Agreement Restrictions in Persian is the first comprehensive attempt to tackle the issue of verbal agreement in Persian from a cross-linguistic point of view. Persian is a field of research within theoretical linguistics that is yet to be sufficiently explored. This book adopts the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995-2004) which is at the forefront of recent theories of formal syntax and applies it to the Persian language.

Although it is commonly believed that in Persian the verb agrees with the subject, several constructions seem to constrain this obligatory rule. Adopting the framework of Distributed Morphology, the author argues that agreement is in fact obtained with the plural inanimate subjects but a morphological rule may block the result. Unlike the previous analyses which consider the experiencer as the subject of the psychological constructions, the author argues that the psychological state is the subject of the sentence. The findings of this book not only contribute to better understanding of Persian syntax, but also have important implications for grammar theory.

Dr. Anousha Sedighi is Associate Professor of Persian and the coordinator of the Persian program at Portland State University. She has been teaching elementary Persian for more than a decade and serves as the current president of the American Association of Teachers of Persian.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 The Notion of Subject
1.2. Central problems and solutions
1.3. The Theoretical Frameworks
1.4. Background knowledge on Persian
1.5. Outline of the Book
Chapter 2: Animacy and Agreement Restriction in Persian
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Restrictions: Syntactic vs. Morphological accounts
2.3. Animacy in Persian
2.4. Impoversihment proposal for Animacy Restriction
2.5. Summary
Chapter 3: Psychological Verbs and Multiple Subject Constructions
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Psychological Predicates
3.3. Dative/Double Subject Construction in South Asian Languages
3.4. Categorical/Broad Subjects
3.5. Dative Subject Constructions in South Slavic/Albanian
3.6. Summary
Chapter 4: Psychological Verbs in Persian and Applied Arguments
4.1. Introduction
4.2. High and Low Applicatives
4.3. Psychological Constructions in Persian
4.4. The Proposal for Persian Psychological Constructions
4.5. Summary
Chapter 5: Concluding Remarks
References
List of Abbreviations