The analysis of persian head-initial compound adjectives: cognitive morphology

The author in this research aims at studying the way of the formation of head- initial compound adjectives in persian. In this study the data are analyzed on the basis of three most important theories in cognitive linguistics: categorization theory, domain theory and conceptualization theory. According to prototype theory, and the persisn data analyzed, the adjectives with structure adjective + noun= compound adjective (a), are considered as the prototype in this category and the adjectives with structures (b) and (c), are considered as periphery members, and this is shown on a continuum. The analysis of data on the basis of domain theory indicates that the initial part of these compound adjectives is a general property which activates the related cognitive domain in background knowledge presented in the mind. Between the initial part of the compound adjective which is the syntactic head of structure and the whole concept of compound adjective exists a kind of hyponymy sense relation. The related domains activated show the hyponymy relation between the whole concept and the first part of the compound adjective. In the process of conceptualization of these head- initial compound adjectives, the scene is interpreted according to the concept of hyponymy between the whole concept of the structure and the concept of the syntactic head by the language speakers.