Journal of Comparative Linguistic Research
Year:2013 | Volume:2 | Issue:4|Papers Count:10

In this paper, the etymology of some Persian verbs occurred in some classical Persian texts has been studied. These verbs include:1. xaftan “to bend”<OIr. *xafta- from root xa(m)p- “to bend”.2. rastan “to comb”<OIr. *rasta- from root ra(n)d- “to scrape”.3. soridan “to run away, to flee”, prob. related to Ossetic suryn/sorun “to drive”, and New Persian soridan “to be disturbed”.4. saxsidan “to slip”<OIr. *fraxsa-<*fra-raxsa- from root raxs- “to slip”.5. kolidan “to bark”<OIr. *kauda- from root kaud- “to cry, to howl”.6. gusardan “to mix”<OIr. *vi-sarta- from root sar- “to mix, to join”.

This paper presents a descriptive account of ergativity in the Dashti dialect of Buhsher. To illustrate ergativity in Dashti, the behavior of intransitive subject, transitive subject and direct object are analyzed with respect to their ability to induce agreement on the verb. The similar behavior of transitive and intransitive subjects, as opposed to the direct objects, points to the nominative-accusative alignment in the present tense in Dashti. However, the similar behavior of the intransitive subject and direct object, in contrast to the transitive subject, portrays split ergativity in the past tense clauses in Dashti. It will also be shown that ergativity in Dashti is of the morphological type without deeper consequences for the syntax. The distinct distribution of affixes and clitics, on which much of cross-reference in Dashti is based, will be discussed as well.

Converting nouns and adjectives to verbs is a productive word formation process in Persian. Although there are plenty of approaches regarding conversion, a concise theory on meaning in converted verbs in Persian is still to come. In this article an eclectic approach to this phenomenon is introduced. This approach concerns Metonymy hypothesis in cognitive linguistics framework, pragmatic approach used by Clarck and Clarck (1979), and structural it approach of Liber (2004, 2005). In this article making converted verbs is a deliberate coinage of new forms by relisting a lexeme in the lexicon based on shared information after a conceptual metonymical shift.

This paper investigates the Ezafe construction in Persian based on the cognitive and non-cognitive approaches. After providing a short review of the issue from traditional and formal perspectives, the current paper tackles the issue primarily on the basis of cognitive linguistics, namely construction grammar. The Ezafe construction in Persian consists of a number of constructional meanings on which inheritance links dominate. Inheritance links are defined as metaphorization process in which a complex-abstract structure is derived from a basic-concrete concept. This paper is, however, focused on the basic structure of Ezafe and its derivations in Persian. Furthermore, for the analysis of semantic expansion of Ezafe the through metaphorization, we will also provide some diachronic analysis to detect its possible original and prototypical meaning. At end, we represent the Ezafe diagram based on inheritance links among the basic structure and its derivations, having taken some advantages of some cognitive principles like scene encoding and profile hypothesis. The findings of this research take an action to establish the metaphorization process in which the basic structure plays a critical role in constructing the subsequent-complex ones.

The aim of writing this article is to probe the meaning of the word “hatta” in Farsi by the use of existing cognitive facilities presented in cognitive linguistics. To do this, first, current Farsi dictionaries were studied in order for the semantic deficits to be crystal clear in providing the meaning for the word “hatta”. Then it was examined in the structuralist and generative semantics and the weakness of both in providing the meaning for the word “hatta” lead to using a cognitive analysis on the word “hatta”. Cognitively studying more than one hundred daily contexts containing the word “hatta” in Farsi resulted in emerging two contradictory meaning out of it, namely the adverbs “in addition to” and “only”, having the notions of “grouping” and “partitioning” respectively. Tested by seventy educated subjects who were more than eighteen, the semantic hypothesis was confirmed.

This study introduced the linguistic taboo and its variants and also examines the Persian colloquial taboo words among men and women living in Tehran and the differences in how they use taboo words. The main objective of this study is to classify the taboo words in terms of lexical fields and the differences between the way women and men use these taboo words. In addition to the factors of sex, other social factors, such as functional context, have been studied in relation to the use of linguistic variables (taboo words). The statistical sampling of this study is taken from of 500 men and women living in Tehran. The study proved that men tend to use more taboo words in their colloquial conversations.  It is also found that the use of taboo words is different between men and women in terms of lexical fields, but it does not have a significant difference in terms of functional context.

This paper tries to deal with ditransitive constructions in Persian based on Malchukov et. al.(2007) which focus mainly on a semantic definition of these constructions. They regard a ditransitive construction as consisting of a predicate that takes three arguments: an agent (A), a recipient-like argument (R), and a theme (T). The event coded in this way involves physical or mental transfer. At first, the coding properties of ditransitives such as case-marking, indexation, and word order are explored, aiming at finding the relevant alignment. Next, these constructions are analyzed with respect to the behavioral properties of the two objects regarding  syntactic phenomena like passivization, relativization, incorporation, etc. the results show that in Persian ditransitive constructions both case-marking and indexation follow indirective alignment, although, for these properties alignment alternation does exist. Word order is mainly affected by pragmatic factors. Behavioral properties mainly follow the coding properties, mostly showing indirective alignment.

Based on the confessions of the pros and antis, Imam Ali is the leading figure of justice in the history of mankind, whose sacrifice and devotion have marked him as the martyr of justice.  The wisdoms related to Imam Ali about justice, his attitude towards people and the sufferings, he received out of oppression…., are tangible like carbuncles at each and every part of Nahjol-Balaghe, which bring eyes to a standstill mode and bestow solace to the oppressed hearts.On the other hand, in the old Arabic sources, some quotations are presented on the justice of the Iranians, especially on Anoushirvan, whose semantic structures and contents have great affinity with Imam Ali’s words. Irrespective of the national and religious conflicts, this study makes an attempt at making a comparative analysis of these wise words and then the divergent possibilities for the interpretation of these affinities are mooted. The findings of this study show the cultural and mental affinities between the ancient Iranians and Imam Ali, which may be one of their elements of getting drawn to Islam and especially, as Shiite Muslims.