ZABANPAZHUHI (Iranian Journal of Language Research)
Year:2019 | Volume:10 | Issue:29 |Papers Count:13

Auxiliation is a subfield of grammaticalization which deals with the way the complex lexical verb structures, in some contexts, develope into auxiliary grammatical structures over time. Most auxiliaries in New Persian (Farsi) were used just as lexical verbs in Old or Middle Persian and converted into auxiliaries through grammaticalization. The present study deals with the process of auxiliation of three auxiliaries including "astidan", "bashidan" and "budan" (meaning "to be") which are used in Present Prepect, Past Subjunctive and Past Perfect structures in New Persian respectively; the question arises here is “ whether the usage of "astidan", "bashidan" and "budan" as auxiliaries in these structures goes back to the Old Persian or has been the outcome of grammaticalization” ? This paper tries to answer this question by scrutinizing instances of the aforementioned grammatical structures in Old and Middle Persian. According to existing evidence, the grammatical functions of these verbs as axiliray verbs in mentioned structures (Present Prepect, Past Subjunctive and Past Perfect) are due to the process of auxiliation in Middle Persian or Dari (early New Persian). The auxiliaries "astidan", "bashidan", "budan" don`t have a common root; the roots of mentioned auxiliaries are and meaning "to be" in Old Persian. Although in New Persian "ast" and "bash" are the present and imperative forms of "budan" respectively, "astidan" stems from while "budan" and "bashidan" stem from. The various forms of "astidan" which are used as lexical and linking verb as well as Present Prepect auxiliary in New Persian, didn't have auxiliary function in Middle or Old Persian. Although the auxiliation of this verb goes back to Middle Persian, its usage as Present Perfect auxiliary has been peculiar to New Persian or Dari. Infact "istadan" was substituded for "astidan" as Present Perfect axiliary in late Middle Persian or early Dari. "Bashidan" is used in various forms as lexical and linking verb as well as Past Subjunctive auxiliary in New Persian. But the auxiliary function of this verb has been the product of auxiliation in Dari. "Bashidan" had no usage in Old Persian and there has been found just one imperative form of it, "bash", as lexical and linking verb in Midde Persian. The auxiliary usage of "bashidan" in Past Subjunctive structure has been peculiar to New Persian or Dari. Past Subjunctive structures in Middle Persian texts had been formed by using "astidan" as auxiliary. Before being used as Present Perfect auxiliary in Dari, "astidan" was used as Past Subjunctive auxiliary in Middle Persian. Then "Bashidan" was substituded for "astidan" in Past Subjunctive structures in Dari. "Budan" not only is used as lexical and linking verb in various forms in New Persian, but also as an auxiliary verb in Past Perfect structures. The late function didn`t exist in Old Persian and "budan" was just a lexical and linking verb. The auxiliary "budan" is a grammatialized verb which was formed through auxiliation process in Middle Persian. Following a revolution in the manner of expressing the aspect of verb in Middle Persian, "budan" was used to express Perfect Aspect in Past Perfect structures. As mentioned, the auxiliaries "astidan", "bashidan" and "budan" as infinitives in New Persian stemmed from two different roots each of which passed through certain grammaticalization processes from Old Persian to Middle and New Persian, especially with regard to auxiliation. "Bashidan" went through this process later than two other auxiliaries and its auxiliary usage has been peculiar to Dari. "Astidan", "bashidan" and "budan" have been used as auxiliaries in grammatical structures of Present Prepect, Past Subjunctive and Past Perfect through reanalysis of predicative structures; they have lost their lexical category and meaning through "decategorialization" and "desemantization" process while their functions as lexical and linking verbs have been preserved. The later phenomenon is called "divergence" and is one of the grammaticalization principals which is common among many Indo-European languages. It is worth mentioning that conversion of existential verbs into auxiliaries in Present/Past Perfect structures have also been a very common tendency in grammaticalization process in many languages. According to Lehman (2002: 29) the existential "be" in English have gone through such auxiliation process. There have also been numerous evidences in different languages indicating linking verbs used as auxiliaries in structures with one Past Participle, such as Present Prepect, Past Subjunctive and Past Perfect structures. What we called resultative structure in this article seems very much like predicative structure in Persian. According to Bybee (1994: 69) evolution of resultative structures in to perfect structures can be an instance of "semantic generalization".

