Chapter 9. A null stem analysis of Persian copular verbs

Abstract

Traditional grammars of Persian recognize two copular series for the affirmative indicative present tense, which we call the independent copulas and dependent copulas. The former has been considered as a full verb whereas the latter has been described as an enclitic. This paper explores the syntactic and phonological properties of the two copular series by looking into cases in which only one form is grammatical. We propose that the dependent copulas are not enclitics but have the same internal structure as the independent copulas, consisting of a null verbal stem and a person inflectional suffix. Through examinations of the syntactic operations of A-bar movement via association with an enclitic focus particle and ellipsis of the complement, as well as stress assignment in copular constructions, we demonstrate that nonparallel grammatical judgments arise from unsuccessful stress assignment, which results from the absence of overt material in the complement. This work contributes a new look at the copular system in Persian and beyond, which has not been extensively investigated in the literature.