The present paper examines a phenomenon by means of which the main verb in yes-no questions in the spoken form of Persian can either optionally move to the front of the sentence or remain in-situ, intending to yield an interrogative interpretation. However, as the latest approaches to the study of the linguistic systems do not opt for optionality, the issue of the optionality of verb movement in such structures, which seems to be an unfortunate drawback, should be settled down in some way or another. More specifically, considering the theoretical framework of the paper, which is the feature checking mechanism within the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1981; 1982; 1993; 1995; 2000; 2001a-b), the optionality of verb-PREPOSING in yes-no questions entails a contradiction in terms of the two-valued feature strength in the feature checking theory. A feature should be either [+ value] or [-value], and there is no in-between feature value. That is, a syntactic feature is either strong or weak, making the constituent it is associated with either move or remain in situ. Consequently, the optional movement of an element in syntax cannot be analyzed as having a strong and a weak feature simultaneously. To do away with this inconsistency regarding verb-PREPOSING in yes-no questions in Persian, this paper proposes an alternative approach relying on the notion of Extended Projection Principle ([EPP]) feature. The EPP is considered by Chomsky (2000, 2000a) as a feature optionally assigned to the head of a syntactic phrase, providing the necessary impetus for the overt movement of such a projection or the constituent thereof. In fact, the EPP feature is taken to be a syntactic mechanism or a strong syntactic feature which induces the overt movement of a constituent to satisfy certain semantic and functional requirements. Turning to the Persian data, the adopted approach in this article considers checking the strong EPP-feature on the head of the focus phrase (FocP) as the trigger for verb-PREPOSING in such constructions. In this approach, the difference between the verb fronting in yes-no questions, on the one hand, and its remaining in-situ, on the other hand, reduces to the optional selection of the EPP-feature from the lexicon by the head of the FocP. In the former case, after the verb has checked the strong EPP-feature on the head of FocP through movement to the Foco, it fails to move on to the head of CP due to the presence of the complementizer “ ke” (that) on the Co. Subsequently, the [-Q] feature on the Co is matched with the [+Q] feature of the verb through agree, hence checking the [-Q] feature of the Co. In the latter case, on the contrary, the [-Q] feature on the Co is checked against the [+Q] feature on the verb through agree only, with no movement involved.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the presence and absence of inversion and topicalization in Kurdish literature and its texts and to argue about how to explain the relationship between these processes based on sentence word order to classify the data; if the element preposed to the beginning of a sentence, it is considered PREPOSING and if postponed to the end of the sentence it is considered postposing. The analysis has been based on information structure and pragmatics. In this article, to argue about the role of discoursal processes, inversion and topicalization in Kurdish have been studied from functional perspective. The following results can be revealed in both inversion and topicalization. Both of them match the marked topics and do not correspond with postposing. Topicalization is a process which is conditional and bound to PREPOSING element. In both processes the commonest movement is PREPOSING old information whether it is listener-old or discourse-old.

The position of words in a sentence and its effect on rhetoric is one of the most important topics that Abdul Qahir Jorjani has raised in "Nazm" theory. He examines the position of elements under the heading of "PREPOSING and postposing", and, of course, in relation to definition and refinement. Jorjani’, s ideas are consistent with information construction and subject-information construction in Halliday's "Functional Grammar" theory which focuses on lexical arrangement in sentences. Vocabulary arrangement can be considered as one of the most prominent features and the basis of syntactic structure in the Garshaspnameh and the story of Bijan and Manijeh. Therefore, in this study, we have examined the prepositions and postpositions of the main elements of a sentence and analyzed the rhetorical function of each in about 3000 sentences of the two poems. In this regard, first we examine the frequency of PREPOSING and postposing of the main elements in sentences which have a subject and also the sentences with a deleted subject in the mentioned range of two poems. Then we have entered the statistics in the tables representing the distribution in terms of number and percentage creating a precise analogy between the poems. Then, with reference to the table related to each section, we have analyzed the rhetorical function of the elements according to its position in the sentence. The results of the research suggest that in addition to compulsion in observing the meter, rhetorical intentions such as emphasis, paying tribute, humiliation, confinement, etc. have a significant effect on PREPOSING and postposing the main elements of the sentence, and on the position and order of words in Ferdowsi and Asadi Tusi's poems. The Main rhetorical method of the two poets is their foregrounding of of the main elements, especially the verb as a means of emphasis.