This article studies 14 semantic frames of external body part words in Persian. Semantic frame is a knowledge structure required for understanding the meaning of a word or related set of words. Unlike internal body parts (e. g. heart, brain and bones), external body parts (e. g. arm, leg. head and trunk) are observable and can be delineated, therefore their referential meanings seem perfectly clear. Frame semantics is an approach to the study of word meaning or lexical semantics, which holds that lexical meaning can only be properly studied and described considering a particular body of knowledge, known as frames. This theory provides a powerful tool to study lexical meaning. As Evans (2007: 193) puts it “ a given word foregrounds a particular part of the semantic frame to which it is relativized, and yet cannot be understood without the other elements which make up the frame. One consequence of this is that a word provides a route through a particular frame. That is, as words relate to slots in the frame, they directly relate certain elements within a frame” . Two questions then arise: 1) how are the principal frames pertaining to body parts are represented in Persian language in terms of syntactic or morphological structures? 2) What are the semantic elements of these frames? The aim of this study is to recognize semantic domain of body part terms in Persian and to present its realizations in morphology and syntax. For this purpose lexicographic data is mainly used. Considering the body part frames of English on FrameNet as a model, the same frames extracted for Persian language using a Persian dictionary. As a rule of thumb, if a word was defined by reference to a body part, it was concluded that it was related to body frame (e. g. blink: involuntary shutting and opening of the eye). The Findings reveals that among the body-related frames, one of them is the central frame (containing core elements like hand, arm, foot, leg and head), through which other frames are related to body parts, including: 1) body decoration (nail varnish, tattoo), 2) body harm (slap, kick), 3) body part description (black-eyed, ponytail), 4) disease (leprosy, acne), 5) cloth and clothing (gloved, put on a hat), 6) holistic body description (muscular, bony), 7) posture (cross-legged, lying down), 8) body movement (nodding, limp), 9) sense (smell, touch), 10) accessory (belt, earring), 11) body-based sign (handshake, wink), 12) body surface (mole, scar), 13) body care (brushing, shaving). The study also reveales that body frame manifestation is either explicit (e. g. eye, head, lip, foot, hand) or implicit (e. g. kick: foot, brush: tooth, hear: ear). The explicit manifestation of body frame includes a body part word used in word formation processes to make a new word (e. g. eye in eyelash, finger in fingerprint). It is also possible for body frame to be implicitly present in the sense of a word which becomes explicit in the definition of words (kick: to hit someone or something with your foot, smell: something that you notice by using your nose). The main explicit morphological and syntactic structures representing body frame are 1) in phrases and sentences describing an action or an entity related to body, e. g. č eš me ž aponi (Japanese eye). 2) in noun formation as in gardan-band (lit. neck-tie) (necklace), dahanš uј e (lit. mouth-washer) (mouth lotion). 3) in adjective formation as in č eš mi, an adjective meaning related to the eye, Gatreј e č eš mi (eye drop), labsuz (lit. lip-burner), an adjective meaning the quality of a liquid which is very hot and enjoyable. 4) in compound verb formation as in gush dadan (lit. ear-giving) (to listen), pa kardan (lit. foot-doing) (put on shoes). The data also reveales the implicit presence of body frame. The main morphological and syntactic structures representing body frame implicitly are: 1) simple nouns as in the definition of mesvak (toothbrush): an oral hygiene instrument used to clean the teeth, gums, and tongue. 2) simple verb as in the definition of xarandan (to scratch): to rub your finger nail hard on part of your skin. 3) simple adjectives as in the definition of Guz (hump): a round raised part on a person's or animal's back. 4) compound adjectives as in the definition of siј ahč orde (dark skin). The same study may be carried out for internal body part words. The universality of body part terminology across languages of the world has made it an interesting domain of research. The present article sheds light on some aspects of this domain in Persian language.

The automatic recognition of Persian numerals [sefr-se] “ zero– three” , [do-noh] “ two-nine” and [haft-haʃ t] “ seven-eight” is considered as a challenge for speech recognition systems. Mahmoodzadeh and Bahrani (2014) found that the acoustic reduction of telephone speech triggers lexical ambiguity for the automatic recognition of [sefr-se] pair. The numeral [sefr] is produced with the deletion of [r] at word final position and the weak labial friction of [f] is masked by the channel noise, which results in an increase of acoustic similarity between [sefr] and [se]. The automated recognition of phonological distinctions can be improved by using perceptual cues which listeners apply for the natural recognition of sounds in adverse listening conditions such as telephone speech or noisy environment. In this research for discovering efficient perceptual cues responsible for distinction of numerals [do]-[noh] “ two-nine” in both natural and telephone speech, perception tests were used. The acoustic signal of [noh] shows a weak or practically deleted final [h], which is not audible and recognizable from background noise. Therefore, the acoustic differences of nasal-stop distinction and the co-articulatory effects of nasal on the following vowel play an important role in [do-no] recognition. Results show that the acoustic landmarks, nasal murmur and nasal-vowel transitions affected by various sources of signal disruption, undergo phonetic reduction, which leads to perceptual similarity of [do-noh] pair and ultimately listeners` lexical ambiguity. In optimal listening condition, natural recognition of [n] based on nasal murmur is about 40% which increases to 96% after the addition of 10ms of the beginning of vowel [o]. However in telephone speech, natural recognition of [n] based on murmur is about 29% and after the addition of 10ms of vowel [o] transitions rises to just about 48%. According to the outcomes, nasal murmur is not an influential perceptual cue for the recognition of [n] in both optimal and adverse listening conditions; however recognition rises significantly after adding only 10 ms of the beginning of following vowel. It is likely that listeners’ lexical confusion and uncertainty due to lack and reduction of phonetic information reinforced by listeners’ perceptual bias toward unmarked consonant, give rise to [d] responses and failure of [n] identification in adverse listening conditions. The automatic recognition of these words should be done by capturing further temporal and spectral information from neighboring vowel transitions.

1-Introduction: Compounding is one of the most common and useful methods for creating new words. Investigating compound formation is a continuing concern within the field of morphology. Recent developments in the field of linguistics have led to the renewed interest in this phenomenon from different aspects such as semantics perspectives, cognitive linguistics, morphology, acoustic phononetics, neurolinguistics and sociolinguistics. However, far too little attention has been paid to compounding in the field of typology. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the endocentric and exocentric compound nouns in different age groups of children and adolescent stories. This research tried to answer the following questions: (1) what would be the probable syntactic prototype pattern(s) for the endocentric and exocentric compound nouns? (2) what would be the probable semantic prototype pattern(s) for the endocentric and exocentric compound nouns? , and (3) how could the difference in the ratio of their frequencies be explained? 2-Theoretical framework: There are various theoretical frameworks for categorizing endocentric and exocentric compound nouns, including Spencer, 1991; Fabb, 1998; Olsen, 2001; Bauer, 2001; Haspelmath, 2002; Booij, 2005; Bisetto and Scalise, 2005. Nonetheless, endocentricity and exocentricity deal with syntactic and semantic aspects of the language; therefore, to investigate the two aforementioned types of compound nouns, Shaghaghi’ s framework (2008) was used. Regarding the semantic relation between the constituents, compound nous are classified as: (1) endocentric compound: it consists of two words in which one of them functions as the head, such as steamboat (the head is ), blackboard (the head is ), and (2) exocentric compound: it is a compound construction that lacks a head word: that is, the construction as a whole is not semantically equivalent to either of its parts. So the central meaning isn't carried by the head, but is external to the compound; examples include: paleface, pickpocket. 3-Methodology: Based on the purpose of the present study, 315 stories have been selected using convenience sampling. The stories were allocated to different age groups: group A (pre-school & primary school children) and group B (middle school and high school adolescents). To investigate the two aforementioned types of compound nouns, Shaghaghi’ s framework (2008) was used. After calculating the frequency of compound nouns in stories, the two groups were compared with each other in order to reach the decision about the probable prototype pattern for endocentricity and exocentricity of Persian compound nouns. 4-Results and discussion: Regarding the first question of this research, the syntactic prototype patterns for endocentric and exocentric compound nouns in both groups are: N+N > N+Adj> V+ Adj. The second question addressed the issue of extracting the semantic prototype pattern of compound nouns. The results demonstrated that the most frequent type of compound in both groups was endocentric compound: group A 70. 5 % and group B 52%. So, endocentric compound nouns> exocentric compound nouns. Furthermore, the results also showed that the usages of exocentric compound nouns were higher in the second group in comparison to the first group. So it seems that social and cognitive development plays a key role in using exocentric compounds. In other words, cognitive development in adolescents and their attention to details, help them to understand and process exocentric compound nouns faster and easier. 5-Conclusion and suggestions: The study raises questions that would require further investigation. Future research can include a kind of diachronic study; i. e. studying the described prototype patterns in past and present prose texts. The findings of the present study might be a contributing factor for Iranian authors to narrate their story according to language development in childern and the level of cognition.

The componential analysis as one of the theories of semantic studies deals with the analysis of the meaning of a word or other linguistic units into discrete semantic components; it is important in identifying the semantic differences between words and explains the underlying meanings of words. The present study introduces this analysis method as a new approach in the field of semantics to find the Persian equivalent of some Arabic words based on their componential analysis. The research is organized by a critical-descriptive method. The Surahs An-nur, Al-furqan and Ash-Shuara were selected to be studied; the Persian translation of Quran by Ayati, Elahi Ghomshei, Rezaie, Fuladvand and Moezi were chosen to study the methods the translators applied for finding Persian equivalent of marked words and the way they analyse the semantic components of those words. The results indicate that the inadequate attention to the meaning components of words leads to literal translation. Although none of the translators have been successful in providing the exact equivalent of the studied words, the Persian translation of the mentioned surahs by Rezaie, Elahi Ghamshahi, Ayati, Moezi and Fouladvand would be considered on a scale of the most to the least attention to the meanings components of Quran vocabulary. 1-Introduction The word, as the main semantic unit, plays a fundamental role in the transfer of meaning. One of the main issues in semantics is the componential analysis which can be used as a method in semantics and translation studies. This process is defined as analyzing the concept of a word in terms of its semantic constituents, so called “ componential analysis’ ’ or lexical decomposition (Lyons, 2012: 153). Therefore, the translators should take "componential analysis" into consideration in the translation process of Quran to provide the most accurate and precise translation. The present study tries to evaluate the level of lexical balance in the Persian translations of surahs An-nur, Al-furqan and Ash-Shuara by Ayati, Elahi Ghamshahi, Rezaie, Fouladvand and Moezzi; the semantic units of selected words are analysed in order to answer the following questions: 1: What kind of role does the componential analysis play to reach the translation balance and understand the Quranic vocabulary? 2: To what extent is the analysis of the vocabulary of the target language possible in the translation of the Quran? 