The Semantic Behavior of Homonym Morphemes in Persian Language

The present study aims to analyze the process of homonym morphemes interpretation in Persian on the basis of a Perceptual approach. There have been two dominant approaches in the history of word meaning studies namely Word-based and Morpheme-based approaches which have been used by many researches in word and morphemes meaning studies until now. This research first studies the disadvantages of each of the two approaches, then with the help of 20 homonyms taken from farhang-e fešorde-ye soxan and by interviewing 50 non linguistics graduates using the Perceptual approach framework introduced by Safavi concludes that Persian speakers interpret the meaning of homonyms based on word meaning. According to this issue, unlike what has been introduced in the traditional studies of meaning known as meaning 'compositionality' (part - whole), the meaning of morphemes is interpreted by using meaning 'decompositionality' (whole - part) with the help of contextual information including perceptual context A (Linguistic context), B (The present situation in which the context A is produced), and specifically context C (The background information) based on the Perceptual approach. In fact, not having accessibility to contextual information makes language speakers confused in interpreting the morphemes in these words. So, homonym interpretation in Persian relies on the word interpretation by means of the present contextual information inside the words based on meaning decompositionality.