Ra-centric constructions at Persian left-periphery: an RRG account

Abstract Ra-marking in Persian has been a hotly debated topic over five decades. The postposition is primarily a definite marker of accusative objects in Standard Persian. However, the possibility for it to accompany indefinite accusative objects has paved the way for the emergence of further accounts such as ra being a marker of specificity, topicality, or identifiability. In colloquial Persian, the postposition also appears in displacement constructions where it marks clause-external possessors or obliques serving as so-called topics. In this paper, we argue that ra-marking is not unique to topical DOs and displaced NPs. A ra-marked NP also partakes in the constitution of focus structure while the postposition is taken to be an identifiability marker. We situate our account within a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework to delineate that ra-marking at the Persian left-periphery is an example par excellence of the (mis)match between identifiability as a discourse-based concept and the pragmatic functions that the ra-marked displaced NPs serve in information structure. It becomes clear that a displaced NP legitimately plays an array of information-structural roles varying from a primary and secondary topic to a contrastive focus.