3: What is the function of the obove mentioned translators in translating the meaning components of the vocabulary of the target language? 2-Research method The study has adopted critical-descriptive survey research method and benefited from library resources which present some related concepts; In this regard, the semantic units of vocabulary of Quran and its relation to the translation process are studied to evaluate the translators’ performance. 3-Literature review Many studies have been carried out recently on the topic of componential analysis; the studies include, but not limited to the following: " The analysis and evaluation of the verbs of Sura Al-Baqara, applying Componential analysis approach" by Ali Hajikhani et al (2017), " Review of Quran translations from Elahi Qomshei, Foladvand and Khorramshahi based on the analysis of individual words, Case study: Raib, Zebh and Khashyat", by Reza Amani (2014), and "The Pragmatics of the“ Translation balance of lexicon” principle in Quran translation process", byHamid Reza Mirhaji et al (2011). Despite the above-mentioned studies, there has been no independent research on the study of semantic units of the vocabulary in the surahs Al-Baqara, Al-naml, An-Nas and Ash-Shuara. Therefore, the difference between the present research and the related ones is that, this study tries to evaluate the quality of the translation of Quran vocabulary and the degree of translators`adherence to componential analysis; it does so by studying the lexical categories (nouns and verbs) of the mentioned surahs. It actually makes a connection between a semantic theory and translation studies used as a tool for evaluating the equivalent vocabulary in translation of some Quranic words. 4-Meaning components and marked vocabulary The meaning/semantic component is a potentially contrastive part of the meaning ofa lexical unit. The semantic structure of words consists of different semantic units within lexical units and each lexical unit is a unique combination of these semantic units. This important issue has made some linguists deny the existence of absolute synonymy; for example, Palmer points out if the meaning components of a word represent a general concept, that word will be semantically considered as an "unmarked word"; in other words, the meaning is considered "general" (an expression is general in the sense that it does not specify certain details; i. e. generality is a matter of unspecification), but if a word contains more specific components, it can be classified under the term "marked". In this case, it contains "marked" feature. Therefore, marked elements and structures have more specific semantic elements than their unmarked counterparts. In fact, they carry certain parts of meaning that are of particular interest to the producer of a particular piece of speech "(Golfam, 2010: p. 2) 4: Conclusion 1: The "componential analysis" method can help the translator to discover the subtlety in a wonderful text such as Quran, which leads to accurate translation of semantic layers of the words including emotional meanings, emphasis, qualities, etc. 2: The translator should try to select the accurate and close equivalent of the words and terms from the target language, but sometime such equivalent words do not exist in target language, so, in this case the linguistic knowledge can help him/her to add descriptive and interpretative elements to the words, provided that this does not lead to an interpretive meanings. 3: The analysis of five Persian translations of the selected vocabulary of Suras An-nur, Al-furqan and Ash-Shuara, revealed that in most cases translators did not pay sufficient attention to the precise translation of the word elements. Although none of the translators have been successful in providing the exact equivalent of the studied words, the Persian translation of the mentioned surahs by Rezaie, Elahi Ghamshahi, Ayati, Moezi and Fouladvand would be considered on a scale of the most to the least attention to the meanings components of the Quran vocabulary.

1-Introduction: Quran is the most significant Islamic text and the Word of Allah which was revealed to Prophet Muhammad in Arabic language and has been preserved till now by his followers. The Arabic language of Quran is very impressive, eloquent and inimitable; which according to many Islamic scholars could not be totally translated. Therefore, translating the form as well as internal meaning of Quran is an extremely challenging task. There are different translations of Quran, among which some are faithful to the original words of Allah while some are somehow manipulative. It appears that presenting the deep meaning of the Quran without adding some exegetical expressions is not feasible. It is worth mentioning that proper use of exegesis in translation help the fluency and clarity of the text. However, the devoted translators try to keep the holy structure of Quran and in case they have to add extra information to make some implicit information explicit, they add it separate from the words of Allah. Therefore, the need to compare and analyze the exegetical expansions as well as their adjustment to the valid exegesis can be felt. Consequently, analyzing the exegetical expansion the translators have applied, and finding its weak and strong points can pave the way for other translators of Quran. The aim of this paper is to analyze and compare different English and Persian translation of Quran to see if the structural or lexical expansions were according to the exegesis or they were just translators’ personal interpretation. 1-1-Translation of Quran: As Mo’ tamedi (1993) mentioned, translation of Quran has had some opponents who believed that translation of Quran was illegitimate. Among them, as Mo’ tamedi pointed out, was Sheikh Ahmad Fahmi Mohammad. Some also believed that Quran should be interpreted, not translated, among whom he referred to Shafe’ i. Abdul Raof (2001) also referred to untranslatability of Quran and suggested that its translation without interpretation is impossible. 1-2-Different translations of Quran: Jawaheri (2005) divided different translations of Quran into 7 categories which were word for word, literal, faithful, semantic, free, poetic, and exegetical. He also defined 3 kinds of exegetical translation. The first definition related to those exegesis in which translator has tried to clarify and interpret some points in a language other than Arabic. In the second definition, translator tried to add some information in parenthesis to the translated text of Quran according to the known exegesis. In this research, such translations have been analyzed. The last definition was associated to those translations in which the translators add extra information to the translated text of Quran without separating it from the words of Allah. 