Relative clauses in Farsi: a typological study

The present paper, comprised of three main sections, aims to study relative clauses in Farsi from a typological perspective. In the first section, the common strategies for making relative clauses in Farsi are reviewed. In the second section, the position of Farsi relative clauses in the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy is investigated. In the last section, the differences between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses are discussed. The results indicate that Farsi enjoys a higher number of strategies than that which has been explored so far. In addition, the limitations on making relative clauses from different noun phrases in Farsi, as compared with a number of other languages, are reported. Finally, it is concluded that the reason behind some ambiguities in distinguishing restrictive clauses from non-restrictive clauses can be traced in their different readings.