LANGUAGE RELATED RESEARCH (COMPARATIVE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE RESEARCH)
Year:2022 | Volume:12 | Issue:6 (66)|Papers Count:22

Cultural conceptualizations show the ways of thinking and world view of a linguistic community toward the phenomena. The study of the conceptualizations leads to the profound understanding of the relevant cultures, facilitate cross cultural interactions, and remove cultural misunderstandings. This research, using the descriptive – analytical method, tries to study cultural conceptualizations in Zazomahroo Bakhtiari Dialect and describe their cultural origins. Regarding to nomadic and rural lifestyle of the people living in the region and their direct contact to the nature, the natural elements and phenomena provide a basis for cultural conceptualizations. Statistical population is 500 of the death-related phrases, expression, lamentations and proverbs which are used in this dialect. Data have been collected by field study and through interview and inquiry. The results of the studying and analysing of the data show that the origins of the cultural conceptualizations lie in the nomadic and rural lifestyle, people’ s beliefs and ideas, the physiological effects of death-related feelings and emotions on body organs and people’ s imaginations toward death. This lifestyle leads to the direct contact to the nature; therefore, the violent aspects of the nature phenomena are used as a concrete domain in conceptualizing of abstract concept of “ death” . Death cultural conceptualizations such as “ north wind, flood, avalanche, thunder and lightning” or “ extinguishing of the fire, falling of one’ s gravel or collapsing of the tent column” are due to the inspiration of the natural phenomena and rural-nomadic lifestyle.

Reading is one of the most important language skills that students begin to learn it in primary school by means of Farsi textbooks. Reading fluency and reading comprehension are necessary for acquiring reading skill. Orthography systems of every language effects on reading. Researchers believe that reading of deep orthography is harder than shallow one. Farsi is one the languages with deep orthography system, because there isn’ t one by one correspondence between orthography and speech. The aim of this research is replying to these questions: how much is the orthography depth in Farsi textbooks of primary schools and its relationship with reading fluently. For this purpose, the orthography depth was evaluated in Farsi textbooks from first grade to sixth in primary school. After that reading fluency tests were taken from students of grade one to six in primary school based on chosen texts. Fluency test scales were correctness, speed and intonation of reading. The Samples were students in primary school in Semnan in 1397-1398 school year. 402 students from different primary school, grade one to six took part in reading fluency tests. Results show that the distance between writing and reading is 1, 42 phonemes in Farsi textbooks, and there is no significant relationship between orthography depth and ability to read fluently in primary schools.

At first glance, “ number” is considered as a very simple grammatical category. However, in fact, it is a complex matter in languages and it causes varieties in world languages. The present study aims at examining the plurality and number category in language varieties of some cities in Kerman province based on typological approach. The survey’ s corpus is extracted from Iran Linguistic Atlas’ s database (ILA) a project compiling in Research Center of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The research results show that, the value of number category in the studied language varieties is just singular and plural. The singular nouns are encoded without marker and the plural nouns are marked. The plural markers attach to singular nouns in suffix form, therefore the strategy for plurality in the studied language varieties is morphology, which is the most common one in the world languages. The data analysis indicates that syntactic strategy is used for encoding the number category along with morphological one.

Detecting constituents as independent syntactic units having syntactic and semantic coherence on which the structure of the sentences is based is vital both for the prevention of ambiguity and for a correct reading and analysis of syntactic processes. To this end, some tests have been introduced in syntax which help the linguist in diagnosing the boundaries of constituents. Within a Minimalist framework, this study aimed to analyze the efficiency of eight constituency tests, namely: coordination, ellipsis, question formation, sentence fragment, replacement, clefting, pseudo-clefting and topicalization. These had the highest frequency in important syntactic sources as means for diagnosing seven selected important constituents of the sentences, i. e., VP, DP, PP, AP, AdvP, CP and TP. We applied the tests to these categories in Persian to see which ones are most efficient and can cover a wider range of constituents. The results suggested that pseudo-clefting and topicalization are more effective and have the capability of identifying more constituents in English than in Persian. It was also concluded that, given the large number of exceptions, in general, the tests mentioned above cannot be considered as absolute tools in identifying constituents.

