<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div id="yiv1989207033">Dear LINGTYP members,</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033"> Persian has generally been considered throughout the literature as basically a SXV language with a variety of word order rearrangements, which situates it in the category of scrambling languages. Scrambling, as far as I know, is a linguistic term with a paramount importance in the generative literature since Ross' (1967) PhD dissertation on. However, several Iranian and non-Iranian linguists claim that scrambling is a discourse-motivated phenomenon particularly intended to elicit topic or focus interpretations (Karimi 2005 among others). Given that Persian is a canonically a SXV language, the abundance of linguistic terms exerted to describe the syntactic dislocations in the pre-verbal domain of the sentence has lead
to a huge baffling puzzle in my mind. For instance, Birner and Mahootian (1996) claim that there is an inversion process in Persian, functionally akin to English inversion, and English topicalization in terms of the linear order of dislocated constituents, according to which the canonical SXV order is modified to XSV monitored pragmatically by this constraint that the preposed constituent is required to represent information at least as familiar within the discourse as that represented by the postposed constituent, which is in line with Birner (1994). The functional overlap between inversion despite the different constituent order in the two languages gives rise to the claim that inversion in English and Persian constitutes identical constructions on their own rights. </div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Inversion in Persian: X (PP) S V</div><div id="yiv1989207033">Inversion in English : X (PP) V S</div><div
id="yiv1989207033">Topicalization in English : X S V </div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Ex.1: ru-ye hær qali donyayi hast. preposed PP: ru-ye hær qali (Discourse-old)</div><div id="yiv1989207033"> on-EZ every carpet world be.PRS.3SG postposed S: donyayi (Discourse-new)</div><div id="yiv1989207033"> 'In every carper is a world.' (Birner and Mahootian ibid:
130)</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Another functional contribution by Shahidi (2000) reveals that scrambling is a distinct process in the syntax of Persian in which the clausal constituents undergo leftward movements that is conditional to the preservation of their grammatical marking; for example the postposition "ra" and prepositions in case of direct object NPs and PPs respectively. Moreover, the moved elements in leftward scrambling are not bound by their information statuses; e.g. a discourse-new PP can be scrambled to the beginning of the clause in presence of a discourse-old subject, whereas the same alteration in inversion along the lines proposed by Birner and Mahootian (ibid) would be in felicitous on the grounds that the preposed constituent is not supposed to represent newer information than the postposed one. </div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Ex 2: čeraq-ha-ra
man xamuš mi-kon-am. </div><div id="yiv1989207033"> light-PL-RA I dark IPFV-do.PRS-1SG</div><div id="yiv1989207033"> 'lights I'll turn off.' (DO scrambling)</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Ex. 3: ba yeki æz qali-ha-š aqa tæmam-e mædresæ-ro mi-xærid. </div><div id="yiv1989207033"> with one of carpet-PL-CL.3SG
master entire-EZ school-RA IPFV-buy.PST-3SG</div><div id="yiv1989207033"> 'With one of his carpets the master would buy the entire school.' (PP scrambling) (Shahidi 2000: 206)</div><div id="yiv1989207033">
</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">My query is concerned first and foremost with this issue as to whether the discourse-status of dislocated elements could be a valid criterion for the distinction between inversion and scrambling in a SXV language such as Persian with this in mind that both movements share the leftward shift of constituents; e.g. a PP. Perhaps, the question does not pose an interesting issue for the functionalist or generativist models of language; however, I would like to know how linguistic typology can approach this complication. </div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">My second question deals with this challenge whether or not it is possible to claim that a SXV language such as Persian can represent an inversion construction, i.e. the so-called XSV in light of merely discourse-functional similarities with the XVS inversion in English; namely the pragmatic constraint
governing the distribution of given and new information in the preposed and postposed constituents, regardless of the fact that the so-called XSV order in Persian does not syntactically exhibit postposing of the X, say PP, contrary to the constituent reversal in the English counterpart. </div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">I would appreciate any comments, hints or any cross-linguistic evidence posing the same complication. </div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Thank you.</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Farhad</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">References</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033">Birner, Betty J. 1994. Information status and word order: An analysis of English inversion. Language 70:233-59.</div><div id="yiv1989207033">Birner, Betty J., and Shahrzad Mahootian. 1996. Functional constraints on
inversion in. English and Farsi. Language Sciences 18:127-138.</div><div id="yiv1989207033">Karimi, Simin (2005) A Minimalist Approach to Scrambling: Evidence from Persian, Mouton de Gruyter.</div><div id="yiv1989207033">Shahidi, Noushin. 2000. Topicalization in Persian: A Functional Perspective. MA diss., Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran. </div><div id="yiv1989207033">Ross, John R. 1967. Constraints on Variables in Syntax. Doctoral dissertation,. MIT.</div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033" style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br></div><div id="yiv1989207033" style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div
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