Year:2006 | Volume:23 | Issue:1 (46)|Papers Count:19

This article introduces Pinter as an early practitioner of the Theater of the Absurd as well as an existentialist. In his plays The Dumb Waiter, The Room and Birthday Party absurd is presented in its different aspects and faced by different characters. Sometimes this absurdity is funny but the dramatist's aim is to get into reality. Another aspect of Pinter's plays is existentialism. His Pinteresque characters show his multi-dimensional way of looking at life.

In this Paper inflectional categories of the verb in Famoori dialect (a village near Kazeroon) are studied. Verb system, verbal affixes, infinitives and the ways in which present and past verbs are formed are all discussed in this research. This paper also compares verbs in this dialect with their counterparts in similar dialects spoken in adjacent villages, as well as those used in Standard Persian. In this dialect, the verb has two roots, namely, present and past. Verb moods are indicative, subjunctive and imperative. As in Standard Persian, there are six different forms for 1st, 2nd and 3rd persons (singular and plural). All verb endings appear at the end of the verb root.

The preterite in Persian can be used, particularly in its colloquial variety, to designate the future time and for immediate warning. These rather unusual uses of the preterite have not been investigated adequately by grammarians of the Persian language. As a purely grammatical approach will be unable to explain such non-characteristic uses of the preterite, this paper aims to explore the issue from a pragmatic perspective. Interestingly enough, such uses of the preterite are associated with the pragmatic category of deixis. For this reason, the current paper argues that the deicticity of the preterite used for expressing futurity must be explained in terms of subjective deixis, rather than from the perspective of mere temporality. The paper also argues that deontic modality can be an appropriate alternative to account for the preterite being used for the speech act of warning.

The subject of this paper is the linguistic survey of loan-words in the dialects of Bushehr province. The study in question was conducted in the three cities of Borazjan, Bushehr and Khormuj in 2003. The researcher, who conducted this study himself, gives a preliminary report of his findings in this article. The main feature is a list of some 154 words, arranged alphabetically from /fit/ طول واحد"" (= foot)2 to / voyer / "ویر" (= wire). It is concluded that there is ample evidence of morphological distortion and some evidence of semantic shift.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of context on the comprehension and recall of abstract and concrete sentences with respect to dual-coding and context-availability. To this end, one-hundred and forty students at Shiraz Azad University majoring in Translation were given the Oxford Placement Test. Two homogeneous groups of thirty students each were chosen. One group was given random-abstract and random-concrete texts, whereas the other group received thematic-abstract and thematic-concrete materials. The thematic texts presented the materials in a coherent way in paragraphs, whereas the random texts were sentences presented in an incoherent way. The participants read the texts and recorded what they recalled on answer sheets that included the first two words of each sentence. The recall protocols were scored based on the idea units. The scores were subjected to matched and independent t-tests. The results indicated a difference between concrete and abstract sentences, but the context showed no effect on abstract texts. That is to say, the participants performed similarly in reading and recalling thematic abstract and random abstract texts. In the case of concrete texts, context had a negative effect, that is, the students performed significantly better in random concrete texts than thematic concrete ones.

This study aimed to investigate the process of speech segmentation of Farsi speaking EFL learners by manipulating position (initial/medial) and stress (stressed/unstressed). One hundred BA students of English performed a phoneme localization task in which they were asked to locate some target phonemes. Both the participants’ reaction times (RTs) as well as their accuracy in localizing target phonemes were measured and analyzed. The results showed that speech segmentation was mainly affected by position, while stress did not produce any significant effect.

The aim of this paper is to study the Gatha from two different aspects, linguistic and religious. From linguistic point of view, the writing of Gathanig and its five sections are discussed. From religious view point, Ahura Mazda as the unique God and his manifestations in Gatha are analyzed. Compilation of Gatha as Zoroastor’s hymns coincides with the time when “god” was an abstract term in the minds of the people and the emphasis of Zoroaster and monotheism is quite apparent in these old texts. “Sp¶nta mainiiu”, “Asa”, “Vohu manah” and “Armaiti” are presented as divine elements worthy of worship in the Gatha. They are considered as manifestations of Ahura Mazda. They hold the status of divinity and are the centre of a religion in which the less important and potential that have made an appearance in the Yasna “Haft Ha” are their subjects. Later, they take the name of “Amsaspandan” in the recent Avesta.

