ZABANPAZHUHI (IRANIAN JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE RESEARCH)
Year:2024 | Volume:16 | Issue:51|Papers Count:10

Autism is one of the most common neuro-developmental disorders that can influence an individual’s cognitive and linguistic abilities. Since it is necessary to make use of both cognitive and language abilities in narrative discourse, autistic individuals face a challenge in narrative production and comprehension. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the space domain, as one of the inseparable components of each narrative, and in a broader context, narrative discourse in children with high-functioning autism and normal Persian-speaking children. To this end, the representation of some components of space such as predicates (including static, active, active-accomplishment, and semelfactive) and spatial grounds (including nouns and pronouns) in the narrative discourse of children with high-functioning autism and normal children was studied based on Hickman (2004) and Roberts, Barjastefc Delforooz and Jahani's classification (2009).

Since birth and throughout all stages of development, humans have been social beings, as effective communication and interaction with others has been crucial for them. The capability to understand ideas, emotions, and views, and to be aware of and sensitive to them in social interactions, helps develop friendly relationships, promotes self-awareness and self-acceptance, and improves group cohesion. Living in an interconnected world means that we will inevitably face difficulties, and consequently, will regularly need the assistance of others. Iranians have long had a reputation for being kind and helpful to their fellow citizens. It is essential to remember that providing verbal support and assistance to others can also protect them from potential dangers (Andreoni et al., 2016).When seeing other people’s problems and issues, individuals use various verbal and functional approaches in accordance with their own perception and understanding of the situation, as well as the mental and emotional state of others. This indicates their level of care and concern for others. Concern for someone is defined as the emotional and cognitive ability to understand emotions and react to the mental and emotional states of others. Interpersonal interactions and socioemotional aspects help differentiate between “apathy” (having no feelings), “sympathy” (observing feelings), “empathy” (understanding feelings), and “metapathy” (changing feelings).The current research aims to assess people’s level of concern for others by analyzing the language expressions they use in various situations. In other words, the concept of 'cultuling' (language + culture) of concern for others introduces a new perspective on concern, which is influenced by both the extent of people’s engagement with the problem and the closeness between individuals.

Language, as a means of communication, is continually influenced by our society, which is why the reflection of social variables in our everyday speech is inevitable. Among different social factors, sociolinguistic researchers have extensively investigated the correlation between “gender” and linguistic categories to examine the language features of men and women. Lakoff & Bucholtz (2004) suggested that women’s speech is characterized by linguistic features such as precise color terms, polite forms (e.g., indirect requests), tag questions, and empathic stress. In this regard, Holmes (2013, p. 308) claimed that many of the features identified as the characteristics of women’s language are positive politeness devices expressing solidarity.Politeness and “taboo words”, on the other hand, have been the focus of many sociolinguistic researches, such as Jay (2009), Batisttella (2005) and Wardhaugh’s (2006). Jay (2009, p. 156) claims that both “gender” and “age” can affect word choice and frequency; men swear more frequently in public than women. As for age, the swearing rate peak in the teenage years and declines thereafter (Jay, 2009, p. 156). The present research aims to conduct a gender- and age-based study of “taboo words” in the everyday speech of Persian-speaking men and women and to answer the following questions:How does “gender” affect the frequency and use of “taboo words” in the everyday speech of Persian speakers?How the “age” of Persian speakers affect the use of “taboo words”?Which types of “taboo words” do Persian speakers use in their speech?

