Semantic Study in Persian

According to the existing sources, “general and proper terms” were studied by grammarians and logicians as well. Proper nouns have been studied by grammarians and logicians from the viewpoint of the denotational approach. In the study of general and restricted terms one can include another category of words besides nouns, namely, adjectives. General and restricted terms can be analyzed as a continuum rather than distinct categories. In Persian, each term can change its nature to a restricted term in association with other terms and show new effects by analogy to some sense-relations. When restricted nouns are used as general terms, there is a clear shift in semantic type. We can conclude that this type-shifting occurs in the case of nouns which does not occur in the case of adjectives in Persian. Restricted nouns can be used in plural form or can be followed by yek [a] if they are used as general nouns in Persian.