LANGUAGE RELATED RESEARCH (COMPARATIVE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE RESEARCH)
Year:2021 | Volume:11 | Issue:6 (60)|Papers Count:24

In order to fix their articulations, the gendered discourses always try to legitimize their own self dimensions and delegitimize the others’ elements; legitimation, from the semiotic-discursive point of view, is a process that hegemonizes power through discourse articulation. The authors’ aim in this paper is to investigate and identify the way in which the legitimating mechanisms of gendered discourses function in contemporary Persian story literature. Hence, they provide a deconstructive reading of the methodology of Van Leeuwen (2007) based on Laclau and Mouffe (2001) and Derrida (1983) and take advantage of a variety of linguistic tools. Then, in order to analyze the functions of these mechanisms, they go through the “ Solok” and purposefully examine some of its parts. Finally, they respond to the research question about how the legitimizing mechanisms of gendered discourses operate and introduce four structures, i. e. simple, compound, complex, and chain, in those mechanisms. Moreover, they show that after gaining and achieving the legitimacy, the gendered discourses step forward to maintain and fix the legitimacy and delegitimize the other explicitly and implicitly-by the way of recontextualization...

A number of linguistic studies on compounding have acknowledged that due to the existence of head element, endocentric compounds are semantically compositional and transparent. The current study aims to focus on the semantic aspect of Persian endocentric compounds to show that: 1) in some cases, the existence of head element does not entail the semantic compositionality and simplicity of conceptual structure in endocentric compounds, and 2) compound words which are categorized as endocentric compounds differ in terms of the complexity of conceptual structure. Considering that the ability of Conceptual Blending Theory (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002) to describe meaning construction in compound words has been previously approved by some cognitive linguists, this theory has been applied to analyze meaning construction in a number of Persian endocentric noun-noun nominal compounds. A close analysis reveals that although some endocentric compounds are semantically compositional and prompt for simplex networks, there are endocentric compounds which are not semantically as transparent and compositional. In this kind of endocentric compounds, metaphor or metonymy has affected the modifier element, thus meaning construction triggers singlescope networks which are neither as complex as double-scope networks nor as simple and compositional as simplex networks. This result implies the diversity of conceptual structure in words which are defined as endocentric compounds...

Language of science, as a tool for transferring knowledge, experiences and exploring news concepts and scientific innovations, is interconnected with word formation, terminologisation and academic writing. Since the representation of scientific language is highly different from general language, knowing the specific characteristics and linguistico-communicative features of this language deems necessary for maintaining an unequivocal and accurate scientific communication. Thus, the paper investigates quantitatively & qualitatively the frequency of these features in scientific language of geology. Hence, a corpora of 36 geological texts published randomly taken from peer reviewed journals is analyzed according to two distinctive features: “ textual organization” and “ linguistic structures” . The results illustrate a fully-fledged representation of scientific language in geology affirming that the abundant usage of repetition, encapsulation, hyponymical classification ensure the gradual semantic development. Simultaneously, the effervescence of modal verbs, linking verbs accompanied by nominalization and passive statements reinforce the transmission of scientific message in an objective and economical language. Moreover, our statistical analysis over 13805 linguistico-communicative statements illustrates that the most frequency belongs to textual cohesion (morphological and syntactical), and in the second run, to what corresponds to linguistic economy (nominalization, resumed statements), while the modal verbs and instances have scarcely configured in the studies corpora...

Continuous changes taking place in languages have been due to the dynamic nature of language that occurs progressively and slowly over time. In this regard, local languages and dialects change less than the standard languages. Sistani dialect is also among the dialects that has its own specific phonetic, phonological, syntactic and morphological elements and characteristics making it different from the Standard (Modern) Persian. This article while describing some morphological features of Sistani dialect in comparison to Old, Middle, Darri Persian and Avesta Language also is going to show which historical elements and features of this dialect are still being used and have been inherited from which era. The linguistic data has been collected via library and also field methods, through interviewing with old Sistani men above 60 years old and recording their free speech. Then the extracted morphological elements from Sistani dialect were compared to those of Old, Middle, and Dari Persian as well as Avesta Language. The results show that in this dialect, there are some prefixes such as /be-/, /me-/, /na-/, /ma-/ and suffixes /-ak(a)/, non-past verb inflectional suffixes, demonstrative pronouns, /i/ and /o/, personal pronouns /to/  /o/  /mâ /  /š mâ / and /oš o/, reflexive pronouns /xod/ and /xâ /, lack of bound personal and also the exsistance of the initial consonant clusters such as dr  st  fr which have originated from Old, Middle, and Dari Persian as well as Avesta language...