1-3-Use of Interpretation in Quran translation: Different interpretations of Quran revealed that even Arab Muslims did not arrive at a consensus about the meaning of Quran. Considering the relation between translation and interpretation (exegesis), Jawaheri (2012) mentioned that some scholars made a difference between interpretation and translation of Quran while some others believed that translation of Quran was a kind of interpretation and some supposed that its translation without interpretation was impossible. Accordingly, one of the best strategies of translating Quran has been the use of interpretation in translation. Khoramshahi (2001) divided exegetical translation of Quran into additions, deletions, and manipulations. He believed that exegetical translation was necessary and unavoidable since languages differ from each other in various respects, including sentence structure, vocabularies, idioms and collocations, cultural aspect reflected in the languge, and rhetoric. Abdul-raof (2001) referred to 17 cases, which proved that the use of exegesis and footnote was vital in translation of Quran. These cases were historical fact, geographical fact, ecological issue, metaphor, cultural expressions, legal discourse, abrogating structure, intertextuality, religious concepts, scientific facts, cryptic letters, ambiguity, euphemism, parables, lexical meaning, elliptical structure meaning, and evocative names. 1-4-Explicitation and addition in translation: The concept of explicitation was first introduced by Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) who defined it as a technique in translation to make the implicit information explicit. Klaudy (2004) divided explicitation into four categories of obligatory, optional, pragmatic, and translation-inherent. Obligatory explicitation was associated with differences in the syntactic and semantic structure of languages. Optional explicitation related to the differences in text building strategies. Pragmatic explicitation was associated with the differences between cultures and Translation-inherent explicitation could be attributed to the nature of the translation process itself. Nida and Taber (2003) also classified expansion into two categories of syntactic (grammatical or formal) and semantic (lexical). According to Jawaheri (2012) the expansion which cannot be separated from the text is a kind of free or communicative translation but if it can be separated, it is more faithful to the original version. He suggested that sometimes the meaning of text could not be understood without realizing its tone, style and register, culture, and time. He believed that since readers of Quran translation were mostly non-specialists, the translation should be according to the idea and interpretation of the scholars and this interpretations should be separate from the original text of Quran, whether in the parenthesis or in the footnotes. 2-Methodology: This descriptive-qualitative research was aimed at analyzing and comparing the source and target text of Quran in Arabic as well as English and Persian. The framework of the study was based on the definition of expansions proposed by Jawaheri (2012) as well as Nida and Taber (2003)’ s definition of lexical and structural expansion. Moreover, the data were divided into obligatory and optional as suggested by Klaudy (2004). In addition, Abdul-Raof classifications of expansion were also applied in the analysis. 2-1-Data collection: To analyze the data, Mosabbahat Suras in 5 contemporary translations (Makarem Shirazi, Fooladvand, Khoramshahi in Persian and Yusuf Ali and Piktal in English) were selected. Then the expansions in parenthesis were extracted. Afterwards, they were compared with Al-Mizan, the exegesis of the Quran, by Tabataba’ i to see if these structural or lexical expansions were according to the exegesis and their aim was to make explicit the inner layer of the Quran and adjust the target text structure to the source text or they were just translators’ personal interpretation. To this aim, at first a number of expansions each translator applied were specified. Afterwards, the structural and lexical expansions, whether optional or obligatory, were inserted in separate tables to see which translator applied the most and the least structural and lexical as well as optional and obligatory expansions. 3-Results and Discussion: The result revealed that in all translations, most applied expansions were obligatory. In Persian translations, Fooladvand applied optional expansions more than others. Makrem Shirazy applied the least number of expansions and whenever he added something, it was necessary for the clarification of the text. Moreover, Khoramshahi applied obligatory expansions more than optional ones. In English translations of Quran, Yusuf Ali applied obligatory expansions more than optional ones and only few examples of unnecessary expansion were seen in his translation. It seemed that his knowledge of interpretation helped him add the least number of optional expansion in his translation. He was faithful to the original text of Quran and did not have any redundancy. Picktal was a Western Islamic scholar who applied expansion in his translation less than others, since he was a convert from Christianity and his Islamic background was weaker than others. Another point to be considered is that his audiences were English and (maybe) Christian, so they did not need to know Quran in details. 4-Conclusion: After analyzing the data, it was revealed that all the translators added some words to the original words of Quran which were just for clarifying the meaning and adjusting the structure. They tried their best to reduce a number of unnecessary words. It appeared that Fooladvand applied expansion strategy more than others did, while Picktal attempted to reduce a number of expansions in his translation. All translators refused to add any redundancy or manipulation, so the expansions were mostly for clarifying the cultural, historical, geographical, religious and ambiguous expressions.

