Subjective Modality and Tense in Persian

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Language Sciences 31 (2009) 853–873

www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci
Subjective modality and tense in Persian

Manoochehr Tavangar, Mohammad Amouzadeh *
Department of Linguistics, University of Isfahan, Hezarjerib Ave., Isfahan, Iran
Received 28 April 2008; received in revised form 10 December 2008; accepted 18 December 2008
Abstract
The present paper sets out to focus on an aspect of the modal system of Persian which, despite its crucial role in inter-
active discourse, has not received the treatment it deserves. More precisely, the paper seeks to investigate how the simple
past is deployed to express subjective epistemic and deontic modality within a future-oriented framework. This apparent
clash between tense and time can be explained in terms of a set of recognition criteria: tense-distinction, interrogation, con-
ditionality and modal harmony. The clash is also explicable pragmatically in that it is heavily context-dependent. In both
cases, the underlying assumption is that the modality under consideration is invariably construed as indicating certainty,
disbelief, challenge, nonchalance or obligation with respect to a particular state of affairs.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Subjectivity; Modality; Tense; Interrogation; Conditionality; Modal harmony; Persian
‘‘Propositions are the primary bearers of truth and falsity. Propositions are also the objects of our atti-
tudes: they are things we doubt, believe, and think.” King and Davis (2003, p. 195)
1. Introduction
The pervasiveness of modality as a semantic phenomenon is beyond question.1 What corroborates this
claim is the existence of a vast body of literature which has built up over the years, and which continues to
grow as new vistas are opened up through unabating research work (see, for instance, Butler, 2003; Bybee,
1998; Coates, 1983; Halliday, 2002; Narrog, 2005; Nuyts, 2001; Traugott, 2003; von Wright, 1952). The
Abbreviations: ATTR, attributive; CM, conditional marker; CONJ, conjunction; DP, deontic particle; EP, epistemic particle; IMP,
imperative; IMPF, imperfective; INDEF, indefinite; NEG, negative; NPS, non-past stem; OM, object marker; PERF, perfective; PL,
plural; POSS, possessive; PP, past participle; RP, resultative particle; SG, singular; SUBJ, subjunctive. Furthermore the plus sign ‘+’
separates the two parts of a compound verb.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 311 6699546; fax: +98 311 7933073.
E-mail addresses: amouzadeh.m@gmail.com, amouzadeh@litr.ui.ac.ir (M. Amouzadeh).
1
There is a tendency to confuse mood with modality. As a matter of fact, the former is a grammatical category, while the latter
designates a semantic entity (Palmer, 1979, p. 4).
0388-0001/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.langsci.2008.12.016
854 M. Tavangar, M. Amouzadeh / Language Sciences 31 (2009) 853–873
paradox, however, is that, notwithstanding such an upsurge of interest, the inherently complex structure of
modality still baffles many scholars, seeing that it is by no means easy to pin down what exactly constitutes
modal meaning in terms of its linguistic features. This situation means that undertaking further explorations
in the domain of modality pays off since it can illuminate at least some of those dimensions which are still
nebulous.
The principal motivation for this study is to examine a facet of the Persian modal system which has unfor-
tunately been neglected: subjective modality expressed through the mediation of the past-tense form. More
specifically, the issue we intend to address is how to account for the circumstance that, given specific situa-
tional contexts, the past tense is used to encode subjective epistemic and deontic stances taken by speakers
with respect to the realization of states of affairs in future.
At this stage, it is worth stressing that the semantic and pragmatic behavior of the modality type in question
characterizes it as a non-canonical version of modal realization. As a result, the incompatibility of the past-
tense form with the temporal context in which it is used admits of explication only if we remember that the
morphological shape of the tense involved does not correspond to past epistemic or deontic judgment on
the part of the speaker.
As far as the delimitation of the present study is concerned, we will focus on a number of conversational
exchanges2 which were attested by the authors as actualized speech events, and which, as a result, can be
claimed to be characteristic of day-to-day interactive communication in modern colloquial Persian. Interest-
ingly enough, it is in this area of usage that subjective modality is predominantly operative.
The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 spells out the theoretical framework within which our
investigation of subjective modalization is to be carried out. This involves providing a brief account of fun-
damental concepts and an operational definition of modality. Section 3 takes up the modal system of Persian
and delineates the major canonical options to which native speakers have access, and the ways in which such
options are encoded linguistically. Section 4 deals with the analysis and description of some illustrative exam-
ples of future-oriented epistemic and deontic modality, the aim being to identify the semantic/pragmatic fea-
tures associated with this stylistically marked usage, as well as the patterns extractable from the data. Finally,
Section 5 sums up the results of the descriptive analysis and makes an attempt to evaluate them in terms of the
insight they yield into the mechanism behind subjective modality.
2. Theoretical prelude
Examination of the current literature on modality reveals that, despite their divergent theoretical stances,
scholars have reached a unanimous verdict: modality is an elusive domain of human thought and languages.
In this regard, King’s (1997, p. 362) observations are illuminating: ‘‘Undeniably, modality is a subject of con-
siderable complexity, fraught with possibly fuzzy, certainly slippery categories and poorly defined despite con-
siderable recent progress”. Also relevant is Kudô’s (1989, p. 15) statement that ‘‘modality has become the
dustbin of grammatical categories”. The argument put forward by Auwera and Plungian (1998, p. 80) that
‘‘modality and its types can be defined and named in various ways”, and that ‘‘there is no correct way” sounds
less pessimistic, and yet points up the elusiveness of the phenomenon in question. Thus, on the strength of
citations like these, we are led to believe that a universally accepted definition of modality is simply non-exis-
tent. Broadly speaking, however, three distinct perspectives on modality are ascertainable within the discipline
of linguistics:
(a) Modality as the expression of the speaker’s attitude (e.g. Lyons, 1977; Palmer, 1986; Bybee et al., 1994);
(b) Modality as a category embracing whatever linguistic expression there is outside the proposition (e.g.
Fillmore, 1968; Gerstenkorn, 1976); and
(c) Modality as a device for expressing distinctions of factuality (e.g. Givón, 1995; Palmer, 1998, 2001;
Dietrich, 1992; Narrog, 2005).
2
It should be pointed out that the illustrative examples cited were based on the authors’ actual involvement in interactive situations, or
their observation of the way in which other mature adult speakers of Persian use them in a day-to-day conversations.
M. Tavangar, M. Amouzadeh / Language Sciences 31 (2009) 853–873 855
What all three perspectives seem to have in common is the tacit assumption that modality adds ‘‘a special
kind of meaning to the neutral value of a proposition in an utterance” (Wärnsby, 2006, p. 12). This additional
modal meaning can receive different interpretations depending on the context in which it is expressed. The fol-
lowing examples illustrate the point at issue:
(1) Ted is swimming.

(2) Ted can be swimming.
(3) Ted may be swimming.
(4) Ted must be swimming.
As can be seen, on the neutral value of the non-modalized proposition embedded in (1), where a factual
situation is being referred to, are superimposed, so to speak, three distinct modal meanings represented by
can, may, and must, respectively: possibility, probability, and inferred certainty. It must, nonetheless, be
remembered that such meanings are often conveyed in interactive discourse (Bybee and Fleichman, 1995,
pp. 3–8). The implication is that speaker-specific features, as well as situation context, have a vital role to play
when it comes to investigating modality. It will be demonstrated later in this study that this pragmatic aspect
of modality characterizes the future-oriented use of the past tense in Persian.
Having provided a preliminary definition of modality for the purposes of this study, we are now in a position
to devote our attention to a discussion of two modality types which are in focus: epistemic and deontic modality.
2.1. Epistemic and deontic modality
What characterizes epistemic modality is the fact that it ‘‘concerns the expression of truth, but truth rela-
tivized to a speaker” (Frawley, 1992, p. 407). This statement is in full accord with Nuyts’ (2001, p. 398)
remarks: ‘‘Epistemic modality, finally, has little or nothing to do with the internal situation of the state of
affairs . . . but involves a speaker’s evaluation of the ‘ontological’ status of the state of affairs, i.e. it is entirely
speaker-oriented”. In other words, epistemic modality enables the speakers of a language to assign a factuality
value to the propositional content expressed in their statements. Such assignation involves a wide range of
concepts: possibility, probability, necessity, inference, belief, certainty, and the like. By way of illustration,
let us consider the following examples:
(5) It might snow tomorrow. [Remote possibility]

(6) He can’t have done this. [Impossibility]
(7) There must be something wrong with it. [Confident inference]
where, as shown in square brackets, the proposition associated with each sentence undergoes epistemic modal-
ization and, depending on the type of modal used, receives a specific interpretation.
In view of the diversity of concepts falling within the scope of epistemic modality, it would be helpful to set
up a scale, with the notions of ‘‘possibility” and ‘‘certainty” occupying the extreme ends and the notion of
‘‘probability” being located in the middle. The scale can be schematized as in Fig. 1.
Contrasting with epistemic modality is deontic modality, whose conceptual domain accommodates all the
following concepts: obligation, rights, duty, permission, exhortation, orders, requirements. Here are some
examples:
(8) You must pay the damages. [Obligation]

(9) They ought to take more exercise. [Recommendation]
(10) She may stay with us if she likes. [Permission]
possible probable certain
Fig. 1. A schematic representation of the epistemic scale.

