Year:2004 | Volume:21 | Issue:1 (40)|Papers Count:18

Language functions have been variously categorized by different authors. Holliday (1985), for example, has talked of three meta-functions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual. Each of these functions is textually represented by choices the discourse producer opts for from the language choices available to him. In this paper, we focus on interpersonal function and want to illustrate the way the producer makes choices would reflect his/her personality-type. The textual choices we have isolated for this purpose are pre-that verb type and the type of verb in V1 position of V1+ to + V2 constructions. We categories the verbs occurring in such positions in English into different types in terms of their semantic values and try to investigate the relationship between a producer's choice from such categories and his/her personality-type.

The aim of this paper is to introduce field theory and its application in Persian vocabulary. First a short history of this theory within the context of structuralist semantics is presented. Then based on an analysis of field theory diachronically and synchronically it is tried to study its application in Persian vocabulary.

As far as the author knows this article is the first attempt to introduce the Proto-type theory of semantics. First the rival theory of Componential or Feature-based semantics which has its roots in the Aristotlian philosophy of categorization is discussed and its application in the analysis of semantic and phonology is shown. Finally the more recent theory of Proto-type semantics, which has its philosophical underpinning on Witgenstein's ideas is introduced and its application in the analysis of linguistic components such as semantics, phonology, as well as language acquisition is presented.

This article examines the applieability of Tsui's (1995) framework of conversational structure, particularly in regards to different subcategories of elicitations and their comparison in English and Persian. The data for the study are elicitation questions taken from three modern English plays and three modern Persian plays. 698 instances of elicitation questions were analyzed and compared. The results indicate that Tsui's model as well as her classification of elicitations which is basically function-based can account for the data.

This study intends to analyze Guilaki prepositional constructions and to compare the results with Chomsky's ideas concerning Head Parameter. 1200 Fumani and Rashti participants, selected through stratified random sampling, were divided into twelve groups on the basis of their age, gender, literacy and locality. A list of 20 Guilaki sentences, taken from Christensen (1375/1995), was used after it was lexically and syntactically modified. Each sentence contained a blank to be filled in by an appropriate prepositional/postpositional construction. On the whole 24020 constructions were gathered and they were divided into four groups: PREP + NP, NP + POSTP, PREP +NP + POSTP, and finally NP. The findings revealed that in Guilaki Head Parameter is not binary but tertiary. In other words there are three types of constructions in Guilaki: PREP + NP, NP + POSTP, and PREP + NP + POSTP.

The purpose of this study was to develop some guidelines to modify the present BA curriculum in English Translation in Iranian universities. The participants of the study were 30 experts in the fields of ELT, Linguistics, and Translatology from different universities in Iran. The required data for the study were obtained through Delphi method using two rounds of questionnaires. The first questionnaire contained three open-ended questions based on the research questions of the study. The second questionnaire was devised using and classifying the respondents' answers to the first round questionnaire which resulted in a 55-item Likert type questionnaire. The frequency of the experts' answers to the items of the second questionnaire was calculated and checked for statistical significance using Chi-square test. Results of the study indicate an agreement among experts with regard to the required changes and modifications in the present curriculum. The suggested changes include areas of skills and materials (content), strategies for the implementation of the suggested skills and content, and procedures to improve learners' motivation.

In this paper, we show that the Persian plural markers -ân, -gân, -yân,-vân, -ât,-jât and -yât are the allomorphs of the morphemes -ân and -ât which undergo such a variety due to phonetic, phonological and lexical conditions. Focusing on the lexical structures, diachronic developments of words and syllable structures, we present and explain the reasons that cause the morphemes -ân and -ât to appear as different allomorphs in the light of Optimality Theory. It is also verified that syllable structure and sonority and similarity of sounds have an effective role in Epenthesis.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a project carried out to evaluate the present status of teaching and learning English in Iranian junior high schools. About 150 teachers and 3000 students of the second and third grades participated in the study. The subjects were selected following a random cluster sampling procedure from the 20 educational districts in Tehran, capital of Iran. The instruments included 10 English achievement tests (5 parallel tests for each level), a 50 item students' attitude questionnaire, a 100 item teachers' proficiency test, and a 226 item teachers' questionnaire (prepared to evaluate their knowledge of English and pedagogy). The instruments were validated through a pilot study before being employed in the project. The findings led to the following conclusions: 1. On the basis of the scores on the tests, both teachers and students demonstrated a reasonable command of English; i.e., the students' mean score was very close to the ideal mean and the teachers' mean score was above the ideal mean. 2. Girls scored higher than boys at both grades and the second grade students outperformed the third graders. The latter result might be attributed to the difference in attitudes of the students in these grades. 3. The teachers had reasonable knowledge of both the English language and concepts in applied linguistics. 4. The analysis of the questionnaires revealed that regarding variables such as age, degree, weekly teaching hours, and the number of students in class, teachers were qualified for and successful in managing the courses. 5. Although girls showed higher instrumental motivation than boys, there was no meaningful relationship between positive attitudes, instrumental or integrative motivations, effort, self confidence, and the students' scores. Of course, as for the teachers, no relationship was found between their attitudes and interests on the one hand, and their knowledge and competence, on the other hand.

