Journal of Language Research
Year:2011 | Volume:2 | Issue:1 (2)|Papers Count:7

There are different processes to form new words in every language, including compounding, derivation, inflection, etc. In compounding, two lexical stems form a compound. In derivation and inflection, new words are coined by affixation or some phonetic changes. This kind of affixation is applied on the simple or compound stem. Here our compound stem is a bound compound stem, consisting of a noun and a verb, which has verbal category (v), due to the feature ‘Percolation principles’ in Lieber (1983). This bound compound verbal stem is the base of many derivations and inflections.According to lexeme-based morphology/ LBM (Aronoff, 1994), every productive word formation process is applied on a lexeme or its stem in order to build a new word. A stem in Aronff 's frame of mind is a sound form in morphology/ morphological spell-out. Indeed, affixation is applied on this stem separate from its function (semantics and syntax) in word formation rules. This is the core of Separation Hypothesis. So, in LBM, morphophonological representations act separately from syntactico-semantic representations. We study stem and affixes within this frame. Without the assumption of the existence of the bound compound verbal stem, many derivations are not possible. Many affixes can attach this stem paradigmatically, and so various new words are formed based on a bound compound verbal stem. Indeed, replacing affixes in the final position of verbal compounds increases the productivity of word formation processes.

This article is an attempt first to introduce translation as a linguistic cultural process, and then to seek the impact of the English language on Persian modal auxiliaries. Parallel corpora of Persian translated and original texts derived from the area of educational psychology were analyzed based on the theoretical framework of House (1997, 2001). The results show us that although the discoursal-pragmatic priorities of English modal auxiliaries did not predominate directly over their Persian equivalents in Persian translated texts due to the contact phenomenon, the Persian cultural filter was applied less consistently in the second time span, leading to a growing tendency towards the extreme of possibility on the certainty continuum while in the first half, the dominance of certainty extreme was witnessed in Persian original texts.

This paper provides an analysis of Persian verbs within the framework of Optimality theory. To be more specific, it mainly cocentrates on past and present stems of Persian verbs.Since analyzing this subject within the derivational framework would result phonological rules which are not natural, it is analysed by Optimality theory which is one of the constraint-based approach. Based on this, we hypothesized that past stem is derived from present stem by adding past morpheme. Later, using violation and comparative tableau, we argued that past stems of the Persian irregular verbs are dominated by two violable markedness constraints.

The present paper tries to introduce a special type of verbal constructions in "Hawrami". These constructions, called emphatic progressive verbs in this paper, are composed of two conjoined parts: the infinitive plus present continuous, past continuous, and simple past verbs; nothing but agreement clitics (either subject-referring clitics in ergative constructions or object-referring clitics in non-ergative constructions) can separate these two parts. The functions of these constructions are: forming progressive aspect (while used with present and past continuous verbs), and emphasizing the verb (while used with simple past verbs); the former function is more unmarked than the latter one. These two functions will be differentiated on the basis of Givon's (2001) view on the nature of informative and contrastive focuses. Since these constructions are highly influenced by the information status of their constituents, the derivational process of these constructions can be looked at from the perspective of the information structure theory.

This paper examines the semantic contribution of-ar and–andeh suffixes in Persian based on Lieber’s (2004) lexical semantic representation. This framework using six semantic features ([material], [dynamic], [Location], [IEPS], [B] and [CI] and a principle called coordination principle studies the semantic contribution of lexical items including affixes and their functions in compounding, derivation and conversion. In this theory all lexical items including affixes have semantic skeleton, grammatical sub categorization and arguments; but affixes have little or nothing of semantic body.This paper studies different functions of-ar and–andeh suffixes in the process of morphological derivation, their polysemy nature and, in general, the origins of their similarities and differences. Using this theory, it is shown that these affixes do not contribute to the semantic roles of agent and patient or the syntactic roles of object and subject but they, like other lexical items, add semantic features to the lexical bases and their polysemy is the result of different application of coordination principle, not their semantic contribution.

Sassanian Pahlavi and Manichaean Middle Persian Pre/postpositions cover a relatively vast spectrum of meanings. By reference to the different components of the sentence, they act as determining factors for their grammatical roles. Despite the fact that some pre/postpositions partly overlap others' in meanings, they mostly maintain the subtleties of their own specific significations. This article deals with the meanings and grammatical functions of pre/postpositions based on a survey of the Sassanian Pahlavi inscriptions and an anthology of the Book Pahlavi and Manichaean Middle Persian texts. Examples are presented to provide the reader with evidence.

The present paper is about an inscription from the Parthian era which has been found in the town of Sar-e Pol-e Zohab in the province of Kirmanshah. This Parthian bas-relief is about two people on the two sides of the bas-relief inscription. The investigation on the righthandside, due to erosion is not quite readable, but the left-handside inscription had been formerly read and believed to be ‘Godarz, son of Gew’. As I have personally studied this inscription and obtained a moulding there of, I have come at a different understanding; it reveals ‘Godarz, son of Ardawan’. This present paper refers to this incident.