As can be verified, the distinguishing mark of deontic modality is that it expresses the imposition of a state
of affairs on individuals. Couched in different terms, it can be described as the manner in which ‘‘languages
express the restriction of possible future states of affairs to a single choice” (Frawley, 1992, p. 420). Funda-
mental in this respect is the concept of ‘futurity’, which seems to inhere in the semantic structure of deontic
modality. As Palmer (1990, pp. 10–11) observes: ‘‘It is logically impossible, performatively, to make a judg-
ment, to give permission, to lay on an obligation in the past”. This means that, even though there are lan-
guages (e.g. Persian) which deploy the simple past tense to express subjective deontic modality in future,
this can only be justified if a modal, rather than a purely temporal, interpretation is assigned to the tense form
in question (cf. Taylor, 1989, pp. 149–154). At this stage, three main points are worth emphasizing in our
delineation of deontic modality. The first is that this type, as opposed to its epistemic counterpart, does
not typically admit of scalarization. That is to say, speakers either put their addressees under an obligation
to do something or they do not; similarly, permission is either given or denied. The second is that, by virtue
of its impositional character, deontic modality tends to gravitate towards ‘action’, rather than ‘truth’. And the
third is that deontic modality is ‘other-situated’, and ‘goal-oriented’, which contrasts sharply with the typically
‘speaker-situated’ and ‘source-oriented’ nature of epistemic modality (Frawley, 1992, p. 425).
2.2. Subjective vs. objective modality
There is a widely accepted belief that modality falls into two basic categories, depending on whether it is
speaker- or content-related: subjective and objective. This dichotomy is founded on the assumption that some
modal expressions are capable of encoding the position of the speaker with respect to the propositional con-
tent embedded in an utterance, either as epistemic commitment to possibility or probability, or as deontic
commitment to permission or obligation. The distinction involved has been approached from different angles,
and a set of grammatical criteria have been proposed to establish its ontological status. (see, for instance,
Foley and Van Valin, 1984; Halliday, 1970; Hengeveld, 1988; Langacker, 1985, 1990; Lyons, 1977).
This study is based on the theoretical framework presented in Lyons (1977), where the distinction
between subjective and objective modality is accounted for in terms of three functional components: the
neustic, the tropic and the phrastic. The trichotomy, it must be noted, originated with the philosopher Hare
(1970), who, in his analysis of utterances, defined the neustic as ‘‘the sign of subscription to an assertion or
other speech acts”; the tropic as ‘‘the sign of mood”, and the phrastic as ‘‘the part of sentences which is
governed by the tropic and is common to sentences with different tropics” (Hare, 1970, p. 20–21). For
example, Open the window, You open the window, and Do you open the window can be said to share a phras-
tic component (i.e. ‘Your opening the window’) but to differ in their neustics (i.e. the speaker’s subscription
to the speech acts involved) and their tropics (i.e. imperative, declarative and interrogative moods,
respectively).
As reinterpreted by Lyons (1977), the three components discussed above undergo some modification, which
serves to clarify the issue. Accordingly, the phrastic refers to ‘‘that part of sentences which is common to cor-
responding declarative, jussive and interrogative sentences: its propositional content” (Lyons, 1977, p. 749).
The tropic, on the other hand, designates ‘‘that part of the sentence which correlates with the kind of
speech-act that the sentence is characteristically used to perform” (Lyons, 1977, p. 749). As for the neustic,
it deals with ‘‘that part of the sentence which expresses the speaker’s commitment to the factuality, desirabil-
ity, etc., of the propositional content conveyed by the phrastic” (Lyons, 1977, p. 750). From this perspective,
the neustic and the tropic are glossed as the ‘I-say-so’ and the ‘it-is-so’ components, respectively (Lyons, 1977,
p. 749). These latter components, as will be demonstrated below, play a crucial role in determining subjective
and objective modalization.
Drawing on the tripartite analysis mentioned above, Lyons (1977) argues that subjective epistemic modal-
ization consists in ‘‘expressing the speaker’s reservations about giving an unqualified, or categorical, ‘I-say-so’
to the factuality of the proposition embedded in his utterance” (Lyons, 1977, p. 799). This means that subjec-
tively modalized utterances are to be construed as expressing the speaker’s opinion, or tentative inference,
rather than stating facts. By contrast, what distinguishes objective epistemic modalization is that we have
‘‘an unqualified I-say-so component, but an it-is-so component that is qualified with respect to a certain degree
of probability, which, if quantifiable, ranges between 1 and 0” (Lyons, 1977, p. 800). To elucidate the point, let
us examine the following example:
(11) John may have left the city.
Given the appropriate context, this utterance typically admits of two interpretations, depending on whether
the I-say-so or the it-is-so in it undergoes qualification. Viewed as a subjectively modalized utterance, (11) can
be said to mean something like ‘I think it is possible that John has left the city’. In this case, the qualified neu-
stic conveys different degrees of commitment on the part of the speaker. When, on the other hand, (11)
receives an objective interpretation, it expresses something like ‘I say that John has possibly left the city’. Here
the speaker does not modulate his commitment to the factuality of the utterance; rather, the modulation is
shifted to the tropic (i.e the it-is-so) component. In other words, the speaker is not expressing his opinion
but telling something to the interlocutor.
As for deontic modality, Lyons (1977, pp. 832–841) deals with the subjective–objective dichotomy in terms
of a distinction between the tropic and the phrastic components. He maintains that in both cases the speaker
imparts an unqualified ‘I-say-so’ to his utterance. The reason is, he goes on to argue, that deontic modaliza-
tion, unlike its epistemic counterpart, involves obligation, permission, prohibition, etc., and, consequently,
does not reflect the speaker’s assessment of the factuality of the propositional content of his utterance. What
actually happens is that the tropic changes its meaning from ‘it-is-so’ to ‘So-be-it’ in the case of subjective
deontic modality, whereas for objective deontic modality it is the phrastic component that undergoes modal
qualification, with the tropic remaining intact. This means that objective deontic modality relates to the exis-
tence of obligations, rather than to orders creating such obligations (Lyons, 1977, pp. 832–833). By way of
exemplification, the following utterance is worth considering:
(12) You must not interfere in this dispute.
In a strictly deontic context, this utterance is interpretable in two different ways. When construed subjec-
tively, it means ‘I (hereby) oblige you not to interfere in this dispute’. Under an objective interpretation, by
contrast, the utterance has the meaning ‘I (hereby) state that you are obliged (by an unspecified authority)
not to interfere in this dispute’. This is, of course, an oversimplification, merely intended to clarify the point
at issue.
The preceding observations about the theoretical framework within which Lyons (1977) distinguishes
between subjective and objective modality (epistemic and deontic) can be schematized as in Fig. 2 for ease
of reference.
At this juncture, it is worth pointing out that there is substantial empirical evidence to suggest that prag-
matic factors also play a crucial role when it comes to investigating the modal system of a natural language
(see, for instance, Hoye, 2005, p. 1484; Matthews, 2003, p. 65; Nuyts, 2001, p. 366; Papafragou, 2000, p. 185;
Verschueren, 1999, p. 129). The ineluctability of pragmatics is even more in focus when we deal with subjective
modalization (epistemic or deontic), where the ‘indexical and ‘instrumental’ functions of language come into
their own. As will be discussed later on, it is in discourse contexts that the subjectivization process is at its most
operative.
Modality type Subjective Objective