This paper addresses the pronunciation of the Quranic words in the location of pause, or vaqf. Data descriptive generalization shows that the indefinite morpheme and short high vowels /u/ and /i/, respectively for nominative and genitive cases, delete in the pause location. This results in forming a heavy or ultra-heavy syllable in the pause location via adhesion of mora of omitted syllable onset to the final syllable. For pronunciation of the indefinite masculine words in accusative case, deletion of the indefinite morpheme is compensated by lengthening the low vowel /a/ through spreading the floating mora to the low vowel slot. The reason behind resistance of the low vowel to delete could be its high degree of sonority. For pronunciation of the feminine words, indefinite and case morphemes delete, and then /t/ converts into [h] through omission of the supra-laryngeal features and staying laryngeal node. The main aim of this paper is to formalize the phonological pattern of the Quranic words in the location of Vaqf. Research methodology is of descriptive and explanatory type. Accordingly the Quranic phonological rules prohibits to license presence of the light syllable in the pause location, while to license heavy and ultra-heavy syllables via deletion and compensatory lengthening processes in the pause location...

The high frequency of the linguistic tools of the anthropomorphic metaphor in the Qur'an not only provides the ground for the deviation of monotheism and monotheistic truths, but also it can pave the way to the facts of the spiritual world, the mysteries of the unseen world, and the intellectual and spiritual truths clarify in the light of conceptual theory. The most important goals of this study are to elucidate the types of Qur'anic anthropomorphism, to explain their mechanism of formation, to analyze the specific conceptualizations behind each of these metaphors and their semantic motivations for their application. The result showed that the application of anthropomorphic metaphors, in addition to reducing complex intellectual and abstract / immanent affairs to the human scale, they reinforce the vital and abstracted relations of deconstruction, more than any other text that expresses the movement from plurality to the spiritual unity beyond nature and devoid of exaggeration, degradation or exaggeration in praising or blaming. The discovery of attention in these metaphors, which are often one of the most prominent human traits, confirms the necessity of applying the mixed model...

Ambiguity is one of the most important issues in lexical semantics and linguistics, and it has been studied from different approaches so far. It has a very long tradition of research in the history of linguistic studies. However, this paper will open a new perspective in studying semantic lexical ambiguity based on analysis of some cases in Farsi language, and as a result a new cognitive-semantic hypothesis will be introduced and discussed. Studying ambiguity with a cognitive approach may have some theoretical advantages which are not limited to Farsi language, and it could be generalized to all languages. Lexical ambiguity could be found when a word or lexeme presents more than one meaning at the same time by which a language user cannot easily detect the actual meaning. There are also syntactic and pragmatic ambiguities, but this research is about the semantic lexical ambiguity. Some cases of lexical ambiguity are homonymy words that are pronounced, and spelled similar but they are different words with different meanings. In this paper, a new hypothesis will be introduced which deals with the semantic lexical ambiguity with a cognitive approach. This hypothesis will be called dual readings hypothesis of semantic lexical ambiguity...

Although indirect translation (translating a translated text) has always been a common practice in literary translations and other types of translation, it has only recently gained attention as a subject of study in the field of translation studies. The present paper attempts to shed light on the differences between direct and indirect literary translation by analyzing translations of the Japanese novel, Black Rain as a case study. There are two different translations of this novel into Persian; a direct one from Japanese and an indirect one from Russian. Juliane House’ s translation quality assessment model (House, 1997; 2001; 2015) was used to compare the two translations. The main findings show that the direct translation was a relatively overt translation, transferring cultural elements from the source language (SL) to the target language (TL), while the indirect translation used “ cultural filters” to make cultural compensations for SL cultural phenomena in TL. Furthermore, House divides translation errors into two groups, namely, overt and covert errors. The analysis revealed that there were no covert errors in the direct translation, while the indirect translation contained a covert error. House further divides overt errors into ‘ mismatches of the denotative meanings of elements of the source and translation texts’ and ‘ breach of the target language system’ . The former were much more frequent in the indirect translation, while the latter were slightly more frequent in the direct translation...

