novel formal semantic analysis of Persian possessive experiencer complex predicates grounded in property concept theory.
Findings
Persian mental state expressions are analyzed as involving possession of abstract qualities.
The analysis explains gradability and modification patterns in these predicates.
The work connects mental state expressions to cross-linguistic possessive morphosyntax theories.
Abstract
Persian possesses a number of stative complex predicates with dâshtan ‘to have’ that express certain kinds of mental state. I propose that these possessive experiencer complex predicates be given a formal semantic treatment involving possession of a portion of an abstract quality by an individual, as in the analysis of property concept lexemes due to Francez and Koontz-Garboden (Language 91(3):533–563, 2015; Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34:93–106, 2016; Semantics and morphosyntactic variation: Qualities and the grammar of property concepts, Oxford University Press, 2017). Augmented with an analysis of prepositional phrases introducing the target of the mental state and an approach to gradability in terms of measure functions (Wellwood in Measuring predicates, PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2014), the analysis explains various properties of possessive…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
Figure 19
Figure 20
Figure 21
Figure 22
Figure 23
Figure 24
Figure 25
Figure 26
Figure 27
Figure 28
Figure 29
Figure 30
Figure 31
Figure 32
Figure 33
Figure 34
Figure 35
Figure 36
Figure 37
Figure 38
Figure 39
Figure 40
Figure 41
Figure 42
Figure 43
Figure 44
Figure 45
Figure 46
Figure 47
Figure 48
Figure 49
Figure 50Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsSyntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies