Language Studies

The Light Verb "keʃidæn" in Persian: Unraveling its Polysomic Nature through Frame Semantics and Construction Morphology

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research original ,Regular Article

Authors

Raheleh Gandomkar 1
Mohammad Hasanshahi Raviz 2

1 Associate Professor of Linguistics, Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Ph.D. candidate of Linguistics, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran.

10.30465/ls.2026.51623.2208
Abstract
This research examines the meanings of compound verbs with the light verb "keshidan" (pulling) in Persian. The study uses two semantic theories: Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1982) and Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010a & b; 2018). The data consists of 252 compound verbs with "keshidan" sourced from Zanso dictionary (Keshani, 1994), Sokhan dictionary (2002), the syntactic valency lexicon for Persian verbs (Rasouli et al., 2011), and the Corpus of Light Verb Constructions in Persian (Eshaghi & Karimi-Doostan, 2022). The data was categorized based on meanings from Anvari's Great Dictionary and the authors' linguistic intuition. The study found that the formation patterns of compound verbs using constructional schemas can be explained, and the semantic roles and syntactic capacities of sentences with these verbs can be described using semantic frames. A key finding is that "keshidan" represents an extension that can be spatial, temporal, or spatiotemporal. The research also shows that speakers associate constructional schemas and semantic frames with different perspectives on phenomena. The study outlines a network of constructional schemas and sub-schemas that illustrate polysemic constructions in compound verbs with "keshidan," contributing to a deeper understanding of compound verb structures and meanings in Persian.

Keywords

Light Verb "
Keʃidæn"
, Compound Verb, Construction Morphology, Frame Semantics, Polysemy
Subjects
Language Studies

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 13 May 2026

  • Receive Date 16 April 2025
  • Revise Date 01 December 2025
  • Accept Date 13 May 2026

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