none 10.1075/cilt.361.11sto John Benjamins Publishing Company John Benjamins Publishing Company 1757 146109436 4480606 1419350 202507022008000011 10.1075 2025-07-02T18:10:42Z 2023-03-20T14:11:06Z 0 0304-0763 10.1075/cilt https://benjamins.com/ catalog/cilt Simin Karimi University of Arizona https://ror.org/03m2x1q45 Narges Nematollahi University of Arizona https://ror.org/03m2x1q45 Roya Kabiri University of Arizona https://ror.org/03m2x1q45 Jian Gang Ngui University of Arizona https://ror.org/03m2x1q45 This volume offers insight into different aspects of an interesting but fairly understudied language family, opens a path to new inquiries, and provides valuable contribution to linguistics, in general, and to Iranian linguistics, in particular. The articles in this volume offer novel analyses of significant properties of some of the Iranian languages, and contribute to various linguistic subareas such as experimental and historical linguistics as well as the morphology, syntax and semantics of several members of this language family. Specifically, this volume features a few articles on the Ezafe construction which shed new light on this interesting phenomenon of Western Iranian languages from historical, comparative and syntactic points of view. Moreover, a few articles address the syntax and formal semantics of properties of Persian, offering new insight into particular constructions in this language which are also fruitful for the general theory of linguistics. Crucially, all authors raise important questions, opening up the path for further investigations. 361 4 14 2023 3 20 2023 9789027213471 9789027253286 John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam 10.1075/cilt.361 http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027253286 https://www.jbe-platform.com/deliver/fulltext/9789027253286.pdf https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1075/cilt.361/html Dennis R. Storoshenko University of Calgary https://ror.org/03yjb2x39 Mahyar Nakhaei University of Calgary https://ror.org/03yjb2x39 Abstract This paper examines the nature of elements such as hi:tʃkӕs “anyone” in Persian, which have been described as either Negative Polarity Items ( Taleghani 2006 ) or Negative Concord Items ( Kwak 2010 ) in prior literature. Such claims have typically been used to motivate analyses of Persian NegP as being high in the clause structure, above TP. This is in contrast to more recent analyses which have argued for a low position of negation ( Kahnemuyipour 2017 ). Here, we present experimental evidence showing that c-commanding negation is not sufficient for licensing hi:tʃ elements, unlike English any . We also show that hi:tʃ elements have many properties in common with similar elements in Japanese and Korean, where there is less certainty in designating these as Negative Concord Items, and where negation is independently argued to be low. Thus, we claim, the distribution of hi:tʃ elements cannot be upheld as a proof of syntactically high negation, under either a polarity item or concord item analysis. We close the paper with a typological discussion, suggesting that the properties of hi:tʃ elements and their kin seem to be broadly shared among OV languages more generally. 4 14 2023 3 20 2023 282 306 10.1075/cilt.361.11sto https://benjamins.com/catalog/cilt.361.11sto https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1075/cilt.361.11sto/html 10.1162/ling.2009.40.1.35 Investigations in universal grammar: A guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax and semantics Crain 1998 Word order, NP movements, and opacity conditions in Persian Darzi 1996 10.21248/hpsg.2016.13 10.1017/S0008413100017928 10.1162/ling.2007.38.1.1 The Partee Effect Horn 179 2005 Airport’86 revisited: Toward a unified indefinite any Negation is low in Persian: evidence from nominalization Kahnemuyipour 2017 Second North American Conference on Iranian Linguistics (NACIL 2) Kahnemuyipour 2019 The CP-vP parallelism: Evidence from (some) Iranian languages 10.1515/9783110199796 The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics Karimi 161 2018 Generative approaches to syntax Japanese/Korean Linguistics Kim 10 615 2002 Intervention effects are focus effects Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics Kuno 28 195 2008 Negation, focus, and negative concord in Japanese 10.1080/00210862.2010.518028 10.3115/1654690.1654701 10.4236/ojml.2016.64031 Language Research Sells 42 275 2006 Korean NPIs scope over negation Persian quantifiers and their scope Shafiei 10.1075/cilt.361.02sha University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 23.1: Annual Penn Linguistics Conference Shafiei 40 241 2017 Scope as a diagnostic for the position of negation in Persian 10.1093/jos/ffr004 The interaction of modality, aspect and negation in Persian Taleghani 2006