Teaching transitive/intransitive Persian motion verbs to non-native learners: A cognitive approach for recognizing transitivity and conceptualizing motion verbs

The present study explored the notion of teaching transitivity of motion verbs. Recognition of transitivity is very important for Persian language learners. The importance of this structure in Persian is related to its use. On the one hand, the learners can guess whether they can use direct object and its marker (rā) or not, on the other hand, they can decide about using passive structure. Since the learners do not have native speaker intuitions about Persian grammar, recognition of transitivity is a difficult subject for them. Motion events involve situations encompassing movement or the maintenance of a stationary location. According to Talmy (2000), the basic motion event consists of one object (the ‘Figure') moving or located with respect to another object (the reference-object or ‘Ground'). Besides these two components, its semantic structure has two internal components, i.e. ‘Path' and ‘Motion'. The ‘Path' is the course followed or the site occupied by the Figure object with respect to the Ground object, and the ‘Motion' refers to the presence in the event of motion or location. Considering only the dynamic motion event (MOVE) and leaving the result of a motion (BE Loc) aside, we deal with the linking of semantic and syntactic properties. Following Talmy (2000), Persian language motion verbs are classified in fifteen groups, and one schematic representation was considered for each of them. In this study referential verbs describe a motion event only when their object denotes a location-type entity....