This inquiry is a case study of ‘ writing in a third language’ . It highlights three elements of identity, abstraction and oblivion as its main features. Among plurilingual writers, there are some ‘ migrant writers’ that move to a third country and write in a third language in order to free themselves from the hybrid state that limits their identity and writing. They deny their dualistic cultural and social identity and write in an abstract language that gets them close to the state of becoming nomads. An illustrative example of this group is the Indian-American writer, Jhumpa Lahiri, who, after gaining success as a writer of migration literature in the United States, moved to Italy and wrote in Italian. Writing in a third language, Lahiri concerns herself no more with cultural and social matters, instead focuses on language as its main theme. Therefore, this essay by referring to the multilingual and multicultural experiences of Jhumpa Lahiri, demonstrates how writing in a third language can free the migrant writer from his/her memories and dualistic identity and gets him/her close to a nomadic identity.

While there is a substantial body of research on the role of glosses in fostering reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition, the findings on relative efficacy of first language (L1) and second language (L2) glosses are conflicting. This study investigates the impact of Farsi (L1) and English (L2) paper-based glosses with different presentation formats (in the margin and at the bottom of page) on intermediate-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' vocabulary retention and recall. During a two-month treatment, the participants read the passages under one of the four conditions: L1 gloss in the margin (L1-margin), L1 gloss at the bottom of the page (L1-bottom), L2 gloss in the margin (L2-margin), and L2 gloss at the bottom of the page (L2-bottom). Following the treatment, a vocabulary post-test and a month later, a delayed post-test were administered to gauge any vocabulary gains. Results of repeated measures ANOVAs showed the superiority of L1 over L2 glosses (L1-margin> L1-bottom>L2-margin>L2-bottom) in the post-test. The delayed post-test scores revealed the better performance for marginal glosses, regardless of the language of the gloss (L1-margin = L2-margin > L1-bottom > L2-bottom), suggesting that how learners process and retrieve lexical items may vary depending on both language and location of the gloss.

The present study aims to investigate the Ezafe construction in Kurdish (Sorani dialect) based on cognitive grammar. The nature of the methodology of this qualitative research is descriptive-analytic, and the data have been collected via the interview with Kurdish speakers. The authenticity and originality of the collected data have been approved by Kurdish speakers of this linguistic variety. Ezafe marker is considered as the invoker of an intrinsic relationship between two entities having a kind of conceptual proximity. In a way, one entity is considered as a reference-point based on which the location of the other entity is cognitively determined. In this construction, the landmark plays the role of a reference-point to provide a mental path to the trajector as the target. The findings showed that Ezafe in this dialect is the result of the grammaticalization of a relative pronoun HYA by which the intrinsic-conceptual relation between elements is profiled in a complex sentence. It should be noted that Ezafe marker has developed from the relative pronoun HYA in Old Persian. Accordingly, this relative pronoun, as an Ezafe marker, has been gradually transformed into an element profiling an asymmetric relationship between congruent entities within a single phrase (N Ez N; N Ez adj; N Ez preposition; N Ez nominalized verb) or in a clause (predicative Ezafe and topicalizing Ezafe). Also, the results showed that Ezafe marker indicates this asymmetric relation at different linguistic levels.

Virtual networks and Internet language have now been shaped by and are shaping language and registers as communicative tools. The present study aimed at investigating the effect which the internet is making on the language, the discourse and the writing style of Iranian male teenager students in cyberspaces of Telegram and Soroush. To conduct the research project, initially, 60 junior high school students from SAMPAD, Rasht, at the ages of 13-15 years old were selected through non-probability convenience sampling joined in a common group on the social media as the members. Then, 837 utterances from students Netspeak were selected through purposeful sampling. Their social and verbal behaviors including written and spoken had been recorded and transcribed for one month. To this end, the data were analyzed into two levels of description and explanation. At the level of description, the features of network discourse inspired by Crystal (2004) were represented. Along with Crystal's classifications, this study achieved to other features peculiar to Persian networks as follows: Substitution for Persian alphabetic system (Finglish), lexical barrowing, text spoken style, spelling mistakes (slip of the pen), humorously idiosyncratic Netspeak, permutation of Persian word ordering, encryption, and punctuation. At the explanation level, the network discourse which was inspired by Gricean (1975) model, revealed that the cooperative principles worked differently and the quantity maxim was flouted without any violation. But other three maxims were in line with the prominent characteristics of the cooperative strategies. The results manifested that cyberspace for the survival of communicative competence generated the virtual variety as marked written register of Persian language for social media purposes.

