ADAB PAZHUHI
Year:2012 | Volume:6 | Issue:20|Papers Count:8

This paper studies Persian Idioms. First, based on Nunberg, Sag, and Wasow, the idioms are divided into two groups, namely compositional and non-compositional; then they are studied from cognitive point of view. Metaphor, metonymy, and common knowledge are the main semantic motivations in producing and perceiving idioms. The study concludes that compositional idioms are transparent, while non-compositional idioms are opaque. Furthermore transparent idioms outnumber the opaque ones.

While reading Persian ancient texts, the reader might face some words or phrases for which he finds no proper dictionary meanings. Moreover, it happens that the editors of old texts are unable to offer the correct form of a word, and a deductive correction based on syntactic and rhetorical rules comes to no use. In such cases, one can solve the problem by resorting to local dialects and the rituals related to them, and even benefit from the name of the instruments used in those dialects. This article, supported by the information in Lori Dialect, suggests new definitions for some old Persian words such as Eiwareh, Bare Bozeh, Okhreh va Oughrat, Sekāl, Sar hul, Bormeh Kardan, Noch Kardan and Navari.

The Iranian poems are divided into two groups in this paper: Oral Poems, i.e. poems produced following the oral Iranian tradition; Written Poems, i.e. poems written after the Persian quantitative poetry which is some kind of an imitation of Arabic poetry. This article, after a brief discussion of Kurdish Izadi’s Aghwāl and Yaresan Kalamat, as two examples of old oral Iranian Poems, compares some of their formal characteristics like line, rhyme, and meter; then, in the light of some West Iranian Poems, the article concludes that Izadi’s Aghwal are much older than Yaresan’s Kalamat, and Yaresan Kalamāt have lost some of their oral characteristics under the influence of Persian quantitative poetry.

Lori of Boirahmad is one of the Lori dialects spoken in Boirahmad region, in north and east of Kohgiluye and Boirahmad State. Lori dialects constitute an important branch of the Southwestern Iranian Dialects. They are derived from Middle Persian that in turn has its origins in Old Persian. This article intends to trace out the etymology of some Boirahmadi words. After explaining the derivational structure and sound change of the words, their etymology is studied, based on the parallel and cognate words in Iranian Languages, in order to reconstruct the old forms of the words.

This article is a functional and syntactic analysis of simple and complex wh-questions in Persian, following the theoretical framework of a functionalist named Talmy Givon (2001). On the functional dimension, a set of interrogative pronouns are classified into different types based on grammatical functions such as subject, object, indirect object, manner, time, verb, reason, possessor, quantity, instrument, alternation, association. Moreover, semantic features of interrogative pronouns are explained in terms of the answers replaced by wh- pronouns. The semantic features, are (in) definiteness, (non) referentiality, (in) animacy. On the syntactic and typological dimension, wh-position is the position of the focused element in the sentence. Two types of focus are informative and contrastive, and the paper indicates that a conditional association exists between the two.

There is a typical inflectional prefix /bv-/ in past perfectives of many variants of Gilaki Language, which either has been considered as a mood affix in many syntactic sources of Gilaki, or has been neglected in other sources. In many of the mentioned variants, if this affix is omitted, the verb turns from past perfective to past imperfective. This article tries to prove that this affix is not a mood, ornament or extra affix, but an aspect affix which in origin, was not inflectional, although it has become inflected and grammaticalised due to the historical evolutions occurred to Gilaki. This process has led the Gilaki simple past to “markedness”, while substantially it has not been “marked”. Thus, it can be indicated that “markedness” might change diachronically.

This article investigates mood in Persian Language. In the traditional grammar sources, moods are divided into several different groups, and verbs are known to have at least three and at most six moods. Many sources name indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods, and some others also mention infinitive, conditional, participial and optative moods. However, neither of them says on which basis the classification has been made and what criteria denote the existence of mood in sentences. This article is an attempt to offer a new classification of moods in Persian, based on the concept of modality. The essence of such classification is the central meaning of “probability of occurrence” on the basis of which, the different usages of mood is justified in simple and compound sentences. The theoretical basis adopted is “Mental Spaces” that shows the regularities of moods in their various usages.

One way to correct the hand-written dictionaries is the comparative analysis of two or some of them. In order to know the original form of a fake or distorted word and follow the changes happened to it, a great number of sources are needed. A general look on dictionaries makes it clear that the lexicographers have always changed the unsure and unfamiliar recorded forms and different dictionaries have had different recordings of the same word. Therefore a historical study of hand-written dictionaries is necessary. This article examines some distorted forms in a series of Persian dictionaries, of which two words are extracted from a poem, and the others are some known Persian words and compounds.