Epistemic
Neustic Mod (I-say-so) I-say-so
Tropic It-is-so Mod (It-is-so)
Phrastic Prop. Cont. Prop. Cont.
Deontic
Neustic I-say-so I-say-so
Tropic Mod (So-be-it) It-is-so
Phrastic Prop. Cont. Mod (Prop. Cont.)
Fig. 2. A schematic representation of Lyons’s analytic framework (based on Verstraete (2001, p. 1510) with some modifications).
2.3. Criteria for establishing subjective modality
The majority of linguists who draw a distinction between subjective and objective modality have proposed a
number of grammatical criteria in support of their theoretical positions. The aim has been to demonstrate that
modal expressions behave differently in various grammatical environments, depending on whether they take
on a subjective or objective function. What follows is a brief characterization of the criteria in question.
The first criterion deployed is how modal expressions behave under interrogation. This standard was initially
used to distinguish between modal adverbs and modal adjectives (Bellert, 1977, pp. 344–346; Jackendoff, 1972,
pp. 84–87; Nuyts, 1992, 1993, 2000). However, Lyons (1977) and Hengeveld (1988) have extended this criterion
by relating it to the difference between subjective and objective modality. Both authors argue that objective
modality can be subjected to interrogation, whereas subjective modality does not admit of such an operation.
The second criterion relates to the behavior of modal expressions in conditionals. According to Lyons
(1977) and Hengeveld (1988), objective modality is capable of occurring in the protasis of a conditional con-
struction. Palmer’s (1990) version of this criterion is less rigorous since he recognizes the fact that subjective
modality can occur in the protases of conditional constructions, but he adds the important proviso that such
an occurrence only receives an ‘echoic interpretation’ in the sense that it reflects what has already been uttered
in previous discourse. For, as a general principle, it can be said of conditional protases that ‘‘they suspend the
speaker’s commitment to the propositions that they contain: a proposition in a conditional protasis is merely
supposed for the sake of the relation with the apodosis, but not asserted (Verstraete, 2001, p. 1518). As will be
discussed later in our examination of subjectively modalized tense in Persian, the concept of echoic interpre-
tation is instrumental in distinguishing between genuine conditionals and pseudo-conditionals.
The third criterion which is often utilized with respect to the subjective–objective dichotomy is susceptibility
to tense-distinction. Halliday (1970), Hengeveld (1988) and Palmer (1990) subscribe to the view that, in prin-
ciple, subjective modals are characteristically not prone to distinction of tenses. By the same token, Foley and
Van Valin (1984) argue that objective modality can be incorporated into the scope of tense operators, while
subjective modality falls outside that scope.
The fourth and last criterion which is invoked to account for the difference between subjectivized and objec-
tified modality is modal harmony, which pertains to the combinabiltiy of a modal verb and a modal adverb.
When this situation comes about, there are two possibilities: modally harmonic and modally non-harmonic
combinations (Lyons, 1977, p. 807).
3. The modal system of Persian
The Persian language provides its users with a number of morpho-syntatic devices whereby modality can be
expressed. Although a detailed examination of the entire gamut of such devices would be beyond the scope of
the present study, some familiarity with the major modal expression types deployed by native speakers in their
day-to-day interactions has the advantage of creating requisite background information against which our
investigation of epistemic and deontic subjectivity can become more meaningful.3 As a general principle,
modality in Persian can be encoded as one of the following canonical categories, or a combination of them:
(a) Modal adverbs

(b) Modal lexical verbs
(c) Modal auxiliary verbs
(d) Modal state predicates
At this stage, we will take up each category and delineate its characteristic behavior with respect to the
subjective–objective dichotomy. An attempt will be made to give illustrative examples throughout our brief
survey.
3
Ironically enough, there does not exist a comprehensive treatment of the Persian modal system on which researchers can draw. This
deficiency must be redressed by exploring the field in the light of recent developments in semantics and pragmatics.
3.1. Modal adverbs
Modal adverbs in Persian exhibit an essentially objective behavior and typically receive an epistemic
construal. As such, they are exemplified by expressions like šayæd (‘perhaps’), mohtæmelan (‘presumably’),
bišæk (‘undoubtedly’), hætmæn (‘certainly’), be ehtemale qærib be yæqin (‘almost definitely’), etc. As an
illustration, consider the example given below:
(13) šayæd u ta-be hal bærgæšte bašæd.
Perhaps s/he by now return.PP SUB.be.3SG
‘He may have returned by now.’
3.2. Modal lexical verbs
Persian modal lexical verbs can be said to fall into two subtypes. The first subtype, which is predominantly
objective, includes such epistemic modal verbs as benæzær + amadæn (‘to look’), nemudæn (‘to appear’),
bær + amædæn (‘to give an impression’) aškar + budæn (‘to be apparent’), etc. By contrast, the second subtype
is essentially subjective and embraces deontic expressions like esrar + daštæn (‘to insist’), entezar + daštæn (‘to
expect’), dæstur + dadæn (‘to order’), ejaze + dadæn (‘to permit’), pišnæhad + kærdæn (‘to recommend’). Here
are two examples:
(14) anha xæste be-næzær + miayænd.
they tired to-view IMPF.come.3PL
‘They look tired.’ [Objective Epistemic]
(15) mæn esrar + daræm ke šoma bemanid.

I insistence + have.1SG that you SUBJ.stay.2SG/PL
‘I insist that you stay.’ [Subjective Deontic]
3.3. Modal auxiliary verbs
What characterizes the modal auxiliary verbs used in Persian is that they denote a wide range of concepts
which fall under three basic headings: epistemic, deontic and dynamic.4 Illustrative examples are mom-
ken + budæn (‘to be possible’) lazem + budæn (‘to be necessary’), vadar + kærdæn (‘to oblige’), načar + budæn
(‘to have to’), tævanestæn (‘be capable of/can’), xastæn (‘will, desire’) etc. Of these verbs the last two pertain to
the realm of dynamic modality (i.e. the mode of ability and disposition), and are invariably construed as being
objective since they are associated with the propositional content of an utterance. In contrast, the remaining
examples are either epistemic or deontic, depending on the notion expressed by the modal auxiliary verbs
involved. The point can be illuminated by the examples cited below:
(16) færda momken + æst baran biyayæd.
tomorrow possible + be.NPS.3SG rain SUBJ.come.3SG
‘Tomorrow it may rain.’ [Objective Epistemic]
(17) ma anha ra vadar + kærdim kar + konænd
we they OM obliged + do-PAST.1PL work + SUBJ.do.3PL
‘We made them work.’ [Subjective Deontic]
4
Marashi (1972) provides some insight into the ways in which modals and auxiliaries are used in Persian, although the main thrust is
syntactic, and thus does not include the semantic and pragmatic dimensions in focus in the present study.
(18) mæn mitævanæm šena + konæm

I IMPF.can.1SG swim + SUBJ.do.1SG
‘I can swim’ [Dynamic]
3.4. Mental state predicates
The distinguishing mark of the mental state predicates deployed in Persian is that they are inherently sub-
jective. This means that they are associated preponderently with discourse contexts in which speakers voice
their personal opinions on topics falling within the purview of strictly individual experiences. As a corollary
of this situation, the mental state predicates at issue are bound up with polemic contexts involving a clash
between the views expressed by speakers and hearers (Nuyts, 2001, pp. 390–391). Some typical examples
include fekr + kærdæn (‘to think’), xiyal + kærdæn (‘to imagine), hæds + zædæn (‘to guess’), færz + kærdæn
(‘to assume’), goman + kærdæn (‘to reckon’), etc. The following example is illuminating:
(19) ma hæds + mizænim ke u dær paris æst
we guess + IMPF.make-NPS.1PL that s/he in Paris be-NPS.3SG
‘We guess that s/he is in Paris.’
The only apparent exception to this general tendency for subjectivization seems to be the use of mental state
predicates in the passive construction, where personal involvement in discourse is virtually non-existent. Com-
pare the example cited below:
(20) færz+mišævæd ke čenin ketabi
assumption+IMPF.become-NPS 3SG that such book.IDEF
vojud+nædaræd
existence.not.have-NPS.3SG
‘It is assumed that such a book does not exist.’
3.5. The simple past tense as subjectivized modality
Our discussion so far has been centered on the canonical ways in which modern standard Persian expresses
modality. There are, however, occasions when the simple past tense functions, non-canonically, as a grammat-
icalized exponent of subjective epistemic and deontic modalization.5 When this occurs, the tense in question
exhibits two main characteristics:
(a) It invariably has an (imminent) future orientation.

