A Cognitive Approach to the Polysemy of the Persian Verb zadan

Polysemy is a phenomenon which has been focused on in both syntactic and semantic studies for a long time. It occurs when a lexical element enjoys multiple related meanings in different contexts. In the present article, looking cognitively at the verb “zadan” in the Persian language, we attempted to investigate numerous meanings of the verb with regard to its contextual use. First of all, we collected the data on the basis of the electronic sources, Persian grammar books and our native language knowledge. Our data include those verbs made out of “zadan” from the most frequent verbs to the least frequent ones. By frequency, it is meant the degree of profiting from the prototypical meaning. Then we classified the verbs into a variety of categories. Our criterion for classifying was the verbs’ degree of objectivity. Having studied the prototypical meaning and the compound verbs made out of the verb zadan , we came to the conclusion that what makes the verb to have multiple meanings in various contexts is the way of conceptualization and mechanisms used by the Persian native speakers. Multiple meanings of the verb zadan are shaped as a radial category in the form of a semantic network around the prototypical meaning of the verb in question.