Persian Ezafe as a 'figure' Marker: a Unified Analysis

This article is a conceptual exploration of Ezafe in Modern Persian. I will consider cases where Ezafe seems to be conceptually non-neutral. In certain cases of the ‘X-e Y’ construction, X and Y can change their places with a shift in meaning while they are apparently frozen in their positions in other cases of Ezafe construction. The question to address here is if the Ezafe element -e marks any conceptual relation between X (Mozaf) and Y (Mozafon-elaih). I hypothesize that the degree of the conceptual integration of X and Y is a defining characteristic of the a/symmetry of the relation between X and Y in such cases. Moreover, I propose to analyze Persian Ezafe as the grammaticalized marker of the figureground organization of information. This conceptual analysis of Ezafe also seems to have bearing on formal accounts of the phenomena under discussion here. As such, the article is expected to afford a moderate degree of unification of both formal and conceptual accounts of language in this respect.