(b) It reflects the speaker’s commitment to the propositional content of his/her utterance.6
The discourse contexts in which the simple past is deployed thus are exclusive to informal colloquial speech,
and can be described as stylistically marked. In addition, it should be noted that the morphological configu-
ration of the tense-form is irrelevant in the sense that it loses its prototypical temporal reference and takes on a
modal meaning. This immensely important, and yet regrettably neglected, aspect of the past tense can be illus-
trated by the following conversational exchange:
5
For a detailed analysis of the non-canonical use of the Persian past tense in relation to time, deixis, aspect and speech acts, see
Tavangar and Amouzadeh (2006).
6
It is important to note that only the simple past tense is capable of being modalized subjectively. The past progressive and the past
perfect are, therefore, not amendable to subjectivization as such. The reason for this is not at all clear.
(21) A: mitunæm beræm birun ye dæqiqe?

IMPF.can.1SG SUBJ.go.1SG out one minute
‘Can I go out for a minute?’
B: ræfti-yo zud bærgæšti-ya
go-PAST.2SG-and quick return-PAST.2SG-DP
‘Go and come back quickly.’
In this particular scenario, the second speaker uses two past-tense forms in succession to indicate his deon-
tic commitment to the fact that the first speaker has no option but to comply with the implicit order involved
in the interaction. Note how the deontic particle ya is used to indicate the speaker’s commitment in the above
exchange.
4. Identifying the encoding patterns of subjective modality
Having delineated the requisite theoretical background, and focused on the main modal expression types
accessible to native Persian speakers in their communicative interactions, we are now in a position to tackle
the thorny problem of subjectively modalized tense. More specifically, we are now fairly equipped to investi-
gate how modern colloquial Persian sometimes uses the simple past tense to indicate subjective epistemic and
deontic modality. For this purpose, we will analyze and describe a number of conversational exchanges which
incorporate the modality types in question. But we operate on the assumption that each exchange has an
underlying encoding pattern which tends to recur, and which can be extrapolated as a distinct type. Consid-
ering the fact that this paper is concerned with both the epistemics and the deontics of modalized past tense,
the exchanges will be studied under two separate headings.
4.1. Analysis of subjectivized epistemic past tense
As was explained above (see Section 2.2), it is characteristic of subjective epistemic modality that the
speaker qualifies the neustic component of his or her utterance. In other words, the speaker refuses to
give a categorical ‘I-say-so’ to the factuality of the proposition expressed in such an utterance. This sit-
uation applies in the case of all the modalized past tenses occurring in the following exchanges, where
the tenses are linked up with a limited range of epistemic concepts: certainty, disbelief, challenge, and
nonchalance.
4.1.1. The epistemic past tense expressing certainty

As our point of departure, we will focus on the use of modalized past tense to indicate certainty on the part
of the speaker with respect to a particular state of affairs. The following exchange is revealing.
(22) A: ma ziyad væxt + nædarim, bayæd ‘æjæle + konim.
we much time + not.have.NPS.1PL, must hurry + SUBJ.do.1PL
‘We haven’t got much time. We must hurry up.’
B: negæran + næbaš mæn qæza + xordæm-o umædæm.
worried + not. IMPER.be.2SG I food + eat-PAST.1SG-and come-PAST.1SG
‘Don’t worry. I’ll eat and come back (in no time).’
One striking feature of (22) is that stative and inchoative verbs could not have occurred in the construction
of B’s utterance. Another interesting feature of the modalized past tenses used in the above exchange is that it
typically refers to imminent future. As will be explained later, this characteristic is not obligatory in the case of
the other epistemically-oriented modality types that remain to be discussed in the present study. The encoding
pattern associated with B’s utterance in (22) can be represented thus:
PAST-TENSE VERB þ CONJ þ PAST-TENSE VERB

where the past-tense verbs invariably receive an epistemic interpretation, with the subjectivity dimension being
in focus.7 That this observation is valid is substantiated when we apply our recognition criteria to B’s utter-
ance as follows:
(a) When subjected to interrogation, the modalized tenses are divested of their subjectivity, so much so that
the resulting construction becomes unacceptable.
* B: negæran + næbaš, mæn qæza + xordæm-o umædæm?
worried + not.IMPER.be.2SG, I food + eat-PAST.1SG -and come-PAST.1SG
‘Don’t worry. Will I eat and come back (quickly)?
It is worth mentioning that the non-applicability of the interrogation in this particular case may well be
attributed to factors beyond, or totally unrelated to, such categories as interrogative, tense, etc. per se. This
situation seems to corroborate the existence of an asymmetry between the first and second, as distinct from
third person in specific construction types.
(b) The application of the conditionality criterion also eliminates the subjectivity of B’s utterance. But here
we end up with a genuine conditional whose adoposis has vanished mysteriously. We must, of course, remem-
ber that such apparently defective conditional constructions can take on a modal meaning in other appropri-
ate discourse contexts.
* B: negæran + næbaš, æge mæn qæza + xordæm-o umædæm
worried + not.IMPER.be.2SG If I food + eat-PAST.1SG - come-PAST.1SG
and
‘Don’t worry. If I ate food and came back.’
(c) The application of the tense-distinction criterion is far less watertight since the past-tense forms in B’s
utterance are not the only options available – the speaker could have used two replacive tense-forms: the non-
past and the present perfect. But a caveat is in order at this point: whereas the deployment of the non-past
simple results in the speaker-commitment being mitigated to a drastic extent, the use of the present perfect
definitely has no such effect, although the stipulation of a temporal extent seems to be necessary for this
purpose.8
* Bi: negæran + næbaš, mæn qæza + mi xoræm-o miyam
worried+not.IMPER.be.2SG I food + eat-IMPF.eat.1SG- and IMPF.come.1SG
‘Don’t worry. I’ll eat and come back (quickly).
* Bii: negæran+næbaš, mæn ta do dæqiqe-ye dige qæza + xordææm - o
worried+not.IMPER.be.2SG I until two minute-ATTR another food + eat-PERF.1SG -and
umædææm
come-PERF.1SG
‘Don’t worry. In two minutes time, I’ll have eaten my food and come back.’
(d) When the modal-harmony criterion is applied, we will notice that the behavior of modal adverbs is uni-
form in that none of them can combine unproblematically with the modalized tenses involved.
* B: negæran + næbaš, mæn hætmæn qæza + xordæm - o umædæm
worried + not.IMPER.be.2SG I certainly food + eat-PAST.1SG-and come-PAST.1SG
‘Don’t worry. I’ll certainly eat and come back (quickly).
Note that the English gloss cannot reflect the lack of modal harmony involved here.
7
It is, however, possible to come across contextual situations in which three past tenses are used. But this is a rare occurrence, and
involves specific pragmatic motivation.
8
In modern colloquial Persian, the present perfect also has a future-time reference, and is capable of reflecting the speaker’s commitment
to the propositional content of the utterances he or she makes. That is to say, it is interpreted as a carrier of modal meaning. However, this
variant has its own semantic and pragmatic properties, which do not fall within the scope of the present study.
4.1.2. The epistemic past tense expressing disbelief