A formulaic speech is a part of language which can carry many meanings, themes and instances. Formulaic speech are commonly used in proverbs, metaphors, idioms and languages and more in conversational language and play an effective role in social communication and language development both structurally and conceptually. They are part of a community's identity, culture and history whose understanding will lead to a better understanding of culture and society and the linguistic infrastructure and developments of a language community. Also, analyzing and recognizing them in a text gives a better understanding of the hidden angles and style of that text. In Dehkhoda's articles, there are various types of formulaic speech that in each of them lies deep social, cultural and linguistic concepts and understanding them helps to understand the style and language of Dehkhoda's articles and the society of his day. The present study uses qualitative (analytical-descriptive) method to analyze and recognize patterns of species in Dehkhoda's "Charand-o-parand" in three categories: proverb, irony, idioms and languages. The results of the research show that using these molded structures, Dehkhoda has depicted the conditions of his community and it has conveyed its content quickly and deeply to the audience. The use of these constructions has also led to the closest proverbial proverb to colloquial language. Idioms (220 Items), Irony (81 Items) and Proverbs (51 Items) are the most commonly used forms of molding in Dehkhoda's articles.

This article investigates the role of Conceptual Metaphors of 3 behavioral economics biases, including Irrational Evaluation, Labeling, and Replacing market values with social values on Willingness to Pay (WTP) and Willingness to Accept (WTA) of Participants. To extract experimental, conceptual metaphors, the results of field studies were checked on a group of 30 participants in the first phase. In the second phase, we used the semi-pilot method on 30 other participants through 2 stages for investigating conceptual metaphors. Analysis of variances showed that that the conceptual metaphors used in this article do not influence Willingness to Pay and Willingness to Sell. However, in Willingness to Pay status, among other biases, the impact of irrational evaluations conceptual metaphors has stronger effects, whereas, in Willingness to Accept status, replacing market values with social values is stronger than other biases. The results of this research showed that three mentioned behavioral principles that were implemented through conceptual metaphors, couldn't influence buying or selling decisions of participants significantly, but the efficacy of these behavioral principles were different in buying and selling decisions.

Keyword extraction aims to extract words that are able to represent the corpus meaning. Keyword extraction has a crucial role in information retrieval, recommendation systems and corpora classification. In Persian language, keyword extraction is known as hard task due to Persian’ s inherent complication. In this research work, we aim to address keyword extraction with a combination of statistical and Machine Learning as a novel approach to this problem. First the required preprocessing is applied to the corpora. Then three statistical methods and Bayesian classifier was utilized to the corpora to extract the keywords pattern. Also, a post processing methods was used to decrease the number of True Positive outputs. It should be pointed out that the built model can extract up to 20 keywords and they will be compared with keywords in the corresponding corpus. The evaluation results indicate that the proposed method, could extract keywords from scientific corpora (Specifically Thesis and Dissertations) with a good accuracy.

There has been a growing interest in class-related motivational research since 1975, and many studies have been conducted on a variety of motivational models. The present study, on the base of Dornyei Motivational self-systems (2005) and the history of research related to the motivation for learning a second language such as Gardner (1985), Clement (1980), and Clement and Kruidenier (1985), Taguchi (2010), Papi (2010) Magid (2011), examines 16 motivational along with the effect of gender, age, and student’ s degrees variables on Persian language learning motivation among non-Persian students For this purpose, 300 non-native Persian learners (women and men of different nationalities and educational levels) aged between 18 and 50 from the Persian language teaching centers of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin, and Tehran University of Medical Sciences, responded to a questionnaire with 16 factors(92 items). Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were evaluated and verified using PPL software. The results of the study showed that all 16 proposed components had a significant effect on the learner's motivation. Also, the motivational factors, in terms of rank, do not have the same effect on the motivation of non-native Persian learners. In addition, the results showed that women and men differ in their motivational factors. It was also found that older age groups are more likely to be motivated than younger ones. There was a significant relationship between educational level and some motivational variables.

In recent years, the development of sociolinguistics basis along with the effective role of contextual features in didactics, have led language teaching policy makers to “ localization of language teaching” approach all over the world. The attempt to resolve the educational deficiencies and shortcomings in the current methods of language teaching such as ignoring the language learners’ needs and context, led to development of theoretical basis and practical strategies in localization. This research, following an intercultural approach, intends to study the localization concept in French language teaching in Iran and to suggest a theoretical and practical framework for localization of foreign language teaching according to social, cultural, educational and political contexts in our country. In this research we aim to answer the two following questions: what are the mechanism and necessities of French language teaching localization in Iran, and, how is teaching culture in existing French textbooks and how far is it applicable. The present research is applicatory in nature and in terms of methodology, it is descriptive analytics, answering the main questions by means of content qualitative evaluation techniques. Our findings confirm the fact that French teaching in Iran is applicable in three levels, macro (educational localization), medium (curriculum localization) and micro (manual localization). On the other hand, content analyses of seven French teaching textbooks reveal unequal and unbalanced application of national identity factors versus French culture factors, ignoring intercultural approaches.

The controversy over the role of reason, like other subjects of human knowledge, has gone through many ups and downs. In "wisdom in syntax" we seek a phenomenological view of "syntax" and knowledge of how it manifests itself to others, while in "syntax of wisdom" we seek to know what linguistic reason expects from us. In their contemporary approach to grammar, Western linguists have analyzed sentence structures from three "transformational-generative", "functional", and "cognitive" approaches, based on which we have tried to delve into the place of reason in Arabic grammar. This study is an attempt to find out whether the analysis power of reason should be called on from somewhere else or it is innate to the Arabic language. Linguistic features such as "declinable vs. indeclinable", "probability vs. certainty", "diacritics", "forms and morphs", and categories such as "agent and theme" and "semanticism" are all justified by "reason", without which they have nothing to say! Besides, community, speakers and addressees do not have a haphazard or mechanical relationship with the structure and form of sentences; rather, sentence structure rules and various forms are closely related to the elements that make up a verbal communication. It is certainly the power of reason that deciphers the relationship between sentence structure and extralinguistic factors. Accordingly, the power of reason causes morpho-syntax to adopt an analytical and argumentative state rather than a merely descriptive one.

  ’ /v / [=and] as a conjunction that coordinates different linguistic units, namely words and sentences, has been studied in logical and grammatical perspectives by many logicians and grammarians from a long time ago. In this research, semantic study of this morpheme was done on the basis of a spoken corpus which was all produced sentences in three Iranian TV series including Monster, Mannequin, Rhino. Here, ‘  ’ as a sign within the linguistic system was considered by its own especial value and with regard to the syntagmatic relations of other elements presented in the sentences. Considering the semantic values of ‘  ’ which means its substitutional possibilities with other units on the paradigmatic axis on one hand, and semantic behaviors of this unit on the syntagmatic axis on the other hand showed that firstly, ‘  ’ can have different values on the paradigmatic axis as ‘ and’ , ‘ because’ , ‘ but’ , ‘ while’ , ‘ with’ , ‘ starting unit’ and ‘ so’ ; Secondly, this morpheme on the word level has two semantic roles in the frame of free or bound conjunctive compounds, and in onomatopoeia in the form of strong or weak repetitions. However, on the sentence level, ‘  ’ with regard to propositions p and q can have various behaviors that shows its dependence on the time, possible worlds, conditional situations, making consequences, and models in possible worlds. Therefore, the semantic behavior of ‘  ’ completely depends on the semantic behaviors of propositions p and q.

Text mining’ refers to the computational process of unstructured text analytics for extracting latent linguistic layers and themes. It is especially significant as content or thematic analysis in descriptive and interpretive studies. This process begins with structuring simple texts and proceeds with summarizing, classifiing, modelling, evaluating and interpreting the inherent textual concepts and patterns. Given that this method counts as an interdisciplinary innovation especially in discoursal studies, it is to be pursued more intensively in academic studies. Despite the multitude of English studies in this area, there has been little interest to date in text mining amongst Iranian researchers as evidenced by the critically limited number of local Persian and English studies. Thus looking into the theory and practice of text mining and its major analytic tools and methods in Persian and English, this paper aims to prepare the ground for utilizing this methodology in language studies.

The two concepts satan/Iblis are considered as the most important concepts in the Qur’ an, as they have a major role in the system of guidance/misguidnce which is the main purpose of sending prophets and revealing the Qur'an. Providing an incorrect understanding can lead to a misunderstanding of the function of Satan in this system. This study tries to use the etymology by paying attention to the linguistic context of the Qur'an, to provide a clearer explanation of these two concepts and to examine the views of the lexicographers. It observed that the word "Sheitan" derived from "stn" that means enemy, competition … coming from magic. However, despite emphasizing "stn" as the source of "Sheitan", the lexicographers have emphasized the meaning of the root "st"-deviate and turn aside-and have placed the focus of meaning on Satan's own condition in being misguided. The combination of words in the meanings of enmity, discord, obstruction and magic with this word in the Qur'an confirms the results of etymological studies and shows that the focus of the meaning is on the effect of Satan on human misguidance and not his own condition. Regarding the word Iblis, the lexicographers have expressed two theories of derivation from the "bls" meaning despair or loanword in the meaning of mixed and inspector. Studies show that "Iblis" does not related to the meanings of mixed and inspector, but is a Greek word in the original sense of a liar and a special name for one of the Satans.

There is no one-to-one correspondence between semantic roles and grammatical relations. Based on the concept of implicational hierarchy, some linguists have attempted to identify the relationship between grammatical relations and thematic roles. In this descriptive research, based on the Persian Proposition bank, Semantic Role Corpus in the Persian Language, and Persian Syntactic Dependency Treebank, the semantic hierarchy for different grammatical relations like subject, direct object, indirect object, subject complement and object complement have been explored in the one hand and also the grammatical hierarchy for different thematic roles like agent, experiencer, cause, theme, stimulus, attribute have been considered on the other hand. The syntactic and semantic corpora above consist of approximately 30, 000 sentences and about half a million tokens. Observations showed that in the Persian language, among different kinds of semantic roles, the first candidate to be the subject is the agent followed by the theme, experiencer and cause. For the object position, the theme outranks the result which in turn outranks the topic and the recipient. In the direct object position, the most frequent role is the location followed by theme, recipient and destination; and finally, in the subject and object complement position, the attribute is the most frequent role among the other thematic roles in the sentences. On the grammatical hierarchy for thematic roles, subject outranks the object, as the agent and the experiencer; subject outranks the adjunct as the cause; triple preposition outranks the subject as the stimulus; object outranks the subject as the theme, and finally, the subject complement outranks the subject complement as the attribute. Apart from this dominant tendency, this research showed that there are other remarkable correlations between syntactic and semantic arguments; for example, the agent in addition to subject position can be placed in the direct object, indirect object, and even in the adjunct position. The appearance of experiencer in object position and stimulus in subject position is the other remarkable result.

Persian poetry in the 2000s, like many literary and artistic texts, has hidden meaning and reason the enjoyment of discovery of which is met by the criticism process method. One of the methods of studying poems of this decade is to look at the mutual contradictions, which indicate some parts of meaning, because if a poet accepts the historical evaluation of contradictions, he shows his alignment with classic beliefs and if he criticizes it, he represents the intellectual and cultural changes in personal or social level. In analysis of text contradictions, one of the items to be studied is the type of relation that the author or poet connects between two sides of contradiction, and in this case, poets in the 2000s indicated many intellectual infrastructures and type of evaluations changed to them. Among 20 poets studied in this research, 7 poets (Sare Dastaran, Majid Rafati, Garous Abdolmalekian, Abbas Saffari, Sara Mohammadi Ardehali, Shahab Mogharrabin, and Hafez Mousavi) obviously introduced invalid the goodness and badness of two sides of contradiction; i. e. the positive and negative aspects or vice and virtue of parties to the contradiction. The research findings show that the poets in the 2000s make doubt on the known and general contradictions, and also include in their works the new visual fields suitable to the language and time for invalidating the vice and virtue aspects of contradictions.

The current research aims to investigate all the components of thymic structure of discourse (modal and tensive components) in short story of “ Mi’ ad” by Goli Taraghi-one of the writers of contemporary Persian fictional literature. Research methodology is descriptive – analytical. In fact, the author seeks to explain the underlying interaction of these semiotic components “ in this short story by relying on the phenomenal presence of enunciator in order to show how thymic structures emerge in discourse and affect the process of meaning production and perception. To this end, the main objective of the present research is to answer the following questions: . What are the fundamental semiotic constituents and mechanisms of discourse thymic structure in this short story? . How is it possible to explain the function of narrative action with regard to hierarchical nature of discourse thymic structure? The results showed that discourse thymic structure is the output of phenomenal presence of subject enunciator which in its own turn marginalizes narrative action through modal constituents’ turbulence and then stabilizes them by emergence of thymic state of hope which one again rehabilitate narrative action in semiotic field. Undoubtedly, these interactions are in constant relationship with semiotic modes of presence.

In a transmodern world, the current research finds commonalities between the Semiotics of Discourse (Paris School) which is intertwined with other fields such as linguistics, and coaching. The main problem and hypothesis of the present research is to argue that the Semiotics of Discourse (Paris School) can provide ʻ part ofʼ a comprehensive theoretical framework for conceptualizing coaching and its development as an academic discipline and subdiscipline. Therefore, adopting a descriptive-analytic method based on Fontanille's ideas (Fontanille, 2003, as translated by Bostic, 2006) in analyzing and solving a case study of one of her clients in coaching, and introducing the term ʻ Khodnavardiʼ being established and registered in Iran by her, the author examines this problem and hypothesis. In order to make linguistics (its types and subdisciplines), semiotics (its types, and other fields intertwined with it), and other possible, probable fields, institutions, practitioners, skills, and sciences more practical, the current and future objective of this inquiry is to elementarily introduce the process of coaching discourse as an object and corpus of transdisciplinary studies. This trajectory will finally provide the context for the localization of the academic discipline, subdiscipline, and new profession of coaching, and subsequently coaching education and studies, and coaching training: a kind of localization, entrepreneurship and job creation. Pointing out the similarities between the Semiotics of Discourse (Paris School) and coaching, and presenting a model based on “ Khodnavardi” , the main achievement of this inquiry is suggesting the basics of ʻ Semiotic Coachingʼ at an academic level in Iran. In addition, ʻ Semiotic Coachingʼ can lead to interactions or commonalities with other fields, institutions, practitioners, skills, and sciences including pragmatism, educational linguistics, edusemiotics, change, transformation, cognitive sciences, philosophy, sociology, psychology, teaching, communication, management, human and organizational resource development, leadership, literature, cinema and theater, etc., and on the other hand, with different types of coaching like linguistic, semantic, ontological, integral, existential, narrative, cognitive, clean language, core energy, neuro-linguistic, academic, developmental, emotional intelligence, and other topics which will not be addressed for the sake of brevity.

Autism spectrum disorder has always been associated with pragmatic language disorder. The present study aims to investigate the effect of audio-visual social stories and pragmatic exercises on improving (non)verbal communication skills in children with autism. It is a clinical trial with a pretest-posttest design. Subjects were selected by convenience sampling method which included 19 children aged 7 to 9 years old with autism spectrum disorder (level 1: requiring support). They received an intervention program organized in 18 individual sessions of 45 to 60 minutes. The findings of the study revealed that utilized audio-visual social stories and pragmatic exercises improved pragmatic level in children with autism spectrum disorder. In other words, it had a positive effect (p< 0. 05) on the subscales of pragmatic skills in the Bishop Communication Checklist Questionnaire (1998). According to the results, it was shown that audio-visual social stories and pragmatic exercises improved (non)verbal communication skills in children with autism.