English enjoys a unique place in the process of globalization, of which many other languages are deprived. In commerce, science, technology, politics and cultural relations English has an undeniable presence and influence. To mitigate the dominating role of the English language and to alleviate the challenging attitudes towards this language, a few models have been proposed which mostly emphasize the global nature of English and attempt to ignore its cultural interactions and impacts. Globalization in its present form is a model and way of life imposed upon the world by the U. S and the other western countries which share a great deal of cultural similarities. English serves as a medium for boosting the cultural impact of the western countries such as U. S and England upon the world. Through the English language, thoughts, cultural values and traditions of the western nations are propagated in the world, which leads to the hegemony of the western culture. This form of globalization does not conform with globalization which is defined as sharing the values and notions of all cultures and nations. In fact, this tendency may lead to the hegemony of one language and its associated culture over other languages and cultures. It seems that the more a language is employed in various social, economic or military situations, the more its hegemony reveals itself in international affairs. The power of the English language is closely associated with the GNP of the U. S and England. Economic power leads to military power and paves the way for colonialism and imperialism. As the recent history reveals, the colonies had to learn English because it meant survival in a changing world. Additionally, the new colonialism is forcing the people of all nations which want to have a share in the globalization process to adopt the same strategy, which means to speak English. Nowadays, English is employed as the language of the international organizations and financial bodies, the language of science and technology, the language of trade and economy, the language of international law and judiciary systems, the language of tourism, media, higher education, etc. Globally, English is the language of the top fifty scientific journals of the world which are published in the U. S and England. At the same time, the greatest bulk of the published materials are in English. On the basis of the discussion, English as a means through which globalization process is spreading has turned out as threatening other languages and cultures. The domination of this language has thus been associated with the hegemony that English speaking countries, especially United Sates, are exerting across the world. This hegemony has sometimes been very radically interpreted as linguistic genocide resulting in the destruction and extinction of other languages. In order to fight the challenges posed by the unilateral dissemination of the English Language, some scholars have been stimulated to think up new models for the English language, all of which lay an emphasis on the global identity of English as a multicultural and value-free medium. Despite all the attempts made, the status quo does not seem far removed. The present article is thus intended to argue that the growing prevalence of English worldwide is the growth of a specific thought and culture, with globalization as an asymmetrical pattern for world convergence, not contributing to the universality of the language. To that end, the paper first theoretically brings to the fore the significant changes occurring to the advantage of the English language showing that the neutral models attempted to account for the fair role of the language cannot be justifiably explained. In other words, it is argued that the top-down force of the economy and sociopolitical power of the US has pushed aside much of the linguistic and cultural diversity. To concretize the argument, the paper presents a content analysis of Interchange Series to unfold the unilateral cultural density of the books. The findings reveal that the Interchange Series are fraught with the lopsided views of culture defining features such as ‘ values, norms, carrier agents of cultures, and cultural products’ which are detected in the books. The results substantiate the theoretical stance of English Language unilateralism elaborated above, and the hegemonic effects it is assumed to exert on the learners of the language.

Background: Comprehending English academic lectures is difficult for students whose mother tongue is not English. This difficulty is mostly due to the ephemeral nature of lectures and information overload. An understanding of how importance is signified in lectures might benefit lecture comprehension; to this end, this paper studies English academic lectures as a case study of reference in importance markers. Expressions that help students distinguish between important and unimportant information are referred to as ‘ relevance markers’ (Crawford Camiciottoli, 2007; Deroey & Taverniers, 2012a; Hunston, 1994), ‘ importance cues’ (Kiewra, 2002), ‘ emphasizers’ (Siepmann, 2005), ‘ selection cues’ (Titsworth & Kiewra, 2004), and ‘ focusers’ (Simpson, 2004). According to Hunston (1994), relevance markers have four distinguishing features. First, they may be retrospective or prospective (p. 199); this feature is related to the placement of the important information, no matter whether it is placed before or after the importance marker. Second, relevance markers overtly mark the relevance of preceding, or subsequent stretches of text (p. 199); this feature is related to the use of evaluative language (e. g., important, unimportant) to mark importance. Third, relevance markers evaluate the discourse itself and are thus metadiscoursal (p. 199). Finally, they play an important role in organizing discourse (p. 199). Deroey (2015) has derived importance markers from 160 lectures of the BASE corpus and classified them in terms of participants` orientation and discourse. Deroey observed that importance markers pertaining to content, listener, speaker, or joint orientation followed the patterns of ‘ MN v-link’ , ‘ V n/clause’ , ‘ 1s pers pron V n/clause’ , and ‘ 1p pers pron V n/clause’ , respectively. Additionally, importance markers with prospective, retrospective, or combined orientation to highlighted