LANGUAGE SCIENCES
Year:2020 | Volume:7 | Issue:11|Papers Count:12

Modal functions of the verb “ residan” (to arrive) and the emergence of such modal characteristics are discussed from the perspective of grammaticalization in the present study. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to make a review on former studies on the subject of modality – more specifically, grammaticalization of modality – in Persian, followed by a description of theoretical approaches toward the concepts of modality and grammaticalization. The authors gathered data from different periods of Persian language to study the diachronic changes the verb “ rasidan” has faced since the early stages of Old Persian to Middle Persian, New Persian and recent usages in Modern Persian. Analysis of data showed that in some specific contexts in New Persian, the verb “ residan” was grammaticalized to represent dynamic, deserving, and permissive modality after undergoing changes such as metaphorical extension. On the other hand, in recent usages in Modern Persian, “ residan” has survived, through a different path, as a means to represent dynamic modality.

In the present study, grammatical and lexical aspects and their types were studied in synthetic compounds of modern Persian. The research data was derived from the dissertation of Ghonchepour (2014) and includes 8579 synthetic compound words taken from Farhang-i-buzurg-i soxan (Anvari, 2007). The study of this corpus showed that grammatical and lexical aspects which have been reported in verbs and sentences are observed in synthetic compound words. The internal structure of Persian synthetic compound words showed time range and action or state phases of doing. Grammatical aspect in synthetic compound words is of two perfective and imperfective types. The perfective aspect includes the persistence, non-persistence, resultative and experiential types. Iterative, habitual and progressive aspects are subtypes of imperfective aspect. Based on [± durative], [± dynamic], [± scalar] and [± telic] features, two stative and dynamic synthetic compound nouns in Persian were differentiated. The dynamic lexical aspect includes non-scalar (action and semelfactive) and scalar categories. The scalar aspect was also classified into closed (two-point and multi-point) and open types.

In Gilaki language, propositions like, "var / vir, virja, bija" are used to transfer the meaning "near, beside, with, by side of. . . ". These propositions, in addition to concept "place", also signify the concept of accompaniment. This paper is an attempt to investigate the core meaning of var, its semantic changes and the process of its grammaticalization using the data from Avestan and Middle Persian. Var's relationship with virja and bija is also discussed. Gilaki language’ s data is provided by Rastorgueva et al. (2012) and some local poems. Var in Gilaki, is derived from varah in Avestan and war in Middle Persian (= chest). As the result of metonymic use of language, this word has got some meanings like "beside, with, by the side of … ". By passing time, it has been used to point out the space around human, which is under his control. It is shown that this proposition is merged with the preposition ja / je and the result is the formation of the preposition virja. Since the core meaning of "var" signifies the human body and in categorical metaphor's model, human bodies associated with object-person category, these propositions also include the semantic feature of accompaniment. Moreover, the infinitive "manestan" (to resemble), have changed into proposition in the noun phrase constructions.

The Arabic grammar tradition is one of the most important linguistic schools in history-a school whose achievements in many cases are as important as the achievements of the modern linguistic studies. The present study, by explaining the conformity of the threefold divisions of the verbal mood (declarative, subjunctive, and imperative) with the triple subdivision of the verbs into marfu’ , mansub and majzum in Arabic grammar, attempts to explain how the Arabic language grammarians have described the functions of subjunctive mood through the elements they have referred to. The results of this study indicate that Sibawayhi, the leader of the school of Basra and the writer of the oldest book on the Arabic grammar, has been aware of the role of realis/irrealis distinction in the uses of the mansub (subjunctive) and marfu’ (declarative). Moreover, through some of his comments, it is possible to derive the importance of the speaker’ s view in determining whether or not the proposition is definite. On the other hand, the study reveals how al-Farra, the most prominent grammarian of the Kufa School, has emphasized the role of time and temporal implications in explaining the applications of the subjunctive mood. Subsequent grammarians, following their syntactic views, have supplemented this discussion and, for instance, have mentioned the distinction between absolute time and relative time to determine temporal implications of the present subjunctive mood. Currently, linguists without having access to the findings of this tradition, have discovered the importance of these two components in the applications of the subjunctive mood; On the basis of the findings of the present study, such an achievement can be traced its origin back to more than a thousand years ago in the books of Arabic grammarians.

The present study is a response to E. Hosseini-Matakʼ s critique of the book entitled “ Materials for the Study of Bakhtiari Dialect” (Zhukovsky, 1396/2017). The author, as the co-editor of the above work, attempts to reveal the invalidity of a number of the critic’ s claims, referring to the statements of the very book and explaining some linguistic points and the reasons to adopt certain methodological approaches. It seems that the aforementioned critic has totally avoided dealing with the strong points of the book.

Polysemy, being among the conceptual relationships that is important and frequent in Persian, is very close to cognitive concepts. In FrameNet, which is an on-line project in the field of English vocabulary at the University of Berkeley based on frame semantics theory of Fillmore in 1997, each word is related to a frame and relations between words indirectly derive from direct relationship with the frames. This is what can lead to polysemy. In FrameNet, which is considered a huge development in the formation of cognitive semantics, linguistic concepts are seen as related forms in a semantic network and representation of these frames in lexical units. In this descriptive-analytic study, some Persian verbs which are extracted from the dictionary of Anvari (1381) and have the meaning of becoming-aware, are selected in order to find all the semantic frames related to the various meanings of these lexical units on the one hand, and to define the relations between these seemingly different formats and their derivation from the main frame (Prototype) on the other hand. In so doing, the mechanisms of polysemy words in Persian FrameNet are explained.