This paper attampts to analyze the functions of the capacities of language from the perspective of verbal irony in the representation of historical events in the two plays "Jangnameh Golaman" and "Fathnameh Kallat" based on the idea of Meta historiography. Accordingly, we first attempt to provide a definition of Meta historiography and the importance of irony as an important component in Meta historiography, and then elaborate on the types of verbal irony and its function in the dramatic text and analyze the components in the study samples. Therefore, the framework of the discussion is a combination of the linguistic and stylistic studies of Deirdre Wilson and Hayden White. The method of this research is descriptive and analytical and it is possible to analyze the components with sample mining. The findings of this study show that in two plays by Bahram Beizaie, a verbal irony is a linguistic device for employ the potential capacities of language and a tool for historical implications. This linguistic capacity manifests itself sometimes in parodic and significant statements and sometimes in the interpretive and analytical context of the text, given that the mechanism of creating irony and sence in the play's text cannot be extrapolated without considering the meta text of history...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the syntactic processes involved in deriving Persian WH-multiple questions. Therefore, the function of WH-words in these constructs regarding the syntactic processes is examined. It also clarifies which syntactic functions justify their sequential or split orders. The research method is descriptive-analytic on the base of Chomsky’ s Minimalist approach (1995). Research data was collected from books, Media, newspapers, social networks and Google search engine and native speakers’ speech. Data analysis shows that in sequential WH-multiple questions (both types), backward deletion occurs in which the identical constituent in the first clause is deleted under identity. In these constructions, the first WH-word remains in situ and the second one moves to the focus phrase after deleting the identical constituent. Scrambling is just possible with adjunct-adjunct and adjunctargument order in these constructions. In split WH-multiple questions, the deletion of identical constituent occurs in the second clause as forward deletion in which both WH-words remanin in situ. Scrambling in these constructions is also possible with adjunct-adjunct and adjunct-argument order. Scrambling and superiority of WH-words are not permitted in WH-multiple questions with any order of WH-words...

The present article focuses on the role of mental cognitive processes in creating novel imaginative characters in stories. To do this we apply the basic concepts of Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) i. e. Input Spaces and Blending Networks. CBT accounts can provide a methodological tool for cognitive analysis of literal texts. Fauconnier and Turner (2002) provide an overview of how blending affects the course of a human life, and more specifically, how young children are engaged in building complex blends in very early stages of their life. In the present article we determine to show the cognitive bases for creation of "emergent characters" in stories of elementary students' textbooks (Farsi Khandari). Our main question is what are novel/emergent characters in stories introduced in each grade and what are the available cognitive tools for the writers of each grade to make theirs characters creatively different from other writers. The result can provide a methodological cognitive framework for cognitive analysis of the process of novel character creation in children literature...

Vowel harmony like assimilation is a very common process which is seen in most languages of the world. This process is studied by most phonological theories such as generative phonology, auto segmental phonology and optimality theory and is considered as a criterion for evaluating the adequacy of these phonological theories to account. This article deals with the vowel and vowel consonant harmony in Persian. Vowel harmony and vowel consonant harmony studies the features such as height, front/backless, roundness, and advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root. The research method of this article is content analysis and the data are collected by purposive sampling. Theoretical framework of this research is Optimality Theory. In Persian languages features of vowels such as frontness/backness, height and roundness involved in vowel and vowel consonant harmony are studied. Also some features of consonants such as anteriority or posteriority or their place of articulation changed in harmonies are studied. In this article some faithfulness and marked constraints for accounting vowel and vowel-consonant harmony in Persian such as license, agreement and identity are introduced. Finally it was shown that strong positions in Persian account harmony in this language...