This paper investigates the Ezafe Phrase (EzP), a functional phrasal category specific to Persian. The EzP is headed by a morpheme which may be phonetically realized as e/ve or null Æ. This morpheme regulates the occurrence of more than one complement in DPs/NPs a d APs. The analysis follows the Minimalist framework of Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001) and adopts Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) which examines the relation of hierarchical structure and linear order based on the antisymmetry of syntax. Presenting a comprehensive analysis of this construction, the paper concludes that this functional category follows the general Spec-Head-Complement configuration proposed by the LCA

This paper tackles the effects of redundancy reduction of reading comprehension in Persian. To achieve this goal, four common texts were selected from Iranian daily newspapers. Their seemingly redundant parts were reduced. Then C-Tests were prepared for each authentic and intact text and its modified or redundancy-reduced counterpart.After a pilot study, 528 high school male students took part in the test. The tests were distributed to every other student in such a way that after an interval of one week the one who had taken the redundancy-reduced test was given the unmodified test and vice versa.The tests had a mean of 80 for the intact texts and 85 for the redundancy-reduced ones. The results showed that the difference between the two means was significant at 0.05. Accordingly, one can say that redundancy-reduced texts are easier to understand.

The purpose of this study was, firstly, to investigate the language teaching methodologies used in Shiraz EFL institutes. Secondly, the study aimed at exploring the extent to which these teaching methods were effective from the directors’, teachers’, and the students’ views.Out of 28 institutes for men in Shiraz, 5 institutes including 17 classes were selected for the study. An observation scheme was used to observe and record the instructional activities taking place in the classrooms. A questionnaire consisting of five variables was also administered to all 205 students of these institutes. In addition, the five educational directors and seventeen teachers of these classes were interviewed.The findings of the study obtained through statistical analyses indicated that a) the overall methodologies employed in Shiraz EFL institutes benefited from some indices which are in line with the principles of Communicative Approach; b) the classes observed were more in need of supplementary materials; and c) because of the difficulty of writing skill, it was mostly ignored in the classrooms.

The Entrance Examinations to Universities held in Iran during the past two decades are frequently criticized as being invalid, and non-standardized with lots of problems in terms of principles of testing in general and test construction in particular (for instance, Jafarpur, 1376/1997). The present study dealt with a content analysis of University Entrance Examination for English Majors held in 1382. The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, it aimed at analyzing the content of University Entrance Examination for English Majors to see if there is any pattern at work in the process of devising such an exam. Naturally, through such an analysis, some problems of this exam were also determined. Thus, the second aim of the present study was to pinpoint and describe the problems with this exam as well as to offer some suggestions to remedy the problems. The finding of such an analysis supported the idea that the validity of the exam is not strongly established due to the large number of shortcomings. The problems found during the analysis showed that the exam is not a standardized one; still some of the basic principles of language testing are not observed in the process of constructing the exam.

This study explored the effects of attitude, motivation, and years of study on the use of language learning strategies by Iranian EFL university students.The participants of the study consisted of 126 freshmen and seniors majoring in English Translation and Teaching English at Shiraz Islamic Azad University.Two instruments were used to gather the needed data: A 50-item Likert-type strategy questionnaire and a Likert-type background questionnaire to elicit data on attitude, motivation, and years of study. Analysis of the results revealed that the subjects of the study reported to employing metacognitive, social, affective, and compensation strategies more frequently than memory and cognitive strategies. Also in this study, attitude proved to influence the use of Language Learning Strategies (LLSs) significantly. That is, learners with positive attitude used LLSs more frequently than those with negative attitude. Regarding the factor of motivation, integratively-motivated students employed more strategies than instrumentally-oriented ones. Furthermore, seniors showed greater use of LLSs than freshmen.