One of the main uses to which the modalized past tense in Persian can be put is the expression of disbelief.
Here the speaker assesses the propositional content embedded in his or her interlocutor’s utterance in such a
way that an implicitly negative truth-value is assigned to it. In other words, the speaker indicates that a
particular state of affairs will certainly not materialize in future. The following exchange provides a case in
point:
(23) A: una migæn ke mæn bærænde + mišæm
they IMPF.say 3PL that I winner + SUBJ.become 1SG
‘They say that I will become a winner’.
B: una goftænd-o to æm bærænde + šudi
they say-PAST.3PL-and you RP winner + become-PAST. 2SG
‘They said so and you became a winner’.
(i.e. You’ll definitely be a loser, for all they say.)
Examination of B’s utterance in (23) yields a configuration which is visibly dissimilar to the one we have
analyzed so far. What happens here is that the second speaker echoes the verbs deployed by the first speaker,
but changes them into the past tense, resorting to the conjunction o (‘and’) and the resultative particle æm in
the process. This can be represented as follows:
PAST-TENSE VERB þ CONJ: þ RP þ PAST-TENSE VERB
What distinguishes this encoding pattern of subjectivized epistemic modality is that the first tense form has
a non-commital past-time reference, whereas the second one is future-oriented and, despite its affirmative
form, has negative implications, as pointed out above. This means that B’s epistemic stance is one of disbelief
about the propositional content expressed in A’s utterance. Against such background, the application of our
recognition criteria yields the following results:
(a) Under interrogation, the subjectivity dimension of the second past-tense form is lost, and the ensuing
construction can only receive an echoic interpretation in contexts where the reference is to the past.
(b) When the conditionality criterion is applied, the second past tense in B’s utterance can no longer be con-
strued as carrying a modal meaning.
(c) The application of the tense-distinction criterion is severely hampered by the fact that the non-past sim-
ple is the only alternative that could have been deployed. Note that the replacement in question is limited
to the second past-tense form in B’s utterance since subjectivization falls exclusively within its scope, and
that this results in the speaker-commitment being mitigated.
(d) When we apply the modal-harmony criterion, the modalized tense ceases to be interpreted as a carrier of
subjectivity, thus becoming incongruous with the preceding discourse context. This is precisely where B’s
utterance in (23) is distinguished from what we observed in the case of (22).
4.1.3. The epistemic past tense expressing a challenge

Closely akin to the use of modalized past tense for expressing disbelief is its deployment to indicate a chal-
lenge with respect to the propositional content of one’s interlocutor. There are, however, important differences
between the two in terms of how they are encoded and the way in which they respond to our recognition cri-
teria. But let us first consider the exchange given below:
(24) A: dust-e to færda æz tehran pærvaz + mikone
friend.ATTR you tomorrow from Tehran flight + IMPF.do.3SG
‘Your friend is flying from Tehran tomorrow.’
B: æge pærvaz + kærd
If flight + do-PAST.3SG
‘If he flew.’ (i.e. ‘Yes, and pigs might fly.’)
It is characteristic of the past-tense form in this exchange that it occurs in a conditional construction. This
fact might be construed as indicating that the event denoted by the verb is counterfactual. Such an interpre-
tation, however, clashes with the intuitive judgment of Persian native speakers, who view B’s utterance as a
reflection of his/her epistemic commitment (i.e. that the event of flying will definitely not take place). In other
words, what would, at first blush, appear to be a genuine conditional is in reality a pseudo-conditional. For, to
quote Dancygier (1998, pp. 12–24), ‘‘the protasis of a conditional is non-performative, because the function of
the conditional marker is precisely to suspend any commitment by the speaker to the proposition in its scope.”
The pseudo-conditionality of B’s utterance is further confirmed by the fact that there is no apodosis following
the apparent protasis, although, on occasion, we come across the expressions esmæmo ævæz mikonæm (‘I’ll
change my name’) or hærče mixay begu (‘say whatever you like’), which then merely serve to reinforce the epi-
stemic modality expressed in the protasis.
From the preceding observations we can deduce that the encoding pattern associated with B’s utterance in
(24) is as follows:
EP þ PAST-TENSE VERB
where æge (‘if’) functions as an epistemic particle, rather than a purely conditional marker. This particular
configuration does not impose any semantic constraints on the type of verbs deployed. Moreover, the intona-
tion contour characteristic of the modalized verbs is a contributory factor here: a rising tone is used with the
verb and the nuclear stress falls on it.9
Let us now examine how the past tense in (24) behaves in response to our recognition criteria.
(a) Under interrogation, B’s utterance loses its subjectivity dimension, and changes to an echo question,
where it would be construed as a genuine conditional construction. That is to say, the speaker-commit-
ment to the proposition expressed by the seeming conditional protasis is suspended as a result (Dancy-
gier, 1998).
(b) The application of the conditionality criterion is irrelevant as B’s utterance has already assumed the form
of a protasis, although the protasis is a sham one. Interestingly enough, this is the only occasion on
which subjective modality cannot be determined in terms of conditionality.
(c) It is impossible to apply the tense-distinction criterion and simultaneously retain the subjectivity dimen-
sion with the past tense involved, which appears to enjoy a privilege of occurrence that has been denied
to other potential candidates. One reason may be that events (positive or negative) connected with the
past are perceived to be more tangible in realizational terms than their non-past counterparts. Another,
which is even more important theoretically, is that the term æge (‘if’) is in reality an epistemic particle
here and, consequently, has a close semantic affinity to the modalized tense deployed after it. Had it been
a genuine conditional marker, it would have allowed other tense-forms to be used.
(d) When it comes to applying the modal-harmony criterion, B’s utterance in (24) is rendered unacceptable,
irrespective of the position occupied on the epistemic scale by the modal adverbs involved. Contrary to
our expectations, even the modal adverb æslæn (‘at all’), which verges on the negative and, as a result,
tends to harmonize with the epistemic notion of challenge, is not allowed here. The reason for this is by
no means clear.
Corresponding to the encoding pattern delineated under Section 4.1.3 is its negative counterpart, whose
semantic and pragmatic properties deserve close attention. What happens here is that one speaker makes a
negative statement, to which another speaker responds by deploying a modalized past tense that is also nega-
tion-oriented. On the face of it, we seem to be dealing with a situation where two negatives cancel each other
out. But, on closer examination, we will notice that this is by no means the case. By adopting a negative
9
There is ample phonological evidence in support of this argument. In genuine conditional constructions in Persian, the protasis is
characterized by a fall or fall-rise on the nucleus, whereas pseudo-conditionals typically deploy a rising tone on their nuclei. This, however,
is a complicated issue and deserves separate treatment.
epistemic stance, the second interlocutor in fact challenges the propositional content expressed in the first
interlocutor’s utterance.10 This puzzling scenario is illustrated by the following exchange:
(25) A: hæfte-ye dige bærf+nemiyad
week.ATTR other snow+not.IMPF.come.3SG
‘It won’t snow next week’.
B: æge næymæd
If not.come-PAST.3SG
‘If it didn’t snow.’ (i.e. ‘But you bet it will.’)
The encoding pattern underlying the above exchange is given below:

EP þ NEG þ PAST-TENSE VERB
The behavior of the negative modalized tense in (25) in response to interrogation, conditionality, and tense-
distinction is exactly like that of its positive counterpart in (24). As a result, there is no need to elaborate on the
application of those criteria. What, however, distinguishes the negated tense in (25) is that it is capable of com-
bining harmoniously with those modal adverbs which rank high on the epistemic scale. One likely candidate is
hætmæn (‘certainly’).
Given the very close semantic relation between the two past tenses in (24) and (25), we could conflate them
into one for ease of reference:
EP þ ðNEGÞ þ PAST-TENSE VERB
It must be noted that the use of parentheses here is not intended to indicate the optionality of the negation
operator næ, but rather the fact that this operator, when applicable, signals that there is a required match with
a NEG in a prior utterance.
4.1.4. The epistemic past tense expressing nonchalance

