Persian Complex Predicates: Evidence for Verb Movement from Ellipsis and Negation

摘要

Persian has two main verb forms, Simplex Predicates and Complex Predicates (CPr). CPrs consist of a Non-Verbal element (NV), which can be a noun, adjective, adverb or proposition, and a Light Verb (LV) (Vahedi-Langarudi 1996). There has been a controversy on the relation and syntactic position of these two elements. Megerdoomian (2001, 2012) believes that these two elements form a constituent and therefore, treats the CPrs as one syntactic unit. On the other hand, Folli, Harley and Karimi (2005) believe that the NV takes the internal argument as its complement and projects its own phrase, which then merges with the LV.;In the present thesis, I provide evidence in support for Megerdoomian's proposal building on two main lines of argumentation from ellipsis in VPs and the scope of negation. These two argumentations lead me to suggest that the NV and the LV project a head, which I name the Complex-Verb (CV).