Journal of Language Research
Year:2023 | Volume:14 | Issue:1|Papers Count:7

Researchers have paid a lot of attention to collecting and analyzing the language errors. Language learners commit various mistakes during the stages of language learning, and Subject Verb Agreement (SVA) is one of these mistakes. In this type of errors, the features of the person and the number of the verb and the subject do not match with each other. Based on the theory of Distributed Morphology (DM), in this type of errors, the morphologic features that should be specified on the final nodes are received from a wrong source. In this article, we analyze and examine the internal structure of the SVA errors produced by Persian learners in the framework of the DM in order to explain how copying a wrong feature from the wrong source can lead to the production of wrong sentences. The examined samples are related to the final writing test of Persian learners of Saadi Foundation, which were extracted from the corpus of this institution. The discussed errors are divided into two groups: local agreement and long distance agreement. In the first type, the source of error is linearly closer to the verb than the real subject, while in the second type, the source of error is located at a further distance from the subject. By examining examples of local agreement errors of Persian learners, we will show that the source of the error can be the goal, and instead of agreeing with its local subject, the verb agrees with the goal and takes its features. Also, by analyzing the internal structure of long distance agreement errors, we will introduce two new sources which verb can agree with them and takes their features. First, in a coordination structures the verb of the second conjunct mistakenly agrees with the subject of the first conjunct. Second, the verb of the relative clause can agree with the subject of the main clause.

In many languages, compounding as a word-formation process is more productive than the other processes. According to this fact, compounding has a special role in the morphology of languages and this process has been concentrated by grammarians and linguists. Compound words of a language can be classified in various ways. In one of these classification methods, compounds are divided into two major categories: exocentric compounds and endocentric compounds. This research is an attempt to explore the N-P-N tripartite exocentric compounds of Persian within the framework of Construction Morphology. The research examines the systematic semantic relations, the possible schema of the N-P-N construction, its subschemas, and the hierarchical structure of this construction in the lexicon of Persian speakers. The data under the study have been collected from the reference book “Farhang-e Farsi-ye Āmiyāne” (Persian Slang Dictionary) written by Abolhasan Najafi which totally includes 88 tripartite compounds. The approach of this research is construction-based and tries to examine the metaphorical and semantic content of the above-mentioned compounds and to justify their word-formation pattern of them based on the concept of “construction” and “constructional schemas”. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical and the result of the research demonstrates that all the compounds that are examined in this research can be encoded by 10 semantic relations: property, person property, time, location, state, thing, condition/situation, person, action and repetition of time. Each of these semantic relations and their differences has been represented as a schema which is a pairing of form and meaning.  The results also evinced that there is a direct relation between the semantic transparency of a construction and its frequency and productivity in Persian, there are 70 N-be-N compounds in the corpus which is considerably more than other types of compounds. Therefore, it is concluded that the frequency of the N-P-N compounds is rooted in their semantic transparency.

Ta’arof has a special place in the Iranian culture and its linguistic repesentations are various and considerable. Since Ta’arof expressions are used in interactive contexts by native speakers of Persian, it is expected that the intonation patterns of these expressions be affected by discourse factors and vary as a function of context. The present study adopts Brazil’s (1975, 1978, 1997) and Brazil et al.’s (1980) approach to intonation with the main purpose of investigating the intonation patterns of Ta’arofs in Persian. The distinguishing feature of Brazil’s approach to intonation is its focus on the effect of discoursal context on intonation patterns each with a meaning of its own. In his approach, “meaning” does not refer to attitudes such as “surprised” or “expectant”, nor to grammatical meanings such as “interrogative” or “declarative”. Rather, it refers to the interactive role of intonation i.e., constant evaluation of discourse by the speaker and choosing the appropriate intonation pattern to achieve coherence and cohesion in discourse. To this end, the intonation features of tone and the prominence level of the onset (key) and tonic (termination) syllables were annotated and analyzed using the Praat software in 29 Ta’arof expressions in the Iranian series Hayula. Results showed that the dominent tone in these expressions is level or fall. Keys were mostly mid or high, while terminations were mostly mid. Considering the fact that intonation patterns of each Ta’arof expression depends on its situational and discoursal context, the Taarof expression ̒Gorbunet beram̓ ‘(lit.) may I be sacrificed for you’ with 4 different representations was chosen and analysed as one of the most frequent Ta’arof expression in the corpus of this study. Results showed that Ta’arof expressions although fixed lexically and syntactically, show different intonation patterns due to the influence of social norms such as politeness, power relations, the prediction of listener’s judgment, and listener’s agreement expectation.