The most common sentence types in human languages seem to be declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives which are assumed to have the semantic-pragmatic functions of proposition (assertion), question (asking) and demand (impositive), respectively. Typological studies of languages have shown that in daily uses of language, we must not always expect a one-to-one correspondence between grammatical forms of the sentences and their semantic-pragmatic functions. This lack of correspondence is most obviously seen in literary forms especially in poems, for poems are the spontaneous overflow of uncontrolled emotions. In Persian rhetorical traditions, various semantic-pragmatic functions have been mentioned for different sentence types. The present research tries to investigate the figurative aspects of 91 interrogatives used in a number of Akhavan's poems. In achieving this goal, seventeen of Akhavan's poems in the poetical metres of Nimai-e Ramal and Hazaj were selected and analyzed based on the semantic-pragmatic functions of interrogatives detected by Shamisa (1373/ 1994/ 1376/ 1997). Among the findings of the research is, that Akhavan has only made use of 12 functions of the 27 functions proposed by Shamisa. The most frequent function in Akhavan's poems is "disappointment". This is a sign of a dominant crirtical situation in society, incapability of the poet in bringing change in the society and his pessimistic view towards what is going on in his country.

This study is an attempt to investigate the impact of the English section of the University Entrance Exam (UEE) on the teaching of English from the preuniversity teachers' and students' viewpoints. It also seeks to compare and contrast the views held by teachers and students in this respect. To this end, two questionnaires were administered to 40 teachers and 80 students of the four Educational Districts in Shiraz. The data gathered were, first, subjected to descriptive statistics and then to inferential statistics utilizing the Chi-square test. In addition, independent t-tests were run to see if there was any significant difference between teachers' and students' viewpoints with respect to the teachers' methodology. The most important findings of the study were as follows: a) the teachers gave priority to reading skill, translation from English into Persian, grammar and vocabulary. b) speaking, listening and pronunciation were overlooked. c) the teachers tried to adapt their methodologies on the basis of UEE. d) there was a significant difference between teachers' and students' viewpoints in general and with respect to factors 1 (language skills and components) and 4 (teaching and motivation) in particular and e) finally, it seemed that the overall methodology of Preuniversity English was in line with some indices of Grammar-Translation Method (GTM). Moreover, some suggestions were offered to help the Ministry of Education in general and the Department of Education of Shiraz in particular to improve the quality of English in the educational system.

In this study, an attempt is made to analyse some 14 conversations from contemporary Parsian within the framework of some principles of pragmatics propsed by Grice (1975) and Leech (1983). By doing so, the author has followed a two fold aim: first he wanted to single out the importance of sociopragmatic factors in the analysis of linguistic forms. Second he wished to account for the complexities in the lingustic behariour of Persian speakers. It was argued that since linguistic behaviour has its roots in some more profound social conventions, any linguistic study in and analysis of conversntions, in particular, without considering these conuentions is doomed to inconsistency and failure.

This study was an attempt to develop and experiment with a novel test of overall listening comprehension. The new procedure, that tends to be concerned with the top-down view of listening, was termed Dicto-Phrase, standing for dictation-paraphrase. It involves the examinees in a gist-retrieval activity, requiring them to focus on the propositions of language. The intent of the study was to find whether Dicto-Phrase was an efficient, reliable, and valid test of listening comprehension (LC). The 74 participants took three LC tests, namely, the listening section of the TOEFL, which served as the outside criterion, a test of partial dictation, and a Dicto-Phrase. The new Procedure showed acceptable reliability and low measurement error. Moreover, there was a rather high correlation between Dicto-Phrase and the listening section of the TOEFL, providing concurrent validity evidence for the former. Finally, the ANOVA provided evidence for the 'group validity' of the new test method.

This study is concerned with what is believed to be the first application of a recently developed semantic approach in the analysis of language meanings in Persian. This approach is based on the fact that in all human languages there are some concepts functioning as bases for other concepts. In other words, the simplest of the former concepts are primitives.

The purpose of this study was to develop a scale suitable for measuring Iranian students' foreign language self-efficacy, and to find out whether girls and boys performed differently on the scale. A questionnaire was developed based on Bachman's (1990) suggested components of organizational language competence. The questionnaire was given twice to 29 first-year students studying at Shiraz University in order to check the test-retest reliability. Next, it was given to 212 intermediate students studying English at a language institute in Shiraz, Iran. The questionnaire was found to be both reliable and valid. Factor analysis also revealed that a single underlying general factor existed. No significant differences were found between the performances of girls and boys on the questionnaire.

It is quite common in ELT to encounter positions which equate SLA with SCA. However, it is believed that a prerequisite to resolving this basic diversity is the demystification of a set of dominant misconceptions concerning language, culture and speech community. Highlighting a number of dominant misunderstandings in this relation, the present article questions the validity of SLA/SCA parallelism.

This research provides a survey of the frequency of occurrence of a range of syntactic structures in the written production data obtained from adult L2 learners of English with two distinct levels of proficiency. The sample examined includes 1380 sentences that have undergone a detailed syntactic analysis and is available for further exploratory studies. Answers were sought to the following questions: What are the distinguishing features in the writing performance of L2 learners across two proficiency levels? In what ways does the syntactic complexity in the narrative discourse of the two groups differ? What are the most frequent syntactic errors across levels? The results indicated that the two groups' writings are similar in many ways: sentence structure, frequency of active and passive sentences, hierarchical frequency of relative clauses and verb types. Such findings besides providing data for evaluating SLA theories, especially regarding ultimate attainment, will assist teaching specialists build up a picture of the learning process and, based on this, plan very specific help for the learners fully addressing their wants.

Many projects have attempted to integrate new technologies into composition pedagogy. While teaching writing, the researcher found that students were reluctant to offer feedback to their peers. As a result a qualitative study was conducted in an attempt to introduce the modern resources to a writing class. The researcher wished to characterize the feedback offered by students to their peers via e-mail. The participants, 26 male and female undergraduate EFL English literature major at Allameh Tabatabaii University were required to send their assignments to their instructor (the researcher). The messages were redistributed. Students would read them, offer their feedback and mail them back to the instructor. Also towards the end of the study, the learners were invited to comment on this experience of theirs. Analysis of the data revealed interestingly various patterns. All in all, the participants had a general positive attitude toward the e-mail project.