ZABANPAZHUHI (Iranian Journal of Language Research)
Year:2017 | Volume:9 | Issue:24 |Papers Count:8

One of the most basic and essential necessities of every educational system is the development, evaluation and adaptation of textbooks. A key condition for safeguarding the foundations of any educational system is the quality and quantity of information that is made available to students through textbooks as an important and widely applicable educational media. Hence, textbook evaluation is of grave significance for the upcoming textbook development and revision projects. Against this background, the present study sets out to evaluate "Prospect II" as a textbook package designed for second grade high school English course in the Iranian public education system. For this purpose, a 65 item Likert scale researcher made questionnaire was developed and pilot tested. Based on the obtained data from the pilot study, the reliability index was found (α =0. 9) to be highly acceptable. Moreover, confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the instrument as a valid questionnaire for the intended purpose. The questionnaire was distributed among 236 English teachers from Isfahan, Hamedan, Karaj, Sanandaj, Ghorveh, Rasht and Boroujerd, 200 of whom returned the completed questionnaire. Furthermore 38 English teachers sat for a semi-structured interview. Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed that the teachers regarded the textbook as acceptable considering the language related content, however, they believed that the text is quite unacceptable and poor concerning physical and cultural aspects. Finally, the provision of authentic contexts of language use for the EFL learners was also found to be unsatisfactory.

Nasal consonants are a sonorant category of the sounds of the world languages and are considered among universal sounds. Almost all the world languages have the category of nasal consonants in their sound system. Acoustically, nasal consonants have some features one of which is the formation of anti-formant. This research explores 1170 spectrums of two nasals, [m] and [n] which have been produced by three adult Persian women and three adult Persian men in order to identify the frequency area of anti-formant formation in Persian nasals. The FFT and LPC spectrums of these two nasals were extracted by Speech Studio software and their frequency area of anti-formant formation were determined on the basis of formants’ intensity. The results of this research show that anti-formant formation in the production of Persian nasals is not a permanent issue. Nonetheless, the existence of anti-formant is visible in three frequency areas including, F1 and F2, F2 and F3 and F3 and F4.

This paper sets to explore the extraposition of relative clauses in Persian based on Discourse Grammar (DG). In this phenomenon, the relative clause moves from the adjacency of Head Noun and is positioned at the end of the sentence leading to discontinuous construction. DG organizes linguistic elements into two domains according to their prosodic, syntactic and semantic behaviors, namely Sentence Grammar (SG) and Thetical Grammar (TG). Given that TGs are not governed by the structural requirements of SG, they, as properties of thetical elements, tend to be positionally mobile. By analyzing different instances of relative clauses in Persian, this paper then shows that the phenomenon of extraposition is a common property of relative clauses. In short, the mobility of nonrestrictive relatives results from being belonged to the thetical domain, while the mobility of restrictive relatives as elements of having been transferred from TG to SG domain by grammaticalization, is described as the persistence of the property of earlier form in the new construction.

This descriptive-analytic study explores the radial categories of the polysemous words of head (sar) domain in Persian. For this purpose the senses of these polysemous words were collected from Farhange Ruze Soxan, Farsnet, different digital books, weblogs and observation of people using these words. These senses were then categorized, and using the relations among the radial sets mentioned in Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2007), the senses were examined in these categories. The relations including conceptual metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and image schemas were used for developing the radial categories shown in diagrams. In addition, in this study the following questions were addressed: is it possible to categorize and develop radial categories for the head body parts of polysemous words using the relations between the prototype and the extended senses? Which type of expressions including these words cannot be explained using these relations? Can these explanations be employed in lexicography and teaching languages? The data analysis indicated that radial categorization of the polysemous words can be formed using these relations, but the application of them for categorization of idioms was not possible. It seems that although idioms can be categorized using the meaning of the whole idiom, the relations mentioned for radial categories were not useful for this purpose. The results indicated that the proposed radial categories can be used in teaching vocabularies and modern lexicography.

In the present research, the common metaphors in body of proverbs in northern Khuzestan within the framework of cognitive semantics, based on Evans and Green Schematic Model (2006) are studied. Recordings of languages and dialects plays an important role in preserving language and cultural transmission from one generation to another one. Therefore, one reason of gradual loss of local languages may be attributed to the lack of literary texts. In this regard, proverbs as a component of culture, national, personal and social identity are significant. Proverbs can play a major role in transferring and recognizing concepts and language studies. The role of proverbs and discovering their cognitive structure in regard with the surrounding environment can have a major effect on how to select topics and their purposeful processing in Iranian dialects. Therefore, the need for this study in the framework of cognitive semantics is of great importance. The present study was done through descriptive – inductive method and some data were gathered based on a field study of local speakers. Results of the study revealed that the interaction between experience and environment in forming schemata and conceptual metaphors have a valuable role which appear as practical concepts in audience discourse. Furthermore, the overall schema types specified in Green and Evans Model (2006) including space schema, containment schema, force schema, unity schema, and existence schema were traced in proverbs of Dezfuli Dialect in the north of Khuzestan.

Arabic is derivative, and this derivation, which examines the origin of a term, is one of the ways in which language is expanded and helps to expand their vocabulary and meaning. Of the derivation types in which, while preserving the order of the original letters (two letter), one of the triple letters is converted into terms like divergence or divergence (convergence), it is an actuality derived that relates to the semantic relations between the vocabulary. The study seeks to explore this linguistic phenomenon in the first and oldest Arabic-language dictionary, Al-Ain-al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (d. 175), based on the expenditure of the letters. Khalil, after mentioning the two letter words and the termination of the three letter word, poses the general meaning of the word, and the semantic relation between the words that contain the derivation of the term, and which have used the words that refer to it as "methl, shabih, cuff, yodhareo. " This collection was originated by many dictionaries in the following centuries. Subsequently, the verse of the "verses of the word" of Ahmad ibn Fars (d. 395), which is based on the principle and the words of the words, has been considered. The Persian has used the word "Abdul" in balancing and expressing the special meaning of the lexical words which are more derived. This book is written in the late years of the author's life and is the basis for the work of the cultivators. The purpose of this article is to study the phenomenon of the emergence of Akbar in the two dictionaries, the expression of how influential the author of the book is on the subject of his coincidence and assessment, and to assess the views of the two authors in this regard. The methodology of the article is descriptive-statistical. In this method, statistics and results are obtained: 29% of al-Ain's words and 48% of the words are Moghaysis al-Laghata of Azteqagh Akbar, in which 122 words, 21% in two dictionaries, are common in this phenomenon. Subscription can confirm the influence of Ibn Fars from Sahib Al-Ain which plays the role of creating words and expanding Arabic meanings.

This research is specifically about the function of inflectional "-i" suffix in new Persian. The objective of the article is to recognize some concepts and changes which are encoded by this morpheme in New Persian. Additionally, it follows up the reason of change or recognition of the linguistic elements. The results suggest that the so-called morpheme is changed in the cases that it was expressing two categories of frequentative aspect and modes, including subjunctive, conditional, optative, and imagined. The alternative sign in the category of aspect is prefix "mi-", which has taken a new frequentative aspect other than imperfect, and because of taking a new grammatical function, the auxiliary of "dɑ ʃ tæ n" is grammaticalized for its primary function, as well. The alternative sign in the category of mood is the abstract form of subjunctive mood, which means that a literal and phonemic function of an affix is titled to an abstract category. The reason of such changes should be found in the process of grammaticalization. That is, through this process, in aspect form "mi-" has taken a new function in addition to its primary one and has become more grammatical, and in mood form, a grammatical category has become more grammatical and more abstract.