The present study, in the context of computational linguistics and acoustic phonetics, attempted to determine the acoustic features of glottal stop before the word initial vowels in the Persian language and to answer the question whether this sound is a consonant or is the characteristic of the initial vowel in the Persian. The research test groups consisted of three groups: (a) nonword group in which the vowel is located after a consonant except glottal stop, (b) nonword group in which the presence of glottal stop is clear before the vowel, and (c) the group containing 30 words of Farsi language which begin with vowels. The three groups were read and recorded by 16 sample members at the studio. Then, they were subjected to acoustic measures, duration, first formant, intensity and spectral tilt of vowels evaluation using The Praat software. The numerical values obtained were analyzed based on mean indices, variance and Scheffe test. It was found that the criteria for the existence of the glottal stop consonant in the word group were not verified; as a result, the complete stop that has the acoustic characteristics of a consonant does not exist before the word initial vowels in the Persian language. Therefore, the incomplete obstruction can be taken as the phonetic process that is added at the beginning of the initial vowel production, and it makes that vowel glottalized.

Since no Indication system is neutral from the ideological point of view, it is possible to discover the hidden relationships and to re-publishing the latent ideologies in the deepening of language by recognizing the language and discovering the underlying layers. Discourse structures, by organizing their own system of signage, shape our understanding of reality. The present research explored the framework of ideological structure in deference demanding men's discourse, based on Van Dijk theory (2006). In this study, the researchers attended to 20 family courts in Birjand and collect written information from twenty deference demanding men from urban class at age of 25-45 and degree of Diploma and Bachelor. The present paper sought to explain what language strategies and tools men use to achieve their ideological goals and to make the judge make a decision for their best. The referral strategies of these individuals were determined by the "ideological square" model of Van Dijk (2006) and the frequency of each side of the square will be determined. The results showed that demanding men use a variety of linguistic strategies to increase the negative attitude of their wives (%58) and magnify their positive attitude (%27). The population of the study used less than the other two sides of the ideological square (the reduction of positive points the outsiders and negative points of themselves), which is in the same line with the theory of Van Dijk (2006).

The present study addressed the perception of English vowel contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ by Persian speakers in light of the theoretical assumptions underlying the Perceptual Assimilation Model. The lexical pair (feet-fit) and (fool-full) illustrating the contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ were extracted from a natural English spoken corpus, and then duration, first and second formant frequencies were resynthesized. Persian native speakers completed a discrimination task on the non-native vowel contrast. Results suggested that responses are sensitive to variation in duration, and this sensitivity holds irrespective of whether the subjects are familiar with the English language or not. In contrast, variation in the first and second formant frequencies (as acoustic manifestation of vowel quality) failed to produce significant changes in the responses. Moreover, discrimination was not any better for the combinatory stimuli (duration + vowel quality) than the single stimuli duration. In sum, discrimination was consistent with the Perceptual Assimilation Model, showing that assimilation of the two vowel contrasts /i-I/ and /u-U/ with the Persian sound system is a two-category assimilation (TC) for which discrimination is highly accurate.

Given the fact that no original and genuine study has ever investigated the effect of corrective feedback on the development of the Persian language learners' pragmatic competence, the present study aimed at studying the effect of two main types of corrective feedback, namely recast and metalinguistic feedback, on the production of two speech acts of request and refusal among intermediate learners of Persian. To this end, 76 Persian learners were randomly selected and assigned to four groups: task-based instruction and recast, task-based instruction and metalinguistic feedback, traditional instruction and recast, and traditional instruction and metalinguistic feedback. The instrument used in this study was a valid and reliable WDCT (Tajeddin, Keshavarz, and Zand Moghadam, 2012) that was used as a pre-and post-test. The treatment in each group took six weeks (12 hours). The results showed that the groups who received task-based instruction outperformed the other groups. It was also revealed that metalinguistic feedback during task based instruction was more effective than recast. This study has implications for Persian language teachers, syllabus designers and materials developers as well as test designers.

Conditional constructions consist of two clauses. The existence or non-existence of a causal relationship between these two clauses causes the conditional construction to be divided into two groups: consequential and non-consequential conditionals. The literature review of conditional concept shows that it can be introduced a variety of conditional constructions according to various criteria though sometimes the same phenomena differ in how they are named. In the present study, by reviewing the literature and based on the corpus-based approach in the Persian language, it was attempted to provide a model that covers various types of conditional construction according to similarities and differences in their properties. The findings showed that in addition to open, hypothetical, real, rhetorical, relevant and implicit assertion conditional construction, the four different types of conditionals including contrastive, implicational contrastive, converse and reverse conditionals can be also introduced. In the contrastive conditional, both clauses describe some related property but differ in some values assigned to the shared property. In implicational contrastive conditional, there is a contrast relationship between one clauses and the inference of the other one. In the converse conditional, contrary to the basic conditional, the "if clause” is the result of the second clause and in the reverse conditionals both clauses simultaneously are conditioned by the other one.

The present study aimed at investigating clitic doubling in Kalhori Kurdish. The implications of clitic doubling for Kurdish syntax were also investigated. In other words, it was attempted to find whether clitic doubling is a common feature of this language variety or it leads to some syntactic operations including (left or right) dislocation of NP arguments. Another implication of this study is to shed light on the distinction made between (inflectional) affix and clitic. The present study was a descriptive-analytic one in which many arguments were presented to deal with the nature of the relationship between clitic doubling and syntactic structure in Kalhori Kurdish. Theoretically, the present study was mainly based on the Spenser and Luis (2012). Observation, interview and field work were employed to collect the required data. The results indicated that clitic doubling is not a preferred process in Kalhori Kurdish. Instead, Kurdish speakers prefer to dislocate (to right or left) the relevant NP in the sentence to prevent both clitic and its related NP simultaneously.