Semantic-pragmatic functions of ra in Persian: a diachronic and synchronic study

After a brief look at the history of ra, and an overview of Contemporary studies on it, this paper aims at showing that ra may appear with noun phrases having one of the features such as definiteness, specificity, genericity. However, it is not an exclusive maker of any of the above. The main argument of the present research is that in the realm of Pragmatics, any phrase obligatorily followed by ra is necessarily of a, high degree of reference as discussed in the body of the paper. With structures similar ill terms of ally of the concepts Conveying the above features, but differing only in presence or absence of ra, the form accompanied by ra reflects a higher degree of reference to the entity in question compared to the one without ra. the paper also discusses adjuncts represented by NPs accompanied by M. Finally, prepositional phrases accompanied by ra, along with their pragmatic functions are discussed.