discourse had the patterns of [‘ V n/clause’ and ‘ MN v-link’ ], [‘ deic v-link ADJ’ , ‘ deic v-link MN’ , and ‘ deic v-link adj MN’ ], and [‘ 1s pers pron V n/clause’ and ‘ deic v-link adj MN’ ], respectively. Deroey also found most markers to be directed towards either the content (e. g. the point is) or the listeners (e. g. you should remember). Few importance markers were observed to be oriented towards the speaker (e. g. I should stress) or the speaker and listeners jointly (e. g. I want you to notice). Moreover, Deroey found many content-oriented markers with secondary listener orientation (e. g., these are the things to take home). Partington (2014) examined importance marking at local and macro levels in TED talks. The corpus Partington based his study on comprised transcripts of 27 TED talks gathered in 2007-2012 and was downloadable from the TED website. Generally, Partington found importance marking in TED talks to be of two types: endophoric and exophoric. Endophoric importance marking indicates that what the speaker is about to say (cataphoric marking)– or has just said (anaphoric marking)– is a key point in the development of his/her talk. Exophoric importance marking or ‘ real-world oriented’ importance marking (Thompson & Hunston, 2000, p. 24) stresses how the topic the speaker is expounding on, or the work he/she is describing, has importance in real, extra-textual world (Thompson & Hunston, 2000). Partington found exophoric importance marking or ‘ reference to real-world considerations’ to be the most common type of importance marking (p. 149). Methodology: The analytical procedure of this study was a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. A corpus-driven approach was followed to retrieve importance markers and a discourse analytic approach was followed to investigate their reference. The corpus used in this investigation to derive importance markers was British Academic Spoken English (BASE) Corpus. The BASE corpus was developed at the Universities of Warwick and Reading in England under the directorship of Hilary Nesi and Paul Thompson. BASE comprises the audio and video recordings, and the transcripts of 160 English lectures and 39 seminars, totaling 1, 644, 942 words. The lecture section which is the basis for the analysis of this paper contains 1, 186, 290 words; they were recorded between 1998 and 2005. Lectures are equally distributed across four broad disciplinary groups, i. e. arts and humanities (ah), life and medical sciences (ls), physical sciences (ps), and social studies (ss). The transcripts of 160 English academic lectures of the BASE corpus, delivered by male and female lecturers, were investigated. 1, 350 concordances of importance markers were extracted and analyzed in terms of reference— anaphoric, cataphoric, and shared. Results and conclusion: The results showed that (1) both male and female lecturers tend to give cataphoric reference to importance markers in organizing discourse and subject status, than anaphoric one; (2) male and female lecturers use anaphoric and cataphoric importance marking equally in topic treatment markers of importance; (3) exam-related issue is necessarily done through anaphoric importance marking by both male and female lecturers; and (4) audience engagement markers are more cataphoric than anaphoric. By and large, the results showed that most importance markers are cataphoric in reference.

The present research intends to elaborate on the possibility of formalizing the sense relation of ‘ opposition’ in word pairs. In order to do so, firstly, some fundamental concepts from set theory are introduced; main topics covered in this regard include: ‘ membership’ , ‘ inclusion’ , ‘ union’ , ‘ intersection’ and ‘ difference’ . Then some concepts corresponding to propositional logic, which the authors consider necessary for the purpose of the research, are presented. The concepts include logical connectives (‘ negation’ , ‘ conjunction’ , etc. ) and quantifiers (universal quantifier and existential quantifier). The present paper also applies the concept of ‘ function’ from mathematics to present some of the intended formal expressions corresponding to the introduced sense relations. To set a suitable framework, the authors go over various technical definitions of ‘ opposition’ which are introduced as fundamental concepts in linguistics dictionaries as well as semantics textbooks. Sense relation of ‘ opposition’ in word pairs can be classified into several sub-categories, all of which are introduced in this paper and the process of formalizing each of them are explained. All in all, the present paper presents six different types of sense relation under semantic opposition category which are as follows; ‘ antonymy’ , ‘ gradable opposition’ , ‘ complementary opposition’ , ‘ directional opposition’ , ‘ symmetrical opposition’ , and ‘ contrast’ . Then, it goes over the process of formalizing each of the mentioned sub-categories and introduces a formal translation for every proposed definition. Finally, the present research examines the efficiency of the introduced formal expressions by providing several examples. The formal expressions of the listed sub-categories are introduced in the following paragraphs in the same order as they are discussed in the paper. Antonymy; F(x) =-x. The logic behind the presented relation is that, based of the definition of antonymy, as it can be observed in the binary pairs (dead/alive), the absence or presence of a semantic feature pertaining to one word results in binary pairs which are antonyms; i. e. the meaning of one word equals the negated meaning of the other. So the absence or presence of the semantic feature [living] in the example in question (– living/+living), causes them to be antonyms; therefore, F(dead)= F(-living)=-(-living)= alive. Gradable Opposition; [(23)] ∀ p, ∃ q, ∀ x∈ M p(x) → q(x) So; p≃ q Relation [(23)][1], means that for every single utterance such as proposition p, that is the word x, and x is a member of the Universal Set of words M, there exists an utterance like q which is in opposition with p. For instance, if the word “ woman” is a member of M, then there exists a word, “ man’ which is in opposition with “ woman” It is noteworthy that relation [(23)] is a formal expression which is suitable for all kinds of sub-categories