Abstract
This paper compares several types of verbs in English and Persian in terms of direction. The direction of verbs seems to be potentially problematic for the Iranian EFL learners. English verbs can be formed by affixation and compounding. Even proper names and names of animals and products can be used as simple verbs. Persian is poor in this respect, and most verbs are formed via a limited number of affixes or by the productive process of verb collocation. English verbs seem more flexible in switching to intransitive or transitive modes, while Persian requires morphological transformation. The use of prepositions with objects can pose problems for the Iranian EFL learners. In one language, the focus of the sentence is on the subject while in the other, emphasis is directed to the object. Adverbs and prepositional phrases can be inherently stored in the English verb, while Persian has to openly express them.
Highlights
Languages are different; they follow certain sentence patterns
This paper addresses some of the differences and similarities which exist between English and Persian verbs in terms of the direction of the presentation of message and it deals with the different interpretations which may cause misunderstanding for EFL learners in general and the Iranian EFL learners in particular
Except for the limited number of simple verbs in Persian, the main part of Persian verb lexicon is filled with verb collocations
Summary
Languages are different; they follow certain sentence patterns. Some have to observe noun and adjective declensions based on the gender of the arguments. Most studies focused on the ordering of word items commonly known as binomials This linguistic phenomenon refers to the word pairs which consist of two or three words joined by conjunctions Others focused on the quality of the sounds such as strong or weak resonance and the quality of consonants and vowels as the initial element of the binomials (Lehiste, 1961, 1964; Byrd, 1994; Keating et al, 1999; Fougeron, 1999) Frequency is another factor which can determine the ordering of pairs. Ghomeshi’s (2001) study on Persian control and thematic agreement has shown that Persian has core control constructions in which the obligatorily empty subject of an embedded clause takes its reference from an antecedent in the higher clause These embedded clauses are relatively transparent for scrambling and lack independent tense. To my best knowledge, there has been no or little work on the direction of verbs to pinpoint the potential mistakes that learners may make
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