Examining the Emerging Suffix "-طور" /towr/ in Contemporary Persian with a Cognitive Morphology Approach

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Mohammad Reza Pahlavannezhad ¹

Nahid Behnam Moghaddam ²

¹ Linguistics Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran,

² Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

10.22067/jlkd.2026.98626.1382

Abstract

This paper, adopting a cognitive morphology approach and relying on the prototype theory, systematically examines the {x + tor} pattern in Persian. The research data includes 104 contextual examples extracted from natural discourses of users in cyberspace. The main goal of the research is to determine the central meaning and peripheral meanings of this suffix and to examine the relationship between the lexical base type and the conceptual roles resulting from its combination. In addition, the authors drew conceptual schemas based on the meanings obtained, which were helpful in explaining the data. The findings show that the construction {x + tor} has a radial semantic organization in which the prototype meaning is human state similarity and extends to more abstract domains at 10 levels of object sensory similarity, appearance style, evaluative, form and structure, mode of expression, genre, social identity, artistic personality, situation, and quantity. This expansion demonstrates the dynamics of morphology in digital discourse.

Keywords

Suffix "؛ -towr"؛

Cognitive Morphology

Prototype Theory

Conceptual Schema

Social Networks

Subjects

• Word construction

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