Cognitive poetics as one of the new branches of cognitive science, provides appropriate tools for analyzing the text for the literay critics. The theory of text worlds is one of these tools and is useful in analyzing the textual space. In this study the authors seek to analyze the function of this theory in representing the world of constructed text in Persian poetry. To this goal, the authors analyzed a sonnets of Saadi and a free verse poem of Nima, and examined the function of the theory of the text worlds. The results of this study indicate that this theory is more suitable for the analysis of free verse poetry, and in classical poetry, especially the liryc poetry, there are obstacles due to the inherent limitations of this kind of poetry. To solve the problems of classical poetry analysis, the authors have presented solutions using the theory of text worlds...

The relation between culture and language, features the need to examine the effectiveness of language textbooks. Considering the goal that foreign language teaching is mainly associated with the entry of cultural issues into the learner' knowledge, this need increases especially during learning a foreign language. Due to the today's growing importance of visual communication, this article offers a new perspective on images of English language textbooks in our system of education, based on the semiotic model of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), which emphasizes the importance of constituent elements of culture and society in analyzing linguistic signs; such as clothing, traditions or customs of cultures and subcultures. Paying attention to limitations of this case study, "ethnicity and location" are analyzed in the images of "Visions" and "Prospects". The present study explains how discourse is represented in these images, based on a scientific background and descriptive-analytical method with the aim of examining the social and cultural functions of language. The results show that the studied textbooks don't have a specific "ethnic-racial" approach and selection of "place" was without bias of the source language or the target language; In this way, the illustrator didn't pay special attention to his or her own language in choosing the images...

This study made an attempt to investigate the impacts of Virtual Reality on Iranian young Foreign Language learners’ pronunciation, aged between 6 to 12 years (Lowintermediate Level) in Tehran, Iran. To this aim, after taking a pronunciation pre-test through Speech ace Browser, 18 students participated in the study and were divided into two groups in order to be controlled better in their performance. The Virtual Reality Game (VR Games) given by a teacher was designed with a humanoid robot in virtual environments and all of the pronunciation items were measured in words consisting of vowel /
/ and /i/ and vowel / / and /u/. The researchers taught learners the items in 10 ninety-minute-long sessions (twice a week) through the VR games and helped them learn efficaciously the items by different pronunciation activities. Finally, the researchers administered the post-test and the paired-samples t-test was conducted to examine a potential relationship between the pretest and the posttest of the group. The findings of the study showed that there was a significant relationship between these two times of testing. Overall, the results revealed that VR has been very influential and useful in creating an efficient and pleasurable English learning environment. This study has some implications for technology-based education and language teaching through educational games...

So far in the mood system of New Persian, the inflectional element ‘ be-’ has had three grammatical roles: subjunctive marker, imperative marker, and future marker, all of which having in common the feature of unrealized occurrence of the event (as opposed to its realized occurrence for indicative mood). This investigation, based on a sampled corpus of 55 texts, selected from 10th to 20th centuries, follows the changes of these functions in New Persian diachronically. The results show that in a period of eleven centuries the frequency of ‘ be-’ as a marker of subjunctive has increased three times, and as the imperative marker twice-and-half, while it has been productive in its third role (future marking) mostly in 10th to 12th centuries, and this function gradually disappeared later. Furthermore, since 19th c., ‘ be-’ which was formerly used with simple verbs almost exclusively, began to be used with complex predicates as well. However, there is some amount of irregularity in the increasing frequency of ‘ be-’ in the whole period, and the author attempts to explain it with such hypotheses as grammatical archaism in some texts, and the possible change of grammatical forms in the process of copying the texts...

Categorization as a form of organization and placing different things, including phenomena, objects, events and the like in different groups, is a kind of cognitive function in human beings that occurs based on the common "taxonomy" of categories or the thematic "relationships" that occur between them. Research shows that Western and East Asian cognitive performance, especially that of the Chinese, is quite different in terms of categorization; Accordingly, Westerners classify things on the basis of "category" (taxonomic categorization) and East Asians do so on the basis of "relationships" (thematic categorization). The present study evaluated and analyzed their cognitive performance by performing two tests in the form of visual and verbal questionnaires on 50 Persian male and female speakers. The visual questionnaire showed that out of 50 Persian participants, 70% carried out the categorization based on "relationships"; the verbal questionnaire also confirmed the result of the former and showed that 76% of Persian speakers, during the process of categorization, have considered the "relationship" criterion and, in fact, have acted on the syntagmatic axis. On this basis, it can be concluded that, firstly, the cognitive function is not the same in all human beings, and secondly, the cognition of Persian speakers in the field of categorization operates on the syntagmatic axis, unlike Westerners who in fact "classify" and act on the paradigmatic axis...

