There are two types of VERB in the Persian language: simple VERBs and COMPOUND VERBs. The number of COMPOUND ones is much greater than the simple ones, being from typological point of view of significance. COMPOUND VERBs usually consist of a noun/adVERB (e.g. eqdâm kardan 'to take measures', pas gereftan 'to take back/to recapture'). In Persian a VERB phrase may have the same structure, as it is seen in the phrases such as qazâ xordan 'to have food' and zud raftan 'to go early'.COMPOUND VERBs are to be entered in dictionaries, however, VERB phrases are not regarded as Lexical entries, because they are formed according to general syntactic rules. In this article, the author endeavours to provide criteria to make distinction between these two categories.

The problem of COMPOUND VERB and determining clear criteria for distinguishing this form of VERB from VERB phrase and simple VERB has been a subject of hard debates among grammarians, especially over the last few years.While providing answers to some of the existing open questions about COMPOUND VERBs, this paper focuses on analysis of the structure of this grammatical category from two aspects, semantic and morphological, and establishes a framework that offers a clear pattern for the analysis of this linguistic phenomenon based on the presented information.It is our belief that COMPOUND VERB, like all COMPOUND words, is one of the linguistic phenomena playing a role in extension of semantic field in Persian language.

The process of COMPOUND predicates (CPr) formation in Persian has got little attention on behalf of linguists. This paper aims to situate the components of Persian light VERB constructions in contexts that can be justifiably invoked as a motivation for CPr formation. The authors believe that CPrs can be considered as direct or indirect products of incorporation process.We hold here a broad concept of incorporation, namely X incorporation (XI), in which X indicates categories including nominals, adjectives and prepositional phrases.This process, explicated by means of some concepts from Cognitive Grammar, involves CPrs originating from complete clauses, and then passing through a compositional path where a nonVERBal and a VERBal element are selected out of a clause and end up in a complex predicate. In such a hypothetical path, a VERB argument is occasionally omitted and the VERB complement or adjunct, having a higher cognitive salience, is incorporated to it. The investigation will continue with focusing on the LVCs constructed with LVkardan ’do, make’, as the most frequently used light VERB in Persian. The paper will also explore how different paths could be associated with different ‘heavy’ meanings of kardan. Moreover, each CPr may further provide speakers with constructional schemas upon which other LVCs formed with a given LV can be sanctioned. Considering different kinds of LVCs explained in this paper, we can say that the semantic contribution of LVs falls into one of the two following possibilities depending on how the LVC in question is formed:i. Compositional path is directly conceivable. When this is the case, the semantics of LV is equivalent to, or derived from, a main or extended sense of its non-light counterpart, as in emtehan dadan ‘to take an exam’ (lit. to exam-give), xab raftan ‘to fall asleep’ (lit. to sleep N-go), and lane kardan ‘to nest’ (lit. to nest N-do).ii. Compositional path is indirectly accessible through a constructional schema.In this case, the LV’s semantic contribution can be thought of as dissolved in the constructional meaning of the relevant schema, as inimeyl zadan ‘to email’ (lit. to email N-hit) whose LV has nothing to do with ‘hit‘, but imports a sense of ‘communication’ immanent in the constructional schema X+zadan which is in turn inherited from telegraf zadan ‘to telegraph’ (lit. to telegraph N-hit).iii. The COMPOUND VERB is a denominal VERB in which the light VERB serves to VERBalize a non-VERBal element. In this case the semantic contribution of the light VERB is to add processual meaning to the predicate.

The aim of this research is to study the effect of Persian language on Azerbaijani COMPOUND VERB construction. Data were collected from Azerbaijani resources and the interactions of 30 speakers of this language in Ardabil province (Ardabil, Meshkin Shahr and their surrounding regions). Native Azerbaijani COMPOUND VERBs plus those borrowed from Persian were extracted from the collected data and their frequency was determined. The research method is descriptive-analytic, because at first the data were classified in the framework of the VERB accommodation strategies in the borrowed language and they were analyzed according to the common approaches in language contact literature. Results show that no Persian finite VERB has entered Azerbaijani language. Azerbaijani language uses two strategies to accommodate Persian finite VERBs. The light VERB construction and indirect insertion are two important strategies that Azerbaijani speakers use to accommodate Persian VERBs. The frequency of light VERB construction (Persian non-VERBal element + Azerbaijani light VERB) in the speakers’ speech is very high in comparison to indirect insertion strategy (Persian noun or adjective + Azerbaijani VERB making affixes) and Azerbaijani native COMPOUND VERBs. In spite of some previous studies considering Azerbaijani COMPOUND VERBs as patterns borrowed from Persian, this research finding shows that light VERB construction is not a new pattern in Azerbaijani and this construction exists in the language itself. Azerbaijani speakers use the extending strategy to increase the frequency of this construction matching that of Persian. Borrowed Persian non-VERBal element causes Azerbaijani speakers to choose among alternative VERB making constructions (Persian non-VERBal element + Azerbaijani light VERB and Persian noun or adjective + Azerbaijani VERB making affixes) the one corresponding to Persian construction. This change resulting in Azerbaijani progressive convergence to Persian is a natural consequence of language contact.