An important dimension of the epistemically-oriented past tense in modern colloquial Persian is its use in
contexts where the speaker expresses his nonchalance toward the propositional content embedded in his/her
interlocutor’s utterance. There are three distinct, yet interrelated, ways in which nonchalance can be conveyed
through the modalization of the tense under discussion.11 In this respect, we will investigate some illustrative
examples and try to extrapolate the encoding patterns associated with each of them. We will start off with the
exchange given below:
(26) A: æge jævad emruz šena + kærd, čikar konim?
If Javad today swim + do-PAST.3SG, what work + SUBJ.do.1PL
‘If Javad swam today, what shall we do?’
B: šena + kærd ke kærd. be ma če?
swim + do.PAST.3SG EP do.PAST.3SG to us what
‘(He) swam that (he) swam. What has it got to do with us?’
(i.e. ‘I don’t care if he is swimming or not.’)
10
The close interaction between negation and subjective modality has its own semantic–pragmatic correlates. It would appear that such a
relationship cannot be explained purely in terms of truth-conditional semantics. Probably it has also something to do with the pragmatics
of conditionality itself. At any rate, the whole issue calls for an in-depth analysis.
11
In an illuminating paper on how indifference is expressed in modern conversational Persian, Sadat-Tehrani (2005) examines the
behavior of the particle ke within the theoretical framework of Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff, 1997, 2002). He focuses on a number of
conversational exchanges from a predominately syntactic point of view, although he also touches on phonological and conceptual aspects.
The main shortcoming of this insightful approach, however, is that it does not take into account the importance of ke as an epistemic or
deontic particle, which manifests itself in far more diverse discourse contexts than are given in the paper. Nor does it reckon with the close
affinity between negation and the reduplication of modalized past tense in Persian. Nonetheless, it must be admitted that the paper
addresses the cross-linguistic issue of reduplication as an indifference-indicating device in three languages – Persian, English, and Japanese
albeit on a very limited scale.
What is interesting about this exchange is that it bears partial resemblance to (22) in that the modalized past
tense is reduplicated. Hence the following encoding pattern can be extracted:
PAST-TENSE VERB þ EP þ PAST-TENSE VERB
However, in terms of modal meaning, this reduplication is totally different since it expresses the epistemic
concept of nonchalance, which is a version of the notion of ‘distancing’ discussed in Fleischman (1989). The
semantic difference involved manifests itself more palpably when it comes to applying our recognition criteria.
Let us then examine how the past tenses in (26) behave in this respect.
(a) Under interrogation, they are no longer construed as carrying a subjective modal meaning, but echo
some immediately preceding discourse.
(b) The application of the conditionality criterion results in a drastic shift in modal meaning: the reduplica-
tion is assigned a deontic interpretation. This means that B’s utterance imposes an obligation on A to
perform the act of swimming. It is interesting to note here that the subjectivity attached to B’s utterance
is not eliminated, as one would have expected, but rather persists in a different mode (see Section 4.2.2).
In other words, our criterion for subjectivity has failed in this particular case, which turns out to be
unique.
(c) With reference to the tense-distinction criterion, the reduplicated tenses can be replaced by the non-past
and the subjunctive mood, while the epistemic particle ke is retained. When this replacement occurs, the
speaker-commitment to the proposition expressed in B’s utterance undergoes considerable modification
– a phenomenon which is reminiscent of what we observed in the case of (22) and (23) above.
(d) As for the application of the modal-harmony criterion, it is impossible to combine a modal adverb with
the reduplicated tense-forms in question, and still preserve the speaker’s epistemic stance. This is similar
to what we observed above in connection with the modalized tenses in (24) and (25).
As was the case in (24), here, too, we are faced with a situation in which the reduplicative pattern under-
lying B’s utterance has a negative counterpart. What characterizes this negated reduplication is that one
speaker makes a negative statement, to which another speaker reacts by expressing his/her nonchalance with
respect to the proposition contained in what the first speaker has asserted. This entails negating both of the
modalized tenses involved. By way of illustration, consider the following exchange:
(27) A: morad færda inja nimixabe.

Morad tomorrow here not.IMPF.sleep.3SG
‘Morad will not sleep here tomorrow.’
B: xob næxabid ke næxabid. čikar konæm?

well not.sleep-PAST.3SG EP not.sleep-PAST.3SG what work SUBJ.do.1SG
‘Well, he did not sleep that he did not sleep. What should I do?
(i.e. ‘Well, I simply don’t care if he won’t. What do you expect me to do?’)
Note that the omission of the negation operator næ in either clause will result in both the reduplicated
tenses taking on a non-subjective meaning. Also remember the negation marker næ in (27) has the function
of echoing the one used by the first speaker, and, consequently, is confirmatory in nature. This is precisely
where negation has a different meaning from what it had in B’s utterance in (25). The difference is not easy
to explain, but we could presumably argue that whereas in (25) negation was used to convey, despite appear-
ances, the opposite of what the first speaker stated, in (27), by contrast, there is not such an oppositional func-
tion simply because the second speaker does not deny the truth of what he or she hears.
The encoding pattern associated with the modalized past-tense forms in (27) can be represented thus:
NEG PAST-TENSE VERB þ EP þ NEG PAST-TENSE VERB

The negative modalized tenses in (27) can be said to behave exactly like their positive counterparts as far
as the application of the interrogation, tense-distinction, and modal-harmony criteria are concerned. But
when we apply the conditionality criterion, the reduplicated tenses do not undergo a functional shift from
being epistemic to becoming deontic, as happened in the case of (26), but rather lose their modality status
altogether. As a result, the reference will invariably be to the past and the epistemic ke changes to a mere
emphatic device.
What we observed concerning the correspondence between the modalized tense-forms in (24) and (25) in
terms of their underlying configurations, as well as their semantic affinity, can be said to apply to the redupli-
cated, epistemically-oriented tense-forms in (26) and (27). Consequently, and for convenience, we could col-
lapse the two encoding patterns into a single form as follows:
ðNEGÞPAST-TENSE VERB þ EP þ ðNEGÞPAST-TENSE VERB
where the insertion of the negation operator within parentheses is intended not to indicate optionality, as is
normally understood, but rather to serve as a convenient abbreviatory notation for the conflated encoding
patterns involved.
At this stage, there remains to be discussed one more way in which the epistemic concept of nonchalance
can be expressed through the mediation of modalized past tense in colloquial Persian. Such a modal expres-
sion type is operative in the following conversational exchange:
(28) A: reza mixad ketab + bexære či migi ?
Reza IMPF. want.3SG book + SUBJ.buy.3SG what IMPF.say.2SG
(‘Reza wants to buy a book. What do you think?’)
B: xærid xærid næxarid næxærid
buy-PAST.3SG buy-PAST.3SG not.buy-PAST.3SG not.buy-PAST.3SG
mohem nis
important not.be-NPS
‘(He) bought, (he) bought; (he) didn’t buy, (he) didn’t buy. It doesn’t matter.’(i.e. ‘I couldn’t care less,
really’.)
The defining feature of the past-tense forms occurring in (28) is that there are two juxtaposed pairs in this
case, where the members of the first pair are positive and those of the second pair are marked for negation. It
must be noted that the epistemic particle ke is typically absent here, and the sequencing order of the positive
and negative members is irreversible. As a result, the encoding pattern of modalized tense-forms extractable
from (28) can be represented as follows:
PAST-TENSE VERB þ PAST-TENSE VERB þ NEG þ PAST-TENSE VERB þ NEG þ PAST-TENSE VERB
where the negation operators, which are by no means omissible, have the effect of counteracting the members
of the positive pair, thus reinforcing the epistemic concept of nonchalance in question.12 Let us now focus on
the way in which the tetraic tense-forms behave with respect to our recognition criteria.
(a) Under interrogation, the subjectivity dimension characteristic of B’s utterance disappears and an echoic
interpretation is the only possibility left.
(b) The application of the conditionality criterion results in the emergence of a pattern which incorporates
two particles – æm (which has a contrastive function) and ke_ (which is epistemic) that tend to reinforce
each other in conveying the speaker’s nonchalance with respect to the occurrence of the events denoted
by the use of the past tenses. In other words, the subjectivity dimension is not affected by the conditional
12
The epistemic particle ke can be optionally used between the modalized past tenses in the affirmative and negative clauses, respectively.
When this happens, the particle tends to reinforce the concept of nonchalance.
construction. We must recognize the fact that in this case we are dealing with a real conditional since the
term æge (‘if’) is used as a genuine conditional marker, rather than an epistemic particle (cf. 24 and 25
above). Moreover, æge occurs twice as there are two propositions involved here.
(c) The tense-distinction is applicable, but subject to heavy constraints. This means that the only forms the
speaker could have opted for are the non-past and the subjunctive in combination. The amalgam is rem-
iniscent of the behavior of the modalized tenses we discussed in (27) above, but it differs in that a seman-
tic polarization is at work here since the first tense pair is obligatorily positive while the second pair is
obligatorily negative. Interestingly enough, the application of the criterion does not eradicate the subjec-
tivity dimension, but mitigates it substantially, which serves to support our claim in this paper that the
use of the past tense in a future-oriented temporal framework enables the speaker to assign a higher fac-
tuality value to the occurrence of an event than does the deployment of its non-past alternatives.
(d) When the modal-harmony test is applied, the resulting construction is unacceptable, irrespective of the
degree of certainty associated with the modal adverb selected for the purpose. The incompatibility
between the modal adverbs and the members of the juxtaposed tense pairs can be explained in terms
of the polarity of values on the epistemic scale involved. The certainty of occurrence associated with
the sequence of the tense-forms in the first reduplication is, as was pointed out earlier, neutralized by
the total absence of certainty designated in the second reduplication. This is tantamount to saying that
modal adverbs cannot function in an epistemic void.
Before we move on to the discussion of the deontic aspect of the modalizaed past tense in colloquial Per-
sian, one last point should be made with respect to the semantic nature of the verbs utilized in (23)–(28).
Except for (23), where stative verbs are very rare, there are no constraints on the use of stative, inchoative
or dynamic verbs in the case of the others.
4.2. Analysis of subjectivized deontic past tense
As was explained earlier, subjective deontic modality entails qualifying the tropic component of the speak-
er’s utterance, in the sense that there is a shift from ‘It-is-so’ to ‘So-be-it’. It was also pointed out that what
characterizes deontic modality is that it expresses the imposition of a state of affairs on individuals, and that
such characterization is based on three parameters: non-scalarity, action-orientedness, and goal-situatedness.
By the same token, it was argued that the concepts of ‘obligation’ and ‘permission’ are at the core of deontic
modality (see Sections 2.1 and 2.2).
With this recapitulation in mind, we are now in a position to focus on two distinct ways in which the
past-tense form is used to express subjective deontic modality. In both cases, the deontic concept involved
is obligation, under which we can subsume a direct and an indirect order. The aim is to identify the encoding
patterns utilized, as well as analyzing and describing the subjectively modalized tenses in terms of the
recognition criteria established in Section 2.3 above. It is expected that the deontic modal expression types
in question will exhibit their own distinctive behavior in this respect.
4.2.1. The deontic past tense expressing a direct order