Linguistic variation is one of the challengeable themes in sociolinguistics. The researcher discusses linguistic variation in Persian translations The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Translated into Persian by Sadegh Hedayat and Farzaneh Taheri. The main questions in the present research are: 1) How is the role of gender in producing lexical variation in these two translations of The Metamorphosis? 2) In which parts of speech does it take place lexical variation more than others? 3) How is the role of gender in producing syntactic variation in two translation of The Metamorphosis? 4) Are there any relationships between gender and syntactic processes concerning the syntactic variations? The results of research indicate that gender has crucial role in producing linguistic variation including lexical, morphological and syntactic variations in Persian language. The results indicate that there are 505 lexical variations in two translations in which the number of verbal, nominal, adjective, and adverbial variations is 398, 51, 39, 17, respectively. The investigation of data indicates that the rate of morphological variation is less than lexical and syntactic variations. Also, the results indicate that there are relationships between gender and syntactic variables such as scrambling, adjuncts application, question particle application, grammatical metaphor of nominalization, grammatical metaphor of modality, causation, relativization, extraposition, grammatical metaphor of transitivity, and subordination shifting. One of the main implications of present research is that there is close interface between sociolinguistics and generative grammar and therefore, the results of present research confirm the opinions of sociolinguists such as Sells et al. (1996) and Barbiers(2002) about interface between sociolinguistics and generative grammar...

The present paper aims at comparing the intonation of Persian statements and questions in terms of the pitch scaling of tonal events in Pre-nuclear and nuclear prosodic positions as well as utterance final position. Previous research suggest that the direction of the sentence-final fundamental frequency (F0) movement is the most salient intonational cue to questions and statements in Persian. Prototypical yes/no questions are often characterized by a high F0 rise (H%) whereas statements have a terminal F0 fall (L%). It has also been suggested that the H tone of the nuclear pitch accent as well as the pitch range is higher in questions than statements. The present study explored the question as to what extent the pre-nuclear, nuclear and boundary tones may contribute to tune meaning in Persian, thereby distinguishing between statements and questions. The research methodology was the one used in laboratory phonology. The results showed that the tonal structure of the F0 contour between the nuclear pitch accent and the end of the utterance is different in the two sentence type: statements are characterized by L-L% while questions are characterized by L-H%. The results further suggested that the differences between statement and question intonation are not limited to boundary tones as the pitch scaling of both the L and the H tones of pre-nuclear and nuclear pitch accents are also different in the two sentence types...

Despite the bulk of literature on various aspects of anxiety, its multi-dimensional aspect generates many controversies among researchers. Sometimes, EFL learners may suffer from proficiency and gender dependent anxiety in language learning contexts. This correlational study aims to explore the relationship between the construct of general anxiety across different English proficiency levels including elementary, intermediate, and advanced in Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 108 male and female (54 in each group) Iranian EFL learners aged 14 to 18 took part in the present study at a private language school in Gorgan, Iran. The analyses explored the general relationship between anxiety levels and English proficiency levels and also EFL learners’ gender. Chi Square tests were run in R software did not demonstrate a significant relationship between anxiety and levels of proficiency in general. Findings revealed a significant relationship between EFL learners’ level of anxiety and gender. The results might help design future studies and assist teachers, teacher educators, and syllabus designers to devise their courses and tests considering affective factors which ultimately lead to students’ self-efficacy...

The personal credibility and authority of the historian are one of the major subjects in Historiography. It's important since the greater the personal credit of historians, the greater would be the degree of persuasion of the audience. In this article, we analyze the degree of historian influence on audience persuasion and rhetorical methods and verbal devices used for historiography credit which makes the text more believable to the audience. In this article, applying the Neo-Aristotelian criticism method, we want to demonstrate the historian Ethos and strategies used by him to increase his credit. For this purpose, we choose Futu
at-i shahi Cornicle by Amini Haravi, since it was one of the first and impressive histories of Safavi's government formation and its ideology because the role and personal credibility of historian and his persuasive of methods are very important...

