Journal of Linguistics and Khorasan Dialects
Year:2010 | Volume:2 | Issue:2|Papers Count:10

In the literature of differential object marking (DOM), it is argued that animacy and definiteness are the two main distinguishing features in marking or not marking direct objects. Objects high in definiteness and animacy clines are more likely to be case marked. Using a functional-typological approach, Aissen (2003) asserts that in Persian, objects high in definiteness and animacy clines are followed by the postposition, RA. This paper tries to show that Aissen’s explanation of Persian RA is not acceptable and her conclusions are not valid considering Persian data.

Deicticity in language is an important issue that can be analyzed pragmatically. So the present paper aims to investigate the pragmatic aspects of time deictic terms in Persian and the way they are used by Farsi speakers. Much information which is transferred in speech has pragmatic aspects and relates to the certain context of situation and social context. One of the goals of this paper is to reveal the role of time deixis in transferring pragmatic concepts in context of situation that grammar is unable to explain exhaustively.

AS far as reader attraction is concerned, each sport journalist is in competition with those who write in the same journal or in other ones. The first and the best way to attract readers is to make the title salient. One of the ways to produce salience in the title is the application of different forms and colours. But these are decided upon by type setters. The journalist may use linguistic patterns to magnify his title. The present paper tries to identify those patterns. To do so, we studied two hundred issues of twenty sport journals published between 1997 and 2007 and selected a random sample containing 150 salient titles. WE detected four types of linguistic patterns which can be ordered in terms of their frequency as: 1. semantic pattern, 2. syntactic pattern, 3. morphological pattern and 4. pragmatic pattern.

The Minimalist Program is the most recent approach in generative linguistics. The program mainly seeks to analyze the hierarchical structure of the sentences in human languages with regard to the mental linguistic knowledge of the speakers. An interesting aspect of the structural analysis in this approach is the introduction of functional categories, which help to define the syntactic relationships between lexical categories. Providing a comprehensive description of functional categories, the present study deals with the one of the functional categories i.e. Tense, in the syntax of Persian sentences. In line with the definitions applied in the Minimalist Program, we study verb inflection through agreement and the checking process of uninterpretable features on T and V nodes. Moreover, with regard to the fact that the feature Infl is a strong feature in Persian, the verb is attracted to the head T and placed in a position outside vP, vP deletion and tag questions support this hypothesis.

Maintenance of the cultural heritage as a part of the national identity has recently drawn the attention of Iranian people and officials. However, it seems that such an interest has not been shown in the "spiritual" cultural heritage of Iran. Since many of the Iranian languages and dialects are on the verge of extinction, and their death will surely affect many other traditions and beliefs, one of the major national concerns of the officials should be the maintenance of their important, endangered, and scattered cultural heritage. This article deals with the issues of the endangered languages, and focuses on the Iranian languages, emphasizing on "language documentation", aiming to provide a modern, scientific method for preserving these dialects.

This paper is an attempt at a descriptive, qualitative study of Persian suffix -i considering both its history and its current functions. To attain this goal, we first present a linguistic description of the suffix. The article then deals with the origins of the Persian suffix -i as one of the most generative and frequent Persian suffixes. It is indicated that the suffix originates in ancient times and can be traced in Old Persian and Western Middle Iranian languages. Then it goes through the functions of -i in current New Persian and investigates it under three categories, namely nominal, adjectival and adverbial structures while relevant examples are provided. The study shows that the suffix i- is unique in terms of the number and variety of the derivations it makes. The generation and dynamism of the suffix have increased dramatically over time. We conclude that the suffix -i has been so active that it has penetrated to the domain of some other Persian suffixes and has marginalized them.

The aim of the present study is to describe Givi dialect and compare it with Pahlavi language, especially in regard to phonological processes, and to introduce the dialect because of its historical and cultural importance. It also wants to indicate that there are many words in Givi dialect that while they have undergone phonological processes, they are phonologically and semantically, close to Pahlavi language. These processes include deletion, addition, mutation, merger and metathesis. The main data in this study is a list of words which are used as examples to establish the mentioned phonetic changes. This study indicates profound historical links between Givi dialect and Pahlavi language.

The present paper studies the power/solidarity relations in the talk between Farsi-speaking doctors and patients from a sociolinguistics perspective. Therefore, we studied the linguistic variable, types of address, as one of the markers for exercising power, together with four social variables: sex, social class, age and education. The application of the variables in every group was statistically analyzed. The results indicated that the power factor is obvious in the talk of Farsi-speaking doctors to patients while the four non-linguistic factors affect the extent to which these markers of power. This is largely in line with the topics in the medical ethics and the results can shed light upon many issues in this scope.