One of the challenges of second language learners is listening comprehension. In this context, Field (2008: 4) says that if we ask many language learners to determine the relative difficulty of the four language skills, many of them consider listening to be the area in which they feel most insecure. Various reasons have been mentioned as to why listening skill, or in other words, the process of listening in a second language, is considered difficult and challenging (e.g., see Brown and Yule, 1983; Field, 2008). Considering these challenges, one solutions to facilitate the listening process for language learners is to change their listening status from a passive listener to an active listener.Goh (2014: 73) defines an active listener as someone who uses a range of skills and strategies to direct and manage their listening processes according to their communication goals. Regarding "listening skills", Rost (1990; cited in Lynch and Mendelson, 2010: 185) mentions two categories: enabling skills and enacting skills. He considers the first category to be the skills that are used to perceive what the speaker is saying and interpret the intended meaning (such as recognizing the prominences within utterances and inferring implicit information), and the second category to be the skills that play a role in responding appropriately to the message or text. The second component that exists in the definition of an active listener is Strategy. In a general definition, strategy can be seen as a method of facing a problem. In the context of the present research, strategy can be a method or a tactic used by language learners for encountering listening texts, either in one-way (non-participatory) or two-way (interactive or participatory) listening contexts.Strategies are generally divided into three categories: cognitive, metacognitive, and social/emotional. Metacognitive strategies are those strategies that direct attention to the input and coordinate various cognitive processes (Goh, 2014: 73). According to Anderson (2005: 758), attention has been paid to the role of strategies in second language learning since the mid-1970s. This attention to strategies in language teaching can be understood from the emergence of two approaches in the context of teaching methodology that have given a central role to strategies: Styles and Strategies-Based Instruction (SSBI) and Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA). Regarding these, it is naturally expected that the more language learners use strategies for listening and understanding, and in fact, the more they focus their listening on strategies, the more comprehending and interpreting of the listening messages and speech interactions or one-way listening will be achieved. Therefore, it is necessary to get information about the language learners’ level of awareness of different strategies and their application.

Modality is of fundamental importance in studying the structure of all languages worldwide. Providing a comprehensive definition of this notion is difficult. In general, modality expresses the speaker's point of view towards the statement in the sentence. In terms of semantics, the modality is considered in two general categories: epistemic and root modalities. Epistemic modality expresses the speaker's assessment of the probability or predictability of the action. This type of modality involves the possibility or necessity of the proposition based on the judgment, evidence, or knowledge of the speaker. Root modality is used to express concepts such as coercion, permission, and ability and is divided into two subsets: deontic and dynamic. In deontic modality, external circumstances and power often oblige the third person or addressee to act or do an activity. In dynamic modality, the inner force or the existing conditions provide the necessity or possibility for the action to be performed. This kind of modality expresses the ability and capability of the actor.

