ZABANSHENAKHT (LANGUAGE STUDIES)
Year:2014 | Volume:5 | Issue:1|Papers Count:10

To know how people open conversation and how they address each other is an important topic in studying language community to establish social relation among people. This article investigates addressing behavior in spoken variety of colloquial Persian. In this research, the analysis of the data from 43 Persian speakers show that 10 types of address terms are used in everyday conversations, namely, personal names, titles, religious terms, occupational terms, relative terms, honorifics and formal terms, intimate terms, personal pronouns, descriptive terms and zero ones. Also metaphors and taboos are investigated. Statistical analysis of address terms show that male speakers use intimate terms more than female ones and usage of relative terms decreases with the increase in the age of speakers.

One of the important issues in systemic functional linguistics is metafunction. In this viewpoint, all of languages have been formed by three broad metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. The ideational metafunction is divided into two functions: experiential and logical. In experiential function, experiences of the world are represented through the language. In SFL view, a component of the ideational metafunction is transitivity as a property of clauses. It is used to specify the different types of processes in clauses. So, as transitivity encodes our experiences, by studying and inquiring processes existing in the text and their frequency, we can understand thought, experiences and inner world of an author. Then, in this paper, in addition to inquiring the processes of some short stories of Simin Daneshvar, frequency and percentage of all kinds of processes will be demonstrated as a stylistic indicative of her work and also considering these frequencies, her personality will be revealed.

This research aims to study cohesion & coherence and the type of discourse in proverbs and idioms regarding women. The theoretical framework of the analysis is Halliday-Matthiessen’s functional approach, focusing on the textual meta-function. The selected corpus is all proverbs and idioms in Koucheh dictionary. The method consists of both qualitative elements and quantitative approach. The qualitative elements are based on cohesive discourse analysis and the quantitative approach is the statistical analysis of the corpus based on Pearson correlation test. The results show that: Both grammatical and lexical cohesive devices are used in Kouche but the distribution of devices is different. There are no cohesive devices in %17.93 of Koucheh, in which, cohesion is functional and related to coherence. The correlation between the number of cohesive devices and the words is significant and the discourse in this dictionary is mostly coherent, called “minimal discourse”.

This article deals with two technicalities in Wizidagiha i Zadsparam (Ch. 34: 25 & 28); the enigmatic ائفقثجظ in the phrase ائفقثجظ ل تسوظ ا and the concept of the phrases “se kanarag i gehan”. Firstly, the enigmaticائفقثجظ is discussed which was read as “nisarik” (Zaehner, 1955: 345), a hapax legomenon in middle Persian language, followed by Gignoux-Tafazzoli (1993: 120). With a slight emendation, the word can be satisfactorily read as اخقثجظ “waharig” (i. e vernal); thus the phrase runs as “vernal medium/equinoctial measure”. Then, based on the comparison of the phrases “se kanarag i gehan” (§ 25), with the existing ancient astronomical and cosmological contributions (namely, the so-called Assyrian astrolabes and Mul Apin Tablets, Brahmaṇas and the Oration upon the sovereign sun by Julianus Apostate), the phrase is introduced as a technicality which refers to “the tripartite division of sky vault pattern (to the southern, middle and northern regions)”; a renowned procedure in the ancient oriental cosmology.

The Ithoter Revayat is the last zartoshti revayat. It was sent to India by the Iranian Zoroastrians, in the 12th Y. century, in reply of seventy eight jurisprudential questions of Parsis. In 1996 based on three manuscripts, Mario Vitalone has published it in Napoli, Italy. Recently, an old manuscript, dated 1152, listed in the National Library of I.R. Iran.Introducing the National Library manuscript and compar with the Vitalone's printed text is the subject of this article.

Scientometrics is a field of study that analyzes the quantitative parameters involved in science publication and expansion. Taking seven scientometric parameters into account, the present paper investigates 411 articles presented in eight linguistic conferences held in Iran between 1991 and 2013. The findings indicate that the frequency of syntax is higher than other sub-fields of linguistics followed respectively by discourse analysis and morphology. Among 70 universities participating in the eight conferences under study, the students and members of faculty in Allame Tabataba’i University have been the most active scholars. Likewise, 202 articles dealt with a special language or dialect and with 152 counts, Persian has been the most frequent language. The results show that the tendency towards the group work in research and article writing, the number of female article writers, the average of length of article titles, and the frequency of citation have increased throughout the time.

One of the most striking characteristics of Armenian-Persian bilinguals in their Armenian language conversations in Iran, is the use of Persian discourse markers instead of Armenian equivalents. This study gauges the extent to which Persian discourse markers are used as multifunctional by Armenian- Persian bilinguals, their function and position in a clause as well as reasons for this substitution based on 10 hours of recorded informal Armenian conversations. The results show that xob, baba/aqa, be har hal, yani, hala, vali, belakhareh, aslant, vaqean, kollan and khodaees are among the discourse markers used by Armenians. Lack of Armenian equivalent, the multifunctional nature, saliency in content or suprasegmental features and simple structure in some Persian discourse markers are the main reason for their selection.

In the present article, theme-theme structure in clause-complexes of specialized texts (such as biochemistry, physics and anatomy) is studied based on SFG. At first, clause-complexes types in theme-theme structure of scientific texts are classified, and by describing and analyzing different types of clause-complexes (dependent/ dominant) it is revealed that these clauses are used more than simple ones within the whole corpus. Then, theme-theme structure is analyzed, and the result illustrates that clause analysis is possible at one, two or three layers at the same time, depending on the clause type. Therefore, one can find layers of themes in such clauses and introduce the notion of layer theme. Studying simple/complex themes revealed that in the scientific genre, complex themes are used more than textual ones. This is because the sequences of textual themes in the scientific texts are something usual. Complex clauses, complex themes and multiple layers of clause analysis indicate speech adjuncts in scientific texts, and consideration of such structural elements is effective in discourse organizing, text development and perception process. This is useful for text evaluation and can be considered as a criterion for transfer of information to the addressee, as it is seen in physics, biochemistry and anatomy texts respectively.

The sounds of languages undergo changes under the effects of certain linguistic factors through the historical changes of languages from one form into another. Studying 100 Balochi-an Iranian language-words, it was found that the vowel /u/ in Old Iranian has changed into /i/ in some parts of Iranian Baluchistan including southern and central areas, currently being common in a free variant of two forms as /u/ and /i/ in these areas. In addition, investigating the phenomenon in some other Iranian languages from the most eastern (Pamir territory) to the most western (Kurdish and Bakhtiari territories), it was found that this historical change has occurred, and it can be considered a general and widespread phenomenon among Iranian languages. Finally, the study of this phenomenon in the Balochi language can be useful from some aspects such as typology and linguistic description and historical studies of Balochi language and its dialects and accents.

Wisdom has a main and central role in Zoroastrian thought and is the same as the Great creation. The creation of the world from beginning to the end is led by wisdom. In this paper, the wisdom is studied first in ancient texts (Old Persian, Old Avestan (Gahan) and New Avestan), and in then Pahlvi texts such as (Bundahishn, Wizidagiha i Zadisparam and the handwriting text of M.O. 29). Four kinds of wisdom (omniscience wisdom, growing wisdom, The pious wisdom, and instinctive wisdom) in Avesta and Pahlavi are compared.