Memory and Motion: A Path Semantics for Memory Predicates in Persian

In many languages, the translational equivalents of memory predicates likeremember, recall, and forget are constructed out of a combination of a noun meaning memory, locative and path prepositions, and verbs of motion. Persian (Southwest Iranian) shows the paradigm of interest in full: stative remember is expressed with (dar) yād budan (lit. to be in memory), active recall is expressed withbe yād umadan (lit. to come to memory), and forgetting is expressed with az yād raftan (lit. to go from memory). In this talk, I develop a compositional semantics for memory predicates in Persian that takes their surface locative and motion-based morpho-syntax seriously. By means of a synthesis of a path-based semantics for motion and scalar change predicates (Krifka 1998; Zwarts 2005; Beavers 2006, 2008, 2011; Martínez Vera 2021) and recent decompositional approaches to attitude predicates and clausal embedding (Kratzer 2006; Moulton 2009; Elliott 2017; Bondarenko 2022), I show that my proposed analysis compositionally derives the interpretations of locative and motion-based memory predicates in Persian and explains their aspectual properties, particularly their behavior as stative or eventive predicates and their (a)telicity.