To understand how deontically-oriented past-tense forms can be used for the expression of direct orders, let
us consider the following conversational exchange:
(29) A: miše beræm ab + boxoræm?
IMPF.become.3SG SUBJ.go.1SG water + SUBJ.eat.1SG
‘Can I go and drink (some) water?’
B: xordi-yo zud umædi
eat-PAST.2SG-and quickly come-PAST.2SG
‘Ate and came back soon’. (i.e. You may drink and come back quickly.’)
It will take only a cursory glance at the above scenario to convince us that we are dealing with an instance
of subjective modalization in which two past-tense forms convey the second speaker’s deontic commitment to
the propositional content of his/her utterance. As can be verified easily, the encoding pattern involved in B’s
utterance is as follows:
PAST-TENSE VERB þ CONJ þ PAST-TENSE VERB
where the first tense form conveys permission, and the second one expresses obligation, with both modal con-
cepts being subjective. This semantic delineation, it will be observed later, does not apply to the past-tense
forms deployed to express indirect orders. What is also worthy of attention is the fact that the verb types which
can occur in the encoding pattern underlying B’s utterance in (29) are prone to heavy constraints: stative and
inchoative verbs are definitely unacceptable.
At this juncture, we will examine how the past tenses at issue respond to our criteria for establishing sub-
jective deontic modality.
(a) Under interrogation, the modalized tense-forms are no longer construed as carrying a deontic meaning;
they are simply assigned an echoic interpretation instead.
(b) When we apply the conditionality criterion, B’s utterance loses its subjectivity dimension and is trans-
muted into a genuine conditional construction whose apodasis is missing. But it must be realized that
the applicability of this criterion is heavily contingent on the type of intonation used, which is high
level in the case of the protasis. Once the pitch has changed to a rise, the protasis takes on a subjective
epistemic meaning with negative implications. This is exactly what we observed above in relation to
B’s utterance in (24), where the seemingly conditional marker æge in reality constitutes an epistemic
particle. Interestingly enough, the conditionality criterion would not have applied if the deontically-
oriented past tenses had been followed by the discourse marker a, which would have made the result-
ing conditional construction meaningless in any context. Why this should be so is not at all easy to
explain.
(c) The tense-distinction criterion can be applied, but only subject to heavy constraints. This means that the
non-past is the only alternative to the modalized past-tense forms under discussion. But we must remem-
ber that the resulting construction gives rise to a substantial modification of the subjectivity dimension,
as was patently attested in the case of the epistemically-motivated past tenses examined in (22), (23),
(26)–(28) above.
(d) Subjected to the modal-harmony criterion, the deontic character of the past-tense forms is lost, and, con-
sequently, B’s utterance becomes contextually irrelevant, although the resulting construction remains
semantically well-formed, and, given an appropriate context, will have a pragmatic warrant. What is the-
oretically significant here is the fact that, unlike the previous applications of the criteria in the case of the
epistemically-oriented tense-forms discussed above, there are no limitations on the type of modal
adverbs which could be used. The snag, however, is that the resulting adverb–tense combination, albeit
fully harmonious, results in ambiguity since it admits of two interpretations, depending on whether the
past tenses involved have a past-time or a future-time reference.
4.2.2. The deontic past tense expressing an indirect order

