Topic and Focus Functional Phrases in the Persian Clause: Medial or Pre-medial Domain

In the field of syntax and sentence structure, the study of topic and focus phrases has gained significant attention. These phrases play a crucial role in conveying information and highlighting specific elements within a sentence. While the study of Persian has been conducted using generative, functional, cognitive, and optimality frameworks, these approaches have encountered difficulties in explaining structural changes and creating marked constructions such as topic and focus. Thus, using a descriptive-analytical methodology, the study aims to explore the topic and focus constructions in Persian spoken language within a Minimalist program framework, focusing on their functions, syntactic positioning, and their contribution to discourse coherence and cohesion to propose a suitable solution for resolving the contentious issue of the base-generated position and multiplicity of topics and focuses in Persian clauses by analyzing information structure in pre-posed constructions. Analysis of Persian spoken samples reveals that pre-posed constructions in Persian contain predominantly old information for the listener and have relative prominence within a clause. Additionally, these constructions can occupy either the topic or focus position, or both, from an information structure perspective. This study provides more satisfactory explanations for these constructions in Persian.

کلیدواژه ها:

Minimalistic program ، Persian language syntax ، pre-posed constructions ، topic and focus phrases ، information structure ، middle and pre-middle domain ، Persian spoken sample