COMPOUND VERBs in Persian are VERB constructions formed by more than one simple lexeme. For example, negah kardan (literally “ watch do” ) is a COMPOUND VERB made of a nonVERBal element negah (watch) and a light VERB kard-an (to do). Syntactically, they are heads which can split during sentence derivation. The light VERB kard-an, merged with a nonVERBal element, comprises a COMPOUND VERB and it cannot determine argument and transitivity of a VERB alone. If such COMPOUND VERBs are lexical words, then they should not split in the sentence structure by syntactic operations. On the other hand, if they are syntactic constructions then forming a new lexeme after syntax floats some theoretical conditions. The purpose of this paper is to describe the derivational steps of one type of COMPOUND VERBs and explain how it is separable in syntax. Some of the data are selected from Sokhan Dictionary and some other (used in the sentence structure) from the online version of the Persian Linguistic Database (PLDB). The results indicated that Persian COMPOUND VERBs are morphological phases the edge of which is visible and accessible to syntactic operations. First, the roots negah and kard enter merging, and after merging of a phase head involving [Tense] feature (usually, a light VERB category), the root kard adjoins it to obtain the [Tense] feature. Finally, if root negah remains at the phase domain (under the phase head) it could not join to form a COMPOUND VERB. That is, negah is also absorbed to Spec-phase by the [EPP] feature of the phase head. Now, both of them are regarded as a COMPOUND VERB and the nonVERBal element at the phase edge is accessible to the syntactic operations. Hence, it can split in syntax (for more details, see Heidarizadi, et al, 2017). Finally, following Johnson (2003) a syntactic operation called "renumeration" is introduced which targets the nonVERBal element at the morphological phase edge and splits it, hence leads to its separability in syntax as the derivation proceeds.

The purpose of this article is not to show what "the COMPOUND VERB" (le'l-e morakkab) in Persian is, but what it is not. The article is, in fact, a criticism of Dab'īr Moqaddam's "fe'l-e l1lorakkab dar fārsi" (1997). The writer, from a lexicographical point of view, argues that if a VERB is said to be fe'l-e morakkab, it is expected to have all the characteristics of a VERB as, by definition, it belongs to the VERB category, and unless we change our definition of the VERB, there is no reason why it should not be in a dictionary.

A sentence is the most complete syntactic unit of a language. The construction of a sentence is the most comprehensive, controversial and fascinating syntactic issue in the language grammar. The message or intention is usually conveyed through a sentence. In fact, the communicative function of a language is carried out via a sentence. A sentence can be classified in to different categories from different perspectives: semantically, constructively or performatively either with a VERB or without a VERB and also with regard to the construction...

The light VERB of "kӕrdӕn" has the most participation in the production of Persian COMPOUND VERBs due to the fact that it can be empty of meaning more than other Persian light VERBs in the process of lightenization and moves away from its meaning by combining with various words with different meanings and parts of speech to make various COMPOUND VERBs. Therefore, COMPOUND VERBs in conjunction with "kӕrdӕn" light VERB have formed the largest share of all COMPOUND VERBs in Persian. The present study aims at how Persian COMPOUND VERBs with “kærdæn” light VERB are formed, and identifying and analyzing the polysemy between them based on Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010a&b). To this end, the authors have used the concepts of Construction Morphology such as structural schema and sub-schema to show the polysemy in meanings in these COMPOUND VERBs at the abstract level of schema. The data of this study, which includes a corpus containing 3326 numbers of COMPOUND VERBs with “kærdæn” light VERB, are gathered from Zanso dictionary (Keshani, 1994), Sokhan (2002), syntactic valency lexicon for Persian VERBs corpus (Moloudi, Kouhestani and Rasouli, 2011), and Persian Calligraphy Spelling Dictionary (Sadeghi and Zandi Moghaddam, 2016). Findings show that in COMPOUND VERBs with “kærdæn” light VERB, we are faced with a kind of polysemy that can be explainable not at the level of concrete words, but at the abstract level of structural schemas. Also, a high-order structural scheme that is at a high level of abstraction, and below it there are more objective structural sub-schemas with VERB formation patterns. They show the COMPOUND in different groups.

Language is the most important means of message transmission and has the most application for the social functioning of mankind. The key element and inseparable part of a sentence is the VERB and its structure consists of some parts such as: simple VERB, prefix, COMPOUND, COMPOUND prefix, VERB phrases, and intransitive VERBs. There have been a lot of investigations and discussions about the structure of the VERB. However, there hasn’t been a comprehensive research on the structure of VERB phrases. This study is aimed at examining the VERB phrases according to the viewpoints of grammarians such as (Khanlari, Ahmadi-Givi, Abolghasemi, Anvari, Farshidvard, and Arjang) and linguists such as (Meshkatodini, Bateni, Vahidian Kamyar, and Tabibzadeh). Further, through the analysis and critique of each one, the truth or inaccuracy and the differences of their view points are explored. To this end, this study represents the viewpoints of both traditional and new grammarians and provides a scientific and precise definition for the VERB phrases. Finally, it investigates the structure of VERB phrases from both semantic and structural perspectives.