Intervention effects in Persian: A pragmatic approach

Abstract

This paper aims at a description of intervention effects in Persian, which have been underdocumented thus far. It is shown that Persian involves intervention effects when the NPIs and some quantificational phrases precede wh-phrases except for cherâ 'why', and the intervention effects are canceled when the wh-phrase scrambles over the intervener as in many other languages with intervention effects. Also, as in the case of Korean and Japanese, cherâ 'why' is exempt from intervention effects. This paper argues that the asymmetry between cherâ 'why' and the other wh-phrases with regard to intervention effects cannot be accounted for by a purely syntactic analysis. It will also be argued that the current Persian data can be explained by a pragmatic account of intervention effects proposed by Tomioka (2007, 2009) and may further support the pragmatic account. © 2018 Institute for the Study of Language and Information.