of the sense relation of opposition. Complementary Opposition; [(29)] p → q Therefore, p∧ q is never a tautology. For example, dead → alive, therefore, dead˄ alive is never a tautology. Directional Opposition; [(31)] g: X→ X ∀ x∈ X; g(x) = x-1 It is worth mentioning that X is a set of semantic features which concern with the concept of ‘ direction’ and the function g reverses x∈ X (x is a directional feature). The set an example, if we take x: to depart, then g(x) = g(depart) = (depart)-1 = arrive, that the function g reverses the semantic feature of direction. Symmetrical Opposition; [(32)] f, g: X→ X ∀ x∈ X; x =-y f(x) =-g(y) As it is seen, the relation of reciprocal opposition is defined as “ one element is in contrast with the other” ; that is they cannot coexist. Examples include pairs of words ‘ husband/wife’ , and ‘ sell/buy’ . So, if Mary is John’ s wife, then John should be Mary’ s husband. The relation [(32)], defines two functions that turn the very mutual semantic element of x to – y which is in fact the opposite of x. Considering the example ‘ sell/buy’ , it is clarified as follows: buy (+to get sth[2] by paying money) =-(to give sth by receiving money); so, f (buy) = (+to get sth by paying money) =-g (to give sth by receiving money) = g (sell). Contrast; as this relation is a type of antonymy, the very formal expression of [(23)] works for this relation as well. The efficiency and correctness of the presented formal expressions are discussed in detail in the paper using various examples from Persian. In the end, it is concluded that the sense relation of opposition in word pairs (which includes several sub-categories) can be formalized applying concepts from logic, set theory and mathematics. [1]. The numbers in bracket corresponds to the suggested formal expressions presented in the paper. [2]. sth: something

This paper studies the imperfect aspect of verbs in Persian based on the prototype theory. Cognitive semantics holds that language is part of a more general human cognitive ability. Cognitive linguists believe that neither form nor content can be regarded as having priority over the other; so it is vain to analyse grammatical units without referring to meaning. Moreover, in cognitive studies, semantic values do not rely solely on linguistic knowledge, but it requires extralinguistic knowledge as well. Aspect is a multidimensional category and indicates a semantic attitude towards the verb structure. According to definitions presented in various proceedings, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time; it denotes the reflection of the static state, continuity, movement, or a completed action pertaining to verb, from the speaker's point of view. Prototype is the most prominent example of each category, and indeed the closest member to its implicit concept. Lö bner (2013: 181) states that the prototype is the best example and specimen or definition of a classifier that introduces its members and their attributes. Prototype examples, on the one hand, are considered as semantic concepts by means of which human beings classify categories of the outside world. On the other hand, the prototype samples contain new and unfamiliar units. All members of a category are classified according to the number of their distinctive features. This research sheds more light on imperfect aspect in Persian based on the prototype theory within the framework of cognitive semantics. The definitions proposed in different texts for the state of continuation of Persian verbs, (not necessarily the prototype aspect), are more or less identical and refer to the presence of the prefix <-می> pronounced as "mi" in the beginning of the verb indicating continuity. Considering cognitive semantics and the prototype theory, the question that arises here is whether to examine continuity on the basis of formal aspect, or formal and semantic aspects simultaneously. Another question is: what form can be presented as a prototype for the imperfect aspect in Persian? First the present study examines the imperfect aspect in Persian, then investigates it from the prototype point of view. Unlike current view, in traditional perspectives, the concept of continuity was merely referred to as a verb structure carrying the prefix "mi"; there were two kinds of structures indicating continuity of the verb: absolute or simple continuous aspects, while in cognitive terms it is impossible to study the syntax of language without considering the meaning and the original message. Aspect, that is the structural and semantic property of verbs, existed in Old Persian too and has been noticed and studied by Parviz Khanlari (1986). The main aim of this study is to achieve a comprehensive definition and criteria for imperfect aspect in Persian that can be useful in teaching Persian language. For this purpose, the authors present the prototype of this verb property from a cognitive perspective by considering four criteria selected from the presented materials. What is presented in this study is based on the analysis of 200 compound structures, written and sometimes spoken, from which 15 sentences were extracted to be analyzed. Then the sentences that called for semantic criteria for their aspect analysis were chosen to be scrutinized, because the formal criteria as well as the traditional grammar were unable to describe the continuity aspect pertaining to the mentioned sample. The analysis of the sample is based on both formal criteria of continuous representation (i. e. adding the prefix "mi" or the linking verb "dashtan" to the beginning of the verb) and semantic criteria (including the inherent meaning of the verb and context). So some of the sentences, despite having a sustained formal criteria, were excluded because of the absence of semantic criteria to indicate continuity. According to the results, the imperfect aspect cannot be defined and studied only based on the form but contextual meaning should also be considered simultaneously to determine this property. In this paper, while referring to the history of the imperfect aspect in grammar books and linguists’ works, we showed that the prefix "mi"-especially in the present tense-can not be considered as the only imperfective marker in Persian. The meaning of the verb is the combination of the inherent meaning and the contextual one.