The Progressive Aspect and Its Manifestation in Contemporary Persian

 Abstract This paper is restricted to only one category of grammatical aspect in Persian i.e. progressiveness. It will be demonstrated that this aspectual notion is expressed in different ways including inflectional morpheme, auxiliary verb and lexical means. Some linguists ignored the different aspectual meanings of the prefix mi- and regarded it as the exclusive marker of progressiveness . One source of controversy is the polysemic nature of the prefix mi- expressing divers aspectual notions. Indeed, this imperfective marker in Modern Persian no longer expresses progressive aspect in the present tense. Another way to express progressiveness is the use of the verb dâ&scaron tan(to have) that is used with the main verb as an auxiliary or helping verb in both present and past tenses. In sum, this paper shows that progressiveness is different from habituality and iterativity. Also, it demonstrates that the notion of progressiveness is expressed by different forms. However, it should be noted that not all Persian verbs have a progressive aspect. For example states and achievements are two main exceptions in this regard. Â