The present study aimed to investigate diachronic changes in the frequency and function of marked syntactic structures, namely passive constructions, PREPOSING, and cleft sentences that manifest information structural elements in Persian. The study examined these structures across three periods of Persian, i.e., Middle Persian, Dari, and Modern Persian. The data for Middle Persian is sourced from The Mēnōg-ī Khrad and Oshnar-I Dana, while for Dari, Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī and Safarnāma by Nasir Khusraw are used. For Modern Persian, written resources from various genres, such as short stories and scientific articles, are analyzed. The samples from each period are analyzed to determine the function and frequency of marked syntactic structures, which are then compared to identify any potential changes in their usage over time. The findings indicated that the frequency and function of these syntactic structures have changed over time. The findings suggested that passive constructions were commonly used across all three periods to present the patient as the pragmatic topic and maintain the topic-focus order. However, in modern Persian, passive construction was also used to emphasize the patient as the focus. Cleft constructions were not found in Middle Persian, but the increase in frequency of cleft constructions in Dari can be attributed to the fact that in this period, cleft sentences were used similarly to PREPOSING, in order to observe the principle of separation of role and reference, rather than focusing on specific elements. Nonetheless, in modern Persian, cleft constructions were used to exclude other possibilities and emphasize the selected element as the focus. PREPOSING structures were used to present an element as the topic and provide new information about it. This study contributes to our understanding of language change and provides insights into the evolution of Persian syntax over time.

Insufficient scholarly inquiry exists regarding the function of genres and their pertinent discourse characteristics within the realm of Information Structure and its syntactic renderings in the Persian language. The present study, which is descriptive and corpus-based in nature, is designed to analyze three distinct genres of the Persian language –,specifically, political discourse, scientific discourse, and everyday conversation. The study aims to investigate the Information Structure present in these genres, as expressed through four key syntactic devices: clefting, pseudoclefting, passive voice, and PREPOSING. In order to achieve the intended objective, one thousand distinct verbal expressions concerning each of the aforementioned genres were obtained from the multi-media database of the IRNA (Iranian News Agency) website and everyday dialogues amongst acquaintances and family members of the researchers, utilizing Lambrecht's theoretical framework for constructing the Information Structure. Following data collection, transcription was carried out and various syntactic devices were identified. Subsequently, descriptive statistics were utilized to analyze and understand the representation of these syntactic devices across different genre types. The findings indicated that there are distinct variations in the depiction of instruments across the three classifications of political discourse, scientific discourse, and commonplace discussions. This discovery may hold significance for scholars of linguistics and language theory.

Persian owns a flexible syntax and is thought to be a free word order language. In this paper, employing a Role and Reference Grammar framework, we argue that constituent reordering in PREPOSING and left-dislocation constructions of the Persian left-periphery is the result of the interface between information-discourse structure, on the one hand, and a certain syntactic position in the layered structure of the clause, on the other: topical, focused, and contrastive constituents are hosted respectively by the left-detached position, pre-core slot, and kontrast position. Bear in mind that each position requires a certain discourse condition to be met. We also show that non-canonical constituent orders at the Persian left-periphery are not merely a rearrangement of syntactic units for pragmatic reasons, they are in effect ‘ constituent ordering constructions’ in line with the notion of construction as proposed and defined in the RRG theory.

This study investigates non-canonical syntax in the Persian language from a non-hierarchical perspective, emphasizing the significant role of information-structural triggers, including topic and focus, in shaping the non-canonical order of left-dislocated possessive constructions. We apply Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993, 2004) to account for the grammatical and pragmatic properties of these constructions. Additionally, we utilize Syntax First Alignment (Newson, 2004, 2010) to explore the constraints and discourse-pragmatic reasons for left-dislocated possessive constructions, particularly those related to left dislocation in Persian. While left dislocation may resemble PREPOSING, it differs in that a co-referential pronoun occupies the canonical position of the marked constituent (Schiffrin & Hamilton, 2008). Dabir-Moghaddam (2005) explains that left dislocation involves moving an item to the sentence-initial position, with a resumptive pronoun taking its original place.