The use of the deontically-motivated past tense in colloquial Persian to express an indirect order is demon-
strated at its best in the exchange given below:
(30) A: mæn tæsmim + gereftææm inja qæza + næxoræm
I decision + PERF-take.1SG here food + not.SUBJ.eat.1SG
in be to mærbut nis
this to you related NEG.be-NPS.3SG
‘I’ve decided not to eat here; it is none of your business.’
B: æge inja qæza xordi ke xordi
If here food.eat-PAST.2SG DP eat-PAST.2SG
væ ella pæšimun + miši
or else sorry IMPF + become 2SG
‘If you ate that you ate or else you’ll become sorry.’
(i.e. ‘You’d better eat or else you’ll regret it.’)
What characterizes B’s utterance in (30) is that it uses a full-status conditional construction, where the prot-
asis is followed by an apodosis. The conditional marker æge (‘if’) is genuine, thus differing from its fake epi-
stemic counterparts occurring in (24) and (25) cited above. The deontic particle, whose modal homonym we
encountered in (26) and (27), has a pragmatic role to play here. This means that it designates submission on
the part of the speaker if the protasis is fulfilled. Moreover, the modalized tense is obligatorily reduplicative,
which is again redolent of what we observed in (26) and (27). Note that the concept of submission is valid only
if the first speaker complies with the indirect order conveyed by the first modalized past tense in B’s utterance.
Furthermore, we must remember that whereas the epistemic particle æge in (24) and (25) requires that both
tense-forms deployed in A’s and B’s utterances should be either positive or negative, the deontic particle
imposes a different requirement: if the tense-form used by the first speaker is in the negative, the reduplicated
past tenses utilized by the second speaker are obligatorily in the affirmative. For some unknown reason, the
reverse of this is almost non-existent.
In view of the preceding observations, the encoding pattern associated with B’s utterance in (30) can be
represented thus:
CM þ PAST-TENSE VERB þ DP þ PAST-TENSE VERB þ CONJ þ NON-PAST TENSE VERB
where the first past tense is based on a hypothesis, and the second one reflects its fulfillment. As for the non-
past tense following the conditional construction, it has the illocutionary force of a threat, which is expected to
be carried out if the hypothesis is not realized. This situation is confirmed through the obligatory conjunction
væ ella (‘otherwise’). But there are two important points to consider here. The first is that in some discourse
contexts the non-past tense is omissible, with the illocutionary burden being carried solely by the conjunction.
The second is that the non-past tense can sometimes have the clichified variant hær či didi æz češme xudet didi
(‘what you saw, from your own eye you saw’, i.e. ‘You’ll have to face the music’). As can be seen, this alter-
native is based on two past-tense forms which, despite their morphological shape, refer to the future and, thus,
perform an epistemic function in the sense that the speaker expresses his commitment to the certainty of the
realization of a threat. This combination of subjective deontic and epistemic modality is exclusive to the pat-
tern delineated above. With respect to the modalized tenses used in the conditional construction component of
the pattern involved, it must be said that there are no constraints on the verb types deployed.
We conclude our discussion of deontically-oriented past tenses in modern informal spoken Persian by
investigating how the subjectivized tense-forms in (30) behave with respect to our recognition criteria. What
follows deserves close attention.
(a) The application of the interrogation criterion has the twin effect of divesting B’s utterance of its subjec-
tivity dimension and rendering it pragmatically incongruous with the rest of the discourse context. As a
result, the utterance can only receive an echoic interpretation, which, as we have observed in the case of
the epistemically-oriented exchanges discussed earlier in this paper, does no more than reiterate the
utterance made by a previous speaker.
(b) The conditionality criterion does not apply because, as we witnessed in the case of (24) and (25), the suc-
cession of two conditional markers typically violates the grammatical rules of Persian. The only excep-
tion seems to be when the speaker suffers from a stammer, which is, of course, irrelevant to our
discussion since it is a psychological issue. But even if such a possibility existed, it would definitely
not affect the deontic status of the tenses involved (i.e. the implication of an order).
(c) As for the tense-distinction criterion, its application results in the subjectivity dimension being eroded.
But, unlike what we observed in (b), the ensuing construction is fully grammatical. It must, nonetheless,
be added that the tense choice here is relatively constrained in the sense that the reduplicated tenses can
only be replaced by their non-past or perfect counterparts. However, if the non-past is opted for, it can
sometimes co-occur with the imperative mood.
(d) The application of the modal-harmony criterion yields a construction which is absolutely devoid of
deontic modal meaning. That is to say, the reduplicated tense-forms in B’s utterance can no longer be
construed as expressing the speaker’s deontic commitment to the propositional content conveyed by
what he/she says. In other words, the utterance loses its illocutionary force as a command to the inter-
locutor involved. Besides, the construction introduced violates the grammatical rules of Persian. This
boils down to the fact that we could not possibly find a context in which modal adverbs combine felic-
itously with the modalized tenses under consideration.
It would appear that the mismatch between modal adverbials and the modalized tenses in (30) is not so much a
pragmatic issue as a semantic one: the hypothetical character of the prostasis, within whose scope the first
xordi (‘you ate’) falls, simply does not accord with modal adverbs since the latter are bound to assign a fac-
tuality value to the tense-forms used in it. If, on the other hand, modal adverbs happen to occur outside the
scope of the first modalized tense (i.e. before the conditional marker æge), they will pose no problems in
semantic terms. However, even this alternative has the disadvantage of eliminating the deontic modal meaning
of the second xordi. Presumably, it could be argued that in both cases semantic considerations tend to override
pragmatic principles.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, our main concern was to study the relation between subjective modality and tense in modern
colloquial Persian. More specifically, we set out to investigate how the simple past tense can be deployed as a
grammaticalized exponent of epistemic and deontic modality within a future-oriented temporal framework.
To ensure the systematic nature of our investigation, we focused on some current approaches to modality with
a view to finding an operational definition of this semantic phenomenon, and introducing some basic theoret-
ical concepts germane to our analytical apparatus. Furthermore, we focused on four well-established recog-
nition criteria against which to analyze and describe our illustrative examples: interrogation, conditionality,
tense-distinction, modal harmony. The goal was to examine the behavior of the modalized tenses in question
with respect to each of these criteria, the assumption being that if the tense-forms deployed were truly subjec-
tive in orientation, they would not respond positively to such diagnostics.
As a result of the application of our criteria, and on the basis of Lyons’s (1977) neustic–tropic–phrastic tri-
chotomy, the following encoding patterns of subjectivized modality emerged:
Epistemic
1. PAST-TENSE VERB + CONJ + PAST-TENSE VERB
2. PAST-TENSE VERB + CONJ + RP + PAST-TENSE VERB
3. EP + (NEG) + PAST-TENSE VERB
4. (NEG) + PAST-TENSE VERB + EP + (NEG) + PAST-TENSE VERB
5. PAST-TENSE VERB + PAST-TENSE VERB + NEG + PAST-TENSE VERB + NEG + PAST-
TENSE VERB
Deontic
6. PAST-TENSE VERB + CONJ + PAST-TENSE VERB
7. CM + PAST-TENSE VERB + DP + PAST-TENSE VERB + CONJ + NON-PAST-TENSE VERB
The epistemic concepts expressed by the above configurations were ‘certainty’ (1), ‘disbelief’(2), ‘challenge’
(3) and ‘nonchalance’ (4–5). By contrast, the deontic concepts conveyed were ‘direct order’ (6) and ‘indi-
rect order’ (7). Interestingly enough, of the tetraic criteria applied in the analysis and description of our
illustrative examples it was the tense-distinction that proved to be inconsistent since, in the majority of cases,
we were faced with non-past tense options which, although severely limited, resulted in a substantial mitiga-
tion of subjectivity. The reason for this laxity of application is by no means clear, but one tentative explication
could be that the complicated semantic structure of tense itself was in large measure responsible here. How-
ever, one way out of this dilemma would be to introduce more rigorous criteria. We propose two as possible
candidates: negativization and tag questions. These, of course, need to be verified on the basis of empirical
evidence.
Insofar as the structure of the verb types associated with the encoding patterns themselves is concerned, it
must be noted that, although they showed similarities to one another in terms of the non-applicability of our
recognition criteria, each of them retained its characteristic semantic properties. Also important is the fact that
the subjective interpretation that the modalilzed tense(s) in each pattern received was heavily dependent on the
type of discourse context involved, with intonation playing an indisputably crucial role in this regard.
All in all, it can be safely assumed that the present paper has ventured into a realm which, while being
fraught with thorny problems of various kinds, is worth exploring on account of its intrinsically fascinating
nature. What, however, we hope to have achieved is no more than take a first step towards grappling with
an issue which remains largely intact and, thus, calls for an in-depth investigation. One potential area which
could be suggested for further research would be a cross-linguistic study of whether, and to what extent, the
past tense is used in other languages to express subjective epistemic and deontic modality.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude to the referees who critically went through this paper and made
insightful comments and suggestions with a view to improving its quality.
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Language Sciences 31 (2009) 853–873

Subjective modality and tense in Persian

Keywords: Subjectivity; Modality; Tense; Interrogation; Conditionality; Modal harmony; Persian

(1) Ted is swimming.

2.1. Epistemic and deontic modality

(5) It might snow tomorrow. [Remote possibility]

(8) You must pay the damages. [Obligation]

Fig. 1. A schematic representation of the epistemic scale.

2.2. Subjective vs. objective modality

(11) John may have left the city.

(12) You must not interfere in this dispute.

Modality type Subjective Objective

2.3. Criteria for establishing subjective modality

3. The modal system of Persian

(a) Modal adverbs

3.1. Modal adverbs

3.2. Modal lexical verbs

(15) mæn esrar + daræm ke šoma bemanid.

3.3. Modal auxiliary verbs

(18) mæn mitævanæm šena + konæm

3.4. Mental state predicates

3.5. The simple past tense as subjectivized modality

(a) It invariably has an (imminent) future orientation.

(21) A: mitunæm beræm birun ye dæqiqe?

4. Identifying the encoding patterns of subjective modality

4.1. Analysis of subjectivized epistemic past tense

4.1.1. The epistemic past tense expressing certainty

PAST-TENSE VERB þ CONJ þ PAST-TENSE VERB

4.1.2. The epistemic past tense expressing disbelief

PAST-TENSE VERB þ CONJ: þ RP þ PAST-TENSE VERB

4.1.3. The epistemic past tense expressing a challenge

The encoding pattern underlying the above exchange is given below:

4.1.4. The epistemic past tense expressing nonchalance

(27) A: morad færda inja nimixabe.

B: xob næxabid ke næxabid. čikar konæm?

NEG PAST-TENSE VERB þ EP þ NEG PAST-TENSE VERB

ðNEGÞPAST-TENSE VERB þ EP þ ðNEGÞPAST-TENSE VERB

4.2. Analysis of subjectivized deontic past tense

4.2.1. The deontic past tense expressing a direct order

4.2.2. The deontic past tense expressing an indirect order

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