Persian Minimalist Program Analysis

Persian is Typologically known as an SOV language; verbs mostly appear at the end of the verb phrase. But it shows the word order properties of SVO languages, too.

Persian has a free word order, that is, it is possible to change the order of the verb, its complements, and adjuncts in different ways, without affecting the grammaticality of the sentence.

The properties of Persian regarding three parameters of the Minimalist Program that is relevant to the topic are the following:

- Head Position Parameter: Considering the head-complement order, an SOV language is expected to be head-final. On the contrary, Persian is mostly referred to as a head-first language, as evident in Persian PPs, DPs, VPs with clausal-complements, and adjectives with
o In Persian, the case marker for the specific objects is “ra”, which always follows its complement and makes the so-called “Case Phrase”, mostly abbreviated as KP in the literature. o There are some Persian verbs such as verbs of speaking that accept a complementizer phrase (CP) as their complements. There is only one complementizer in Persian, that is “ke” [that]. Similar to some other Indo-Iranian languages like Urdu or Bengali, this clause-initial complementizer appears in the post-verbal position. It is possible for the resulting complement-clause to be covert. The complementizer phrase in Persian can also appear after DPs and serve as their complements, the same as relative pronouns in English.

- Null Subject Parameter: Persian is a pro-drop or null subject language; that is it is acceptable to drop the nominative pronoun as the subject of the
As Persian is a stress-accent language, a certain syllable in a word is more prominent than other syllables. Considering the AM framework, there are three important prosodic studies of Persian. Eslami (2005) believe that in Persian there are four pitch accents (L*, H*, L*+H, L+H*), two phrase accents (L-, H-) and also two boundary tones (L%, H%). He states that each of the above has a specific meaning and there are sixteen possible combinations of them in Persian. Mahjani (2003) believes that the prosodic structure of Persian has three hierarchical levels, i.e. accentual phrase, intermediate phrase and intonational phrase. Each prosodic level consists of one or more constituents of its lower level. In Persian, the accentual phrase includes at least one content word and its intonational pattern is L+H* in most accentual phrases, but it is H* in initially-stressed words. Sadat-Tehrani (2007) believes the prosodic structure of Persian has two hierarchical levels, i.e. accentual phrase and intonational phrase. And the smallest prosodic unit in Persian is the accentual phrase, with the phonological representation L+H* associating with the stressed