In this paper, we propose a flat analysis of English clause structure in which there is no syntactic VP constituent. Wherever in the derivation of any individual sentence, a unit appears, which looks superficially like a VP, we argue that it is either syntactically a subject less clause, as in “VP-PREPOSING” and “VP-coordination”, or a unit which is constructed solely at the level of logical form, as in “VP-ellipsis” and “VP-anaphora”. The construction of logical forms is carried out in two stages. Firstly, each syntactic rule is accompanied by a translation rule which compositionally gives a corresponding logical form. This aspect of the proposal has affinities with ideas from Lexical Functional Grammar, in particular GLUE semantics (Dalrymple 2001), and Combinatory Categorial Grammar (Steedman 1996), although neither of these frameworks assumes a flat clause structure. The logical forms which are so constructed may then themselves be the input to a further stage of higher-order unification. This procedure manipulates them in a variety of ways. For example creating the partitions required by information structure (Pulman 1997). This aspect of the proposal has affinities with proposals for a flat structure for English clauses in Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin 2005).

Other things being equal, grammatical subject is coded as the theme of the clause. In marked cases, however, other non-subject arguments and prepositional phrases may appear as the theme due to some processes, including pre-posing. Accordingly, the goals of the present study are three-fold. First, it aims at investigating the information status of grammatical subject as the unmarked theme of the clause. Secondly, it intends to find the marked themes in the non-canonical constructions, including inversion, topicalization, passivization, and scrambling. PREPOSING as a cover terms includes all these processes. Accordingly, this study is set out to examine information status, syntactic category, and grammatical function of preposed constituents (marked themes). The degree of matching between grammatical subject and theme is also investigated. This study is a corpus-based one in which the data are collected from two different corpora: a movie (Separation by Farhadi) and a football report. The theory of information structure by Prince (1992) revised in Birner (2013) is adopted as theoretical model of the study. Based on this theory, information is classified in terms of discourse and hearer. Accordingly, information status of any constituent can be one of these for cases: discourse oldhearer old, discourse old-hearer new, discourse new-hearer old, and discourse newhearer new. This classification is applied to the collected themes (both marked and unmarked) of both corpora. Halliday (2004) is another theoretical basis of this study. Different types of themes are taken from Halliday(2004) to be analyzed in terms of information status. The focus in this study is on topical themes (not interpersonal or textual themes). The target themes were, then, coded based on the theoretical model and they were analyzed by SPSS (version 23). In terms of syntactic markedness, the results indicated that in football report, there were more numbers of marked syntactic structures comparing with the film corpus. As for the match between subject and theme, the results indicated a higher amount of match between these two concepts in film corpus comparing with football report corpus. The lower match between subject and theme in football report can be accounted for by the higher number of movements and dislocations in the syntactic category of this type of language. As stated, the main goal of this study was to investigate the information status of both marked and unmarked themes. As for unmarked theme (subject), the results showed that in film corpus such themes are mainly old (more than 90%) both in terms of discourse and hearer. In contrast, the themes were found to be mainly discourse-old but hearer new (more than 65%) in the football report corpus. This is due to the different nature of these two corpora. In daily conversations (film), we have topic continuity, while in football the sentences are expressed to refer to different individuals (no topic continuity). As stated, preposed (marked themes) are also investigated. As for information status, there is almost the same pattern as unmarked themes. Most of the marked themes in film corpus are old both in terms of discourse and hearer. In football report corpus, however, the marked themes (preposed themes) are mainly discourse-old and hearer new. This is somehow problematic, since the discourse old entities cannot be hearer-new. Prince (1992) resolved this problem by raising the issue of schemata and set relations. She believed that many referents are implied in the discourse and hence counted as being discourse-old. She called them inferable. In football report corpus, there were many such inferable marked themes. Another unexpected finding was the high amount of new preposed themes in film corpus which seems to contradict the previous literature (Birner, (1996), for example). Careful examination of literature does not ban the occurrence of new pre-posed items in theme position, although themes naturally have identifiable referents. ‘ recency of new-ness/ old-ness proposed by Birner (1996) can account for the emerged pattern in the present study. The results of this study are important both theoretically and practically. Many findings showed that the constraints on PREPOSING are not observed in the two investigated corpora. It implies that Persian language, due to its flexible word order, does not follow the rules of other languages. It seems there is a connection between language type and the kind of the constraints in that language. This can be a suggestion for further study to find the appropriate constraints governing information status of themes in Persian. Another implication of this study is the fact that in the same language, we do not have the same patterns as far as the information status of themes is concerned. As it was found, the information status of themes in film corpus was dramatically different from football report corpus. Therefore, one cannot generalize the results obtained in a study to the whole language.