Simultaneous decoding and encoding of information in source and target languages comprise the two major components of the simultaneous interpretation as an interactional process. The interpreter is simultaneously involved in decoding of information in the source language and encoding of information in the target language (Chesterman, 2016; Gile, 2018). Parallel corpora are derived from two languages, including source texts and their translations (Zuffery, 2017).Explicitation, as a general tendency or one of the universals of translation, is a strategy in which the implicit information of the source text is made explicit in the process of translation (Blum-Kulka 1986; Dimitrova, 2005). The bases of explanations originates from comparative analysis of parallel texts in source and target languages. What is the rationale behind the studies in explicitation? It is maintained that explicitation is a universal property in translation, revealing its crucial role, significance, and status in translation. Findings obtained from empirical studies can consequently be supposed to be generalizable to other language-related studies.Explicitations in translation are initiated by demands of the communicative conditions and situations. Moreover, due to the anticipated differences and variations appearing in culture and world knowledge, translators foresee some problems for the target language reader to comprehend the text. Therefore, they use explicitation as a strategy to solve those anticipated problems and facilitate the understanding of the target text for the reader (Chesterman 2016; Klaudy 1998).The analysis and investigation of the system of decoding and encoding in process of simultaneous interpretation is generally carried out in the framework of metadiscourse and interpreter’s discursive activities. According to Hyland (2005), in metadiscourse and discursive practices, the investigator tries to study and analyze the processes of production and comprehension of discourse based on social context and social situations. The analysis of these metadiscourse and discursive practice revealed that all these activities involve modification and change on behalf of the speaker/writer and audience. According to Dass and Taboada (2017) and Egg (2010), the analysis of parallel corpora revealed that the themes and issues of modification, substitution, and manipulation generally are directed to coherence relations in discourse. As a result, investigators resorted to the integration of translation studies and discourse investigations (Crible et al, 2019). Consequently, such an integration would result in a new methodology in discourse studies and suggest new models for analysis.The present paper tries to analyze the conditions, causes, and basis of different types of explicitation in the process of monitoring discourse based on analyzing translation of discourse markers (DMs) in simultaneous interpretation through translation spotting to design a model. In pragmatic investigations, researchers try to analyze the natural processing and use of language within the framework of social communicative settings (Yule, 2011). Discourse monitoring is among the basic issues in human communication and has crucial consequences in people’s social life. In the process of production, configuration, structuration, and comprehension of discourse, speaker/writer and audience apply discourse markers to create coherence in discourse based on grammatical elements, semantics, and pragmatics. DMs are the most frequent, creative, practical, and influential variables in the process of creation, analysis, and understanding of discourse (Fraser, 2006; Mohammadi, 2015). DMs are applied to improve and support the coherence of text, substantiate the activation of people's mind and language in the process of creation and interpretation of discourse, and prepare the ground for coherence and relevance in discourse. Achieving the above-mentioned objectives and aims depends on the precise, appropriate, professional, and creative application of DMs (Aijmer, 2002; Anderson, 2001; Schiffrine, 1987). There are different research positions and assumptions about the translation of DMs and Furku (2014) believes that the most straightforward translation strategy for discourse markers is omission. The present research tries to investigate translation strategies of DMs in simultaneous interpretation based on the following questions:To what extent is explicitation applied in the process of translating DMs in simultaneous interpretation?What are the different manifestations and strategies of explicitation in translating DMs in the process of discourse creation in simultaneous interpretation?

The process of actor representation in narrative involves various aspects of discourse-based formulations. The narrator refers to the actors as subjects to either accept or reject them, encompassing different stances, including acceptance and rejection with their sub-categories. Siavash Kasraei's stance as a subject-narrator towards a character as a subject-situator requires the selection of a specific approach and the rejection of other procedures. The mention or omission of actors in Arash Kamangir's poetry is directly related to the poet's thinking and his evaluation and interpretation of that character. The poet describes and depicts the situation of the character through his own interpretations.

Language contact may have a lot of repercussions for the languages involved. Lexical or structural borrowing can be among the results of language contact. Accordingly, the present study investigates the local and borrowed prepositions and pronouns in Kalhori Kurdish due to language contact.To fulfill this goal, a researcher-made questionnaire (list) was used to determine the local and borrowed pronouns and prepositions in Kalhori Kurdish. This list included 35 items: 11 frequent Kurdish prepositions and 24 Kurdish pronouns. The data was collected through interview. Regardless of their education, all the subjects were fluent in both Kurdish and Farsi and were regarded as active bilinguals. In terms of age range, the young participants were between 20-35 years old, and the old participants were between 50-70 years old. Based on age, gender and educational background, the selected subjects were assigned to 8 groups. Each group consisted of 10 people. Totally, 80 people responded to the items in the list through a targeted interview. The data was collected in Ilam (Eyvan) province. Kalhori Kurdish is the mother language of the people. Three-way ANOWA was employed to assess the significance of the probable variations.

