JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES IN LINGUISTICS
Year:2018 | Volume:10 | Issue:1 (18) |Papers Count:6

This paper aims to demonstrate that explaining linearization in the Persian verbal morphology is possible based on an anti-symmetric view of phrase structure, without resorting to contradictory head-parameter values for verbal categories. Kayne (1995, 2008) argues against the concept of head-directionality parameter in natural languages and provides evidence that a default underlying Specifier-Head-Complement (S-H-C) order exists even when surface orderings deviate from the base S-H-C order. Persian is one such language with partly free and partly fixed orders. Parametric explanations of the Persian word order have led to proposing contradictory directionality values: head first for C and P categories and head last for N and V categories. It will be shown here that adopting the anti-symmetric view and subsequently the base S-H-C order has no difficulty in explaining Persian verb shells. This paves the way to a unified theory of Persian phrase structure. It will also be shown that the same view of phrase structure is able to explain some interesting morphological and semantic effects in Persian verb shells.

Metadiscourse is a term for the metalinguistic tools used to establish interaction in discourse. Hyland categorizes metadiscourse in two major classes. One of them is interactional metadiscourse which focuses on the participants in communication, the speaker or author’s identity as well as the norms of the cooperative society. Interactional metadiscourse is comprised of five markers. The goal of the present study is to investigate whether there are any significant differences in terms of gender in the general use of the markers in interactional metadiscourse as well as in the distribution of various interactional metadiscourse markers across Persian research articles. To achieve this goal, thirty Persian single-author research articles were investigated. Half of the articles’ authors were female and the other half were male. The interactional markers and their frequencies in the corpus were closely evaluated considering the situational context. The data were analyzed using SPSS. The findings indicate that, regarding the gender variable, there is an overall significant difference in the frequencies of the interactional metadiscourse markers. Further, the separate review of these markers in relation to gender shows that there are significant differences in the use of hedges, attitude markers, and self-mentions and there is no significant difference in the use of boosters and engagement markers between male and female writers. In short, the results of the present study confirm a gender-based approach in the distribution of linguistic forms.

Phonological adaptation refers to the phonological changes applied to loanwords to make them match the phonological system of the borrowing language. The present research addresses the phonological adaptation of English vowels with the Persian vowel space based on the theory of perceptual assimilation. The theory of perceptual assimilation assumes that phonological adaptations are minimal phonetic changes in the acoustic space. Thus, it is assumed that the adaptation of English vowels with the Persian sound system reflects the acoustic distances between vowels in a comparative vowel space (English-Persian). In this research, the first step in the phonological adaptation of vowels was carried out within the framework of laboratory phonology. To compute the Persian and English vowel spaces, we used natural spoken corpora (namely Farsdat for Persian and Oxford Bookworms for English). The two acoustic parameters F1 and F2-F1 were measured to compute the acoustic distances between vowels in each language and across the two languages. Results suggested that the adaptation of English vowels with those of Persian reflect the acoustic-perceptual distances between them in a comparative vowel space such that each vowel of the English language is mapped onto the vowel in the Persian vowel space with which it has maximal acoustic similarity.

This paper aims to study Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) and Syllable Contact Law (SCL) in three-syllable words in Persian. For this purpose, Mahshid Moshiri’s Persian dictionary, along with the two-volume set of Moein Persian Dictionary were applied. After analyzing about one-hundred thousand words, only 269 three-syllable words with an initial syllable CVCC were found. Then, vowels and consonants sequences were obtained, and SSP and SCL were investigated by using Guskova Sonority Scale. The results of (c)vcc.cv(c)(c).cv(c)(c) show that short vowels of a e o are more inclined to appear at the nucleus of the first syllable than the long vowels of a i, and u. Also, among short vowels, ‘a’ has the priority. In other words, more sonorant vowels possess higher frequency. In addition, there is a fall in sonority in the first syllable of consonant clusters with a frequency of 212 (78% of the data), that shows the observance of SSP in intra-syllables sequence. It is also concluded that SCL in the first and second syllable boundaries is violated, so that there is a rise in sonority in 133 words.

Cognitive Linguistics studies language as a part of cognition, therefore many researchers in the fields of Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Neuro-linguistics, and the like are interested in. Construction Grammar is one of the frameworks derived from Cognitive Linguistics which selects the cognition as the basis of its analysis. Despite of other previous linguistics grammars, Construction Grammar has provided a comprehensive analysis framework for all linguistic data including generalizations and exceptions, therefore it is regarded as a tool for comprehensive and precise study of language. Accordingly, we have taken this approach as the analysis framework of the present study. This study aims at exploring Possessive Ezafe constructions in Persian Language from a Construction Grammar perspective. According to the results, Possessive constructions are classified into three classes including possession, addition and attribution constructions. It has also been showed that the possessive constructions are the most frequent constructions among Ezafe constructions in Persian Language.

The present research studies the derivational suffixes ordering constraints in Persian in Complexity-based Ordering Approach. The corpus based on which this research is conducted is the data of the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. To conduct this study, 8 Persian suffixes were selected and ranked in a hierarchy-based ordering in Complexity-based Ordering Approach, then the correlation between their ranks in the hierarchy and their productivity, parsing ratios and boundary strengths were evaluated. Also, the correlation between the suffixes positions in graphical hierarchy, with their productivity, parsing ratios and boundary strengths were evaluated. The results show that there is no meaningful correlation between the suffixes ranks in the hierarchy-based ordering in Complexity-based Ordering Approach and their position in the graphical hierarchy, their productivity, parsing ratios and boundary strengths.