Recursive structures, structures whose representation is produced by the repeated application of a syntactic rule, have been observed and investigated extensively in languages. By means of an experiment, the present study investigates the acquisition of recursive locatives in Persian-speaking children and provides new evidence on the subject of children's learning path, which lends its support to theoretical insights about the representation of this structure in the mind. Different languages do not uniformly deem recursive structures well-formed. Furthermore, in languages that consider the same recursive structure well-formed, it is possible for the acquisition age of this same structure to be different in children speaking different languages. Experiments report differences in the age that English and Japanese speakers acquire recursive locatives. In these studies, early acquisition of locative structures that employ identical prepositions is observed, as well as early acquisition in the language that marks the recursive structure by an overt functional element, namely, Japanese. Explaining these observations, Nakato and Roeper (2021) propose a three-step path in the acquisition of recursion: 1. Search for overt morphological elements 2. Search for overt lexical elements 3. The ability to interpret recursive structures without the presence of identical overt elements. In the recursive structure of the locatives of Persian, similar to Japanese and contrary to English, we witness an overt functional element: Ezafe. The presence of Ezafe in this structure qualifies as the first stage of the proposed acquisition path, and therefore it is predicted that the acquisition of recursive locatives in Persian will occur early. This article takes advantage of the presence of the overt element in Persian recursive locatives and by designing and implementing an experiment in accordance with the previous experiments, investigates the acquisition of locative recursion among Persian-speaking children and by means of the collected data examines the proposed acquisition path above.

The main purpose of this study is to explain the word order of topicalized constituents in non-pro.making persian topicalization based on Functional Discourse Grammar. Since this grammar does not believe in concepts such as movement, we will also seek to explain this process in base-generated procedures. Therefore, in this study, in order to achieve the above goals, the method of mapping the linguistic elements of sentences containing non-pro.making Persian topicalized constituents in morphosyntactic templates in four absolute initial, second, medial and final positions and infinite relative ones presented in Functional Discourse Grammar was considered. This study is based on a descriptive-analytical method and the examples are taken from selected samples of Persian speech and written texts, which after introducing the mechanisms of this grammar,have been analyzed based on the principles of this theory. The method of determining the order of constituents used in the present study is the dynamic method of FDG that is inspired by the method of determining the word order of Greenberg. In this approach instead of three categories of subject, object and verb, respectively, the concepts of actor, undergoer and predicate, determine the word order of the languages of the world. The results indicate that in marked constituents such as topicalization, considering the communicative intention of the speaker, various elements including ,thematic and non-thematic elements and even predicates can be topicalized and on the other hand, considering that, based on the principles of this grammar, the topicalized constituent in the interpersonal level is given priority in entering morphosyntactic templates, so the topicalization process is not the result of movement, but the topicalized element is produced in base-generated procedures in the same position. The results also show that Functional Discourse Grammar is an appropriate and efficient method by referring to the three principles of iconicity, domain integrity and functional stability in determining the constituent arrangement of sentences containing non-pro.making Persian topicalization.

The present article mainly aims to investigate the process through which relative clauses appear postverbally and distant from the noun they modify. To do so, relative clauses are first classified into two categories of Restrictive (RRC) and Non-restrictive Relative Clauses (NRRC). The article focuses only on the RRCs given the vastness of the research area. Adopting a non-movement analysis for postverbal RRCs within Minimalism, arguments coming from Quantifier Raising and Adjunct Merger are presented to support the hypothesis that RRCs are adjoined to a copy of the NP they modify after the latter adjoins to a functional projection in the left periphery to host the RRC. Furthermore, it is proposed that the head of the aforementioned fumctional projection may come from the lexicon with an optional strong D feature ([uD*]) that triggers the movement of the copy of the source NP. As such, assuming that we have verb movement in Persian and that complement clauses in this language move to their surface position within TP to check a clause type feature, the postverbal RRCs are predicted to follow complement clauses to give the right relative order of the two postverbal clauses, a prediction that is borne out. Finally, the restriction on the presence of only one RRC postverbally is scrutinized in addition to the compulsory postverbal appearance of RRCs in certain structures.

The present research has investigated the difference between achievement and accomplishment aspects in Kalhori based on the minimalist approach of Mc Donald (2008). According to this approach, the internal subject plays a central role in the aspectual interpretation of achievement and accomplishment predicates. Likewise, the presence and interpretation of event structure (ES) and object-to-event mapping (OTE) features play a decisive role in derivation of aspectual predicates. The analysis of the research data showed that in Kalhori, achievement and accomplishment predicates having internal subjects with the OTE feature [-q], have a minimal aspectual interpretation domain; and the final subevent feature [fe] It is not included in the interpretation range. However, internal subjects with the feature [+q] in the achievement and accomplishment predicates, cause an extensive  domain  of aspectual interpretation and also cause interpretation of the final subevent feature [fe].Therefore, it was found that in Kalhori that the presence of the feature [+q] on the internal subject is a necessary condition for telicity of achievement and accomplishment predicates. In addition, in Kalhori, the difference between achievement and accomplishment aspects was determined in this way that in the achievements the initial subevent feature [ie] on the aspectaul group has not dominance and c-command over the feature of the initial subevent feature [fe]. But, in the accomplishments, the initial subevent feature [ie] on the aspectaul group has dominance and c-command over the final subevent feature [fe], which is placed on VP.This situation refers to the time spent between the beginning and the end of the accomplishment events, which unlike the achievement events the beginning and end are simultaneous.In fact ,in the accomplishment predicates between two points of initial event and final event occurs the passage of time,according to this ,there is a dominance and c-command between the initial subevent feature [ie] and the final subevent feature [fe]. But in the achievement predicates between two points of initial event and final event not occur the spend of time,so it is not a dominance and c-command between two features of the initial subevent and the final subevent.