The selection of the appropriate labeling system in any prosodic study depends on the research purpose. In the current research, we have reviewed the labeling system known as Tones and Break Indices (ToBI) (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg, 1990) and its alternative labeling systems including Rhythm and Pitch (RaP) (Dilley, 2005; Dilley & Brown, 2005; Dilley et al., 2006). The problems of the ToBI system were summarized and presented. Furthermore, a review of the studies conducted on intonation in Persian using the ToBI system within the framework of Auto-segmental Metrical theory (AM) showed that the global problems of this system is also observable in its application for the analysis of Persian intonation patterns (e.g. Eslami, 2005; Sadeghi, 2018).Originally, the main goal of ToBI was to provide a standard transcription tool for labeling intonational features, including prominence patterns and prosodic structure of an utterance so that different users with different working fields could use and interpret each other's linguistic data. In the ToBI transcription system, L and H represent low and high tones, respectively. The diacritic * represents pitch accent, and % represents boundary tones (Beckman & Elam, 1997). This system was initially designed for transcribing the intonation and prosodic structure of English utterances (Silverman et al., 1992; Beckman & Hirschberg, 1994; Beckman & Ayers Elam, 1997; Beckman, Hirschberg, and Shattuck- Hufnagel 2005), as well as a few typologically different languages— for example, GToBI for German (Grice & Benzmüller, 1995), K- ToBI for Korean (Beckman & Jun, 1996; Jun 2000), and J_ToBI for Japanese (Venditti, 1997), and Persian (Eslami,2005). Jun (2022), Ladd (2022), and Dilley and Breen (2022) have identified the shortcomings and problems of the ToBI phonetic labeling system to create an International Prosodic Alphabet (IPrA) (Hualde & Prieto, 2016).The Rhythm and Pitch (RaP) system based on enhanced Auto-segmental Metrical theory (AM+) was proposed by Dilley and her colleagues (Dilley, 2005; Dilley & Brown, 2005; Dilley et al., 2006; Dilley & Breen, 2012) to overcome the difficulties of ToBI in showing variations and gradation of the categories and to emphasize the importance of distinguishing rhythmic or metrical prominence from pitch prominence. In this system, pitch information is labeled as three tonal targets (H, L, E) and compared to the previous pitch pattern (higher, lower, or equal to it) in the speech signal. Therefore, labels in RaP have a phonetic representation. Metrical prominence (at three levels of strong, weak, and none) and prosodic structure (at two levels, intonational phrase (IP) and intermediate phrase (ip)) are labeled in the rhythm layer. Although RaP was presented as a “method of transcribing rhythm and related pitch in English” (Dilley and Brown, 2005 p, 2), the concepts and principles of this system can be applied to other languages.

The Planum Temporale (PT) is a cortical area posterior to Heschl's gyrus and within the Sylvian fissure. Hemispheric PT asymmetry of functional activation during hearing- or language-related tasks is well-established. Due to the role of the PT in language processing, we examined its contribution to phi-feature agreement processing.The theory of phi-features (Ackema and Neeleman, 2018, 2019) has proposed two core hypotheses for Number and Person agreements. First, R-expressions do not have Person, while pronouns do. Second, all Persons have a Person feature. By contrast, singular is the absence of a Number feature. This account is based, among others, on the evidence reported by Zawiszewski, Santesteban and Laka (2016) and Mancini et al. (2017), which proposes two generalizations for fMRI activation when the verb carries incorrect agreement. In sentences with R-expressions as subject, Person behaves qualitatively differently from Number and will have a quantitatively larger effect. In sentences with pronouns as subject, there are no qualitative differences between Person and Number, but Person will have a quantitatively larger effect. Recently, Meykadeh et al. (in press) addressed the case where R-expressions and Pronouns were used as subject, respectively, for Number and Person Violations and showed that Number Violations evoked more effects than Person Violations in posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus. The authors suggested that R-expression and pronoun processing are qualitatively different. It is currently unknown whether this pattern is also true for the PT area. Hence, in the present analysis we investigated the contribution of PT to phi-features processing of L1 and L2 sentences.The current study addresses the following questions:To what extent is left and right PT involved in phi-features processing by balanced bilinguals?How does the PT area contribute to L1-L2 Number-Person phi-features processing?Is the PT area equipped with feature-mapping mechanism to identify Number and Person features?To answer these questions, we adapted a bilingual task with an alternating language switching paradigm, in a population of balanced bilinguals and applied fMRI recordings.