Inflectional periphrasis in Persian

Abstract

Modern Persian conjugation makes use of five periphrastic constructions. We contrast the properties of these five constructions and argue that they call for different analyses. We propose contrasting analyses relying on the combination of an HPSG approach to feature geometry and syntactic combination, and an approach to paradigm organization and morphological exponence based on Paradigm Function Morphology. This combination of analytic tools allows us to treat the whole array of periphrastic constructions as lexical in origin—no phrasal construction or multi-word lexical entry of any kind is required.