Translation is said to be a conscious, goal-oriented activity. The translator’s decisions, different choices and various strategies in the process of translating are all but a reflection of his/her ideological orientations. Dealing with the issue of ideology in translation, this article examines and analyzes the extent to which translation may affect the ideological output of the original text. First, ideology has been discussed from different perspectives and has finally been defined in terms of linguistics. Then, the framework proposed by Hatim and Mason (1990, 1991, and 1997) to study and analyze ideological aspects of translated texts has been introduced and the constraints in terms of which they have suggested analyzing texts (i.e., discourse, genre, and text) have separately been discussed and, in each case, relevant examples of translations influenced by these constraints have been presented and properly commented on. The final portion of the article is devoted to the analysis of the English translation of Bouf-e Kour (The Blind Owl), by D. P. Costello, within the analytical framework proposed by Hatim and Mason.

Despite their undeniable significance, communication skills have not been included in the medical curriculum in Iran yet, while they have already secured their position in the medical education of the West. Bearing in mind the presence or absence of such instructions in various medical curricula, the current study was carried out to find out whether physicians with medical education from the West (the USA and England), with training on physician patient communication, were more successful in achieving patient satisfaction than those with domestic education lacking such training. A sum of 528 patients (referring to both groups of physicians) was asked to complete a questionnaire dealing with key features of successful communications. The results were unexpectedly against the study’s hypothesis (p<0.05) which envisaged greater communication achievements for doctors with foreign education with training on communication skills during their medical education.

Persian language is derived from Middle Persian or Pahlavi which itself is derived from Old Persian. The Manichaean Middle Persian is a language in which Manichaean manuscripts (Turfan Material) have been written. Parthian is also one of the western Middle Iranian Languages. Parthian with which Manichaean manuscripts have been written is called Manichaean Parthian.The primary concern of this research is to investigate verb structures in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian and to study how verbs in these two languages have derived from Old Iranian form.

One way of investigating the L2 learners’ interlanguage is uncovering the notion of “difficulty” and “error” learners have in their linguistic input by implementing the grammaticality judgment test (GJT). The test may reveal the relationship that is felt between error “recognition” and “production”. To this purpose, the subjects in this study were required to underline errors in different sentences, having been produced more often by the Persian English learners (PELs).Their response to the errors revealed some part of their interlanguage (IL). It is hypothesized that certain types of errors are not tangible enough to recognize as they represent the items which are more “difficult” to master in the course of language learning. In other words, the study tried to shed light on the assumption that failure to recognize some errors by some learners corresponded closely with difficulty of the same items to master on production level. The statistical value, 6.58 at 2 df. at 5% level indicated that the relationship between the two variables, response and sources, was meaningful. It is furthermore discussed that resorting to the traditional inter- and intra- classification of error sources suffers from some respects and a new dimension in the area, i.e. bi-source errors, was introduced.

This study aims at investigating some cross-linguistic properties of poetic genre. For this purpose, three Persian pieces of poetry by Jalal-addin-Rumi - Avaze Nei (the Reed Flute), Shah va Kanizak (the King and the Servant), Moosa va Shaban (Moses and the Shepherd) will be compared with their English translations. The study draws on the recent version of discourse analysis approach (Baker, 1995) propounding five hypotheses on the specific properties of translation; namely, simplification, normalization, explicitation, transitivity, and nominalization. The analysis of the data reveals significant cross-linguistic differences in SL and TL as related to these properties, which in turn suggest a shift of mind from mere linguistic to metalinguistic and ideational analysis of texts in translation process.

Behbahan is a town located in the south east of Khuzestan province in Iran. Although tribal-groups speak Lori or dialects near to it, in nearby villages surrounding Behbahan, Behbahani dialect is specifically spoken in this town. It belongs to a subdivision of south-West Iranian languages.This article focuses on the verbal construction in general and the function, place and relation of the personal endings and clitics specifically. The dialect is characterized by a split system in the behavior of its personal endings and clitics due to transitivity of the verbs and the tense system. Therefore, there are two different syntactic patterns, each including verbs sharing specific sets of personal endings, clitics and independent personal pronouns.The first pattern consists of intransitive verbs in both past and present tenses and transitive verbs in the present tense following the same pattern concerning the endings and the independent personal pronouns, whereas the second pattern deals with transitive verbs in the past. Past transitive verbs do not take verb personal endings when used in negative forms or in connection with other sentence elements, contrary to their usage in isolation and the verbs following the first pattern.