Language Studies

Language Studies

Investigating Transparency in Persian and English Inflectional Affixes Based on Natural Morphology Theory

Document Type : Research original ,Regular Article

Authors
Leila Gholipour Hsasnkiadeh 1
Foroogh Kazemi 2
1 PhD Student of Linguistics, Department Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Linguistics, Department, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran. (Corresponding Author),
10.30465/ls.2022.40760.2048
Abstract
The morphological systems tend to follow certain principles, transparency is one of these important principles. This study examined the transparency of Persian and English inflectionals based on natural morphology. The main issue is how transparency is represented according to natural morphology. Persian data are selected from Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies Corpora and English data are extracted from Corpus of Contemporary American English through random sampling (and based on equal number of words). Afterwards, they were analyzed based on Dressler and Mayerthaler’s approach. The results indicate, in Persian, the plural markers –ha,-un, the superlative adjective marker -tarin, past tense suffixes –t, -ad, and negation prefix n-, and in English, the genitive marker -'s, superlative adjective marker -est and past participle -en are transparent and the rest is opaque. Findings indicate the transparency of nouns and verbs in Persian is more than adjectives; however, in English, it′s not true. This is one of the differences of two morphological systems. Also, there is no direct relationship between transparency and frequency of inflectional affixes. Indeed, there is a direct relationship between grammatical categories and transparency of inflectional affixes. This relationship doesn’t necessarily apply to the transparency of each affix with its frequency.
Keywords
Frequency
Inflectional Affixes
Inflectional Values
Natural Morphology Theory
Persian and English
Transparency

Subjects

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Language Studies
Volume 13, Issue 2 - Serial Number 26
autumn & winter
February 2022
Pages 193-222

  • Receive Date 19 August 2022
  • Revise Date 19 October 2022
  • Accept Date 05 November 2022