PERSIAN LANGUAGE AND IRANIAN DIALECTS
Year:2017 | Volume:2 | Issue:1 (3) |Papers Count:9

This paper is concerned with the question of which factors govern the adjective order (AO) in Persian. To do so, 3136 adjectives were used based on written-spoken corpus. The variables were length, nouniness, semantic closeness, non-comparability, Dixon’s semantic classes, Subjectivity-objectivity gradience, semantic congruity and affective load, corpus-specific frequency and frequency. Data analysis showed that all of the factors except Dixon’s semantic classes had impact on AO. To determine the effect size of each variable, multifactorial analysis was done. The results showed that the phonological variable is the most important variable for predicting the AO. The pragmatic one including corpus-specific frequency was at second level of importance. And the third level had been devoted to the semantic variables including semantic congruity, affective load and subjectivity-objectivity gradience. At last, the prediction power of the analysis was 63%. In fact, using given variables we could predict up to 63% of the AO.

Gynesis is a concept related to gender studies that can be seen more as a practical term compared to Cixous’s “l’ecriture feminine” which is a maximal and idealistic concept. Gynesis is mainly concerned with the general principles of a writing that tends to meet the needs of women self-identification. The present article rejects this assumption that “l’ecriture feminine” is a pre-shaped linguistic framework that can be materialized by definite sets of phonological and morphological patterns; meanwhile, it strongly believes that gynesis can be seen as the first step to a long way that desires to end in l’ecriture feminine.

Discourse markers are of the most important elements of the language system, especially the conversational and informal language. Today, the study of discourse markers is one of the newest and most important topics in linguistics. This is important because speeches which lack these linguistic units are incomprehensible, imperfect and not clear enough. These linguistic units perform different functions in a language system and "the emphatic function" is one of them. Speakers emphasize on a specific part or the whole of a discourse using these discourse markers. Of course, based on the fact that "emphasis" is a complex issue in the language system, different tools are used to express it. Discourse markers are one of these tools. In this research, the emphatic discourse markers are analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively based on the two-fold framework of Brinton (1996), according to functional approach, and in pragmatics sphere. For this purpose, a colloquial corpus has been selected, which consists of three telefilms such as "panj ta panj", "ye bilit šāns", and "amu jān hitler".

Syncretism is a common process among inflectional languages. This happens when different grammatical cases are encoded through a single phonological unit. Although some linguists have consensus on its being accidental, from a diachronic viewpoint, the related phonological form is the remnant of a multimember case system which according to the authors, despite the formal and functional distinctions, they may have a common semantic nucleus. This contribution bears an attemt to investigate the various semantic roles represented by oblique case in Talishi. We try to ascribe the present syncretism to polysemi and introduce the genitive case as the nucleus meaning which has undergone metaphorical extension. Following the lines of Heine et al (1991) and Malchukov and Narrog’s (2009) semantic map, we argue that the process of metaphorical extension and therefore polysemi of cases emerge within grammaticalization process.

Regional variants of Korta Dialect, a member of Bashāgardi dialect group are origionally spoken by people of Qal' e-ganj and Rudbār-e Janub, the two southern townships of Kermān Province and they belong to the south-western Iranian Language Family. Geographically, this dialect is spoken at the borderline of its linguistic family domain and at its contact point with Makrāni Baluchi Dialect Group, a member of north-western Iranian language family. Henceforth, from a linguistic properties viewpoint, it is regarded as the linking loop of