ZABANPAZHUHI (Iranian Journal of Language Research)
Year:2017 | Volume:9 | Issue:23 |Papers Count:7

In this research, the ability of five Persian-speaking Alzheimer's patients in processing 30 familiar, transparent, non-ambiguous idioms with 10 control subjects who were matched with Alzheimer's patients with respect to age and education has been investigated via oral explanation and force choice tasks. Furthermore, subjects' linguistic abilities were assessed using lexical comprehension and semantic fluency tasks and their executive system ability was investigated through stroop color and clock drawing tasks. The results show patients' deficit in idiom comprehension. The weak performance of patients in cognitive and semantic fluency tasks and the relation between cognitive, executive, and idiom comprehension tasks highlight that a set of semantic, executive and cognitive variables affect patients' performance in idiom comprehension. Subjects' tendency in interpreting literal meaning of idiom is in accord with those models of idiom processing as Idiom List Hypothesis of Borbrow and Bell ( 1973) or The Configuration Hypothesis of Cacciari and Tabossi (1988) which emphasized on the initial processing of idioms.

In the generative literature much less attention has been paid to the exclamative constructions with an exclamative word than the interrogative ones. This calls for a more detailed analysis of the exclamative constructions, and an attempt will be made within the Minimalist framework to determine the syntactic position occupied by the exclamative word č e (what). In this regard, we need to distinguish between two types of exclamative expressions due to the (non-) quantificational nature of the wh-phrase. This involves interpreting the wh-word on the one hand in A-bar position as a Q-adverb and keeping its quantificational force, and on the other hand in the head of a demonstrative phrase (DP) as an indefinite article and giving a non-quantificational reading. We will argue that, in addition to this, in Persian the edge feature [EF] on C in an exclamative clause cannot trigger movement of an exclamative expression to spec-C, contrary to what happens in English. Closer examination of a wider range of data, however, reveals that the Persian exclamative wh-phrase may undergo an optional movement to the specifier position of a focus projection which is above the TP, resulting in a well-formed but emphatic interpretation of the exclamative construction.

Due to the importance associated with vocabulary competence of L2 learners, a good number of studies have addressed the effect of different methodological techniques on L2 vocabulary learning. The present study investigated the effect of underlining, underlining and L1 equivalents, underlining and L1 equivalents plus repetition– as different manifestations of FonF in EFL classroom setting. Ninety seven high school students were randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions and a control group. The groups received the materials prepared for each of them in accordance with their conditions for 4 sessions; the control group received the reading texts with no FonF. The texts provided for the three experimental groups, however, had already been manipulated to enjoy one of the FonF conditions assumed for this study. Following the treatment deliverance, all the four participating groups took a judgment measure, a multiple-choice test, and a production test over the immediate and delayed posttests. Repeated measures ANOVAs run on the data from these tests showed that the group which received a pack of all the three manifestations of FonF could enhance their vocabulary significantly compared to the other groups involved. And the experimental group which had received two manifestations of FonF outperformed the control group and the experimental group which benefited from just one manifestation of FonF. The findings suggest that an appropriate mixture of FonF has the potentiality to enhance L2 vocabulary learning significantly.

This study was an attempt to explore how verbal patterns of lexicogrammar are used to signal the importance of content in Persian academic lectures. These expressions are referred to as importance markers here. 60 authentic academic lectures compiled in the Persian corpus of SOKHAN were investigated with a mixed-methods (exploratory) approach and a corpus-driven method. Analysis of the results showed that importance marking of portions of discourse can be done by making use of evaluative adjectives and metalinguistic nouns, relating the discourse to assessment, and involving the participants in the discourse. Additionally, importance marking was found to be done with one of the five structures of nominal, verbal, adjectival, adverbial, and exam-related. Among these, verbal (‘ V n/clause’ ) and nominal (‘ MN v-link n/clause’ ) importance markers outnumbered other patterns of importance marking. Finally, importance markers that signaled the importance of later portions of discourse were found to be more advantageous to the audience, as they made it possible for the audience to plan for online processing and note-taking of the points.

The teaching experience shows that sometimes the etymology of words can enhance second language vocabulary learning and sometimes knowing the synonymous words help second language learners in improving their lexical knowledge. As these two are from among the most frequent ones, the major issue in this study is to evaluate the role of teaching etymologies in comparison with giving known synonyms of the words in learning the vocabulary. As the learners’ ability in using words after passing some time of learning is important, the effect of these two methods on short term and long term retention across different proficiency levels were investigated. The participants were 120 learners at Alzahra University in Tehran, Iran. Based on the results of PET test they were classified into two groups of elementary and advanced levels of language proficiency. They were taught the vocabulary items through etymology and synonym. The results demonstrated the mnemonic efficacy of etymology presentation at high level in both short and long term retention.

One of the elements of mode is the "Lexical aspect" that as a meaning characteristic is in the verb and show the process of acting a verb. The most important concepts that are considered in lexical aspect are stability, dynamism, strength, weakness, repetition, duration, direction, time, and speed. This study is trying to use appearance of words as a tool for better understanding of the modality or modalities of Imam Ali. Therefore, with reference to the category of lexical aspect, context has been analyzed, and then the connection between this intermodal element and the attitude and ideology of the Imam Ali has been study. Due to the fact that most of issues of this letter are based on educational issues, conditional verbs are observed more than activity verbs and processing verbs. Also activity verbs and achievement verbs of this letter show that Imam Ali has a further emphasis on mobility and speed in the external affairs. Therefore, among the concepts, static, dynamic, and continues will to be observed more than the other concepts.

Metonymy is one of the most important processes of semantic change in the language, which besides receiving a high degree of attention by rhetoricians and historical semanticists, has been, at least for three decades, considered by cognitive semanticists as a process at work in everyday speech. The theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models (LCCM) proposed by Vyvyan Evans in 2006 in the form of an article and within the framework of cognitive semantics explains how the meaning functions in the language, especially based on metaphoric and metonymic processes and how the speakers understand these processes. Based on this theory, words don’ t have ‘ meanings’ in and of themselves and the meaning of a word is subordinate to the utterance in which it occurs. The present article studies this theory with data in the Persian language, evaluating the process of metonymy within LCCM framework. It concludes that first, distinguishing absolute meaninglessness in words, in a word-based approach, is essentially considered a methodological problem. Second, one cannot synchronically distinguish a process called metonymy, especially in its traditional definition; instead, it should be considered a process based on ‘ decreasing’ on the syntagmatic axis, not a process based on the proximity of two concepts on the paradigmatic axis. Thus, words can be considered as units that have meaning when decontextualized, but are not ‘ meaningful’ . Such a view liberates us from the troublesome framework of word-based approaches.