Phase Theory has been proposed as the latest achievement of the minimalist program to optimize syntactic computation of language. The purpose of this paper is to study and analyze of Ardalani Kurdish data and to what extent phase theory is useful in explaning the clitic hosts in Ardalani Kurdish. we showed that the explanation of clitic agreement in Ardalani would follow the principle of phase impenetrability condition. Data collection was based on field methods, library and the use of researcher language intuition. We also showed through a descriptive – analytical method based on theoretical framework of Citko (2014), the derivation of the phase of transitive single object phrases in Ardalani. The clitic hosts are limited to the complement of VP core in the first phase. Therefore, the elements that are in this range can be a good host for the matching word closure. Therefore the direct object and the non-passive component of the compound verb would be the best choice for the clitic. The clitic can also choose object-dependent adjectives and adverbs as hosts, provided that these elements are limited to the first phase. In this case, the clitic systematically selects these elements as the host. We also, by examining of the construction of adverbs, showed that there is restriction on the selection of adverbs and they are locally restricted. Whenever they are in the complement of the first phase, clitic will select them, but when they are outside the first phase, they can not be selected as hosts, and if selected, the sentence will be crashed. Finally, we concluded that phase theory is capable of explaining the clitic hosts in Ardalani...

Ahmad Shamloo, one of the Iranian contemporary poets, has a very short poem with remarkable hidden potentials. At first glance, the brevity and the simplicity of this poem may lead readers to underestimate its true value and the critics to ignore the impact of its analysis. But this article is determined to reveal how this brilliant poet has succeeded to create within few words, a newfound image for a worn and deadened notion which is the fatigue and disappointment. To prove this claim, first we studied the suggestive role of phonemes, armed by the theories of French linguist and phonetician: Maurice Grammont. And then, by dint of a structural analysis, based on the theories of Roman Jakobnson, the famous Russian linguist, we found out that the parallelism is the key factor of this poem which creates its poles and so the possibility of a circular movement. This movement leads to the idea of an independent whole, which is the ultimate purpose of all artistic and literal productions. The guarantor of this unity is the body of the enunciator. A semiotic analysis helped at last to see how this body provides, with his sensations, the rhythm and the direction of the meaning. Due to its evocable phonemes and its parallel structure, this poem awakens sensations of the enunciator’ s body and leads him toward the production of a peerless meaning...

The present article is based on the minimalist program and the descriptive – analytic method. It will discuss the extraction of dependents out of noun and adjective phrases in Persian. The question is why dependents of one group of adjective phrases can extract and the structure after the extraction remains grammatical unlike the other group of adjectives phrases out of which the extraction leads to ungrammaticality. The other question is why in all noun phrases in Persian extraction of all dependents are prohibited. The purpose of the research is to apply new approach of phase theory and to analyze the extraction in noun and adjective phrases in Persian phrases based on it. We found out that for the adjective phrases in Persian we have two different structures. In one of them there is a strong uninterpretable N feature [*-uN] and also a weak [EPP] feature on the head of the functional projection (aP) which is located above (AP). Because of the existence of the strong uninterpretable N feature [*-uN] on the head of the functional projection (aP), the adjective (A) moves overtly to the functional head (a) to check and delete the feature. The phonetic realization of that feature checking is the appearance of Ezafe on the head of the Adjective, moreover; because the [EPP] feature on the functional projection (aP) is weak it leaves no motivation for the dependent to move overtly to the spec of (aP). The other type of adjective phrases in Persian has weak [-uN] feature and a strong [*EPP] feature on the head of (aP) so there would be no overt movement of (A) to (a) due to weakness of the feature [-uN] and also there would be overt movement of dependent to spec (aP) to check the [*EPP] feature in a spec – head relation without violating (PIC). On the other hand the extraction of dependents out of a noun phrases always leads to ungrammaticality. This is because the head of the functional projection (nP) located above (NP) has no [EPP] feature so the dependent of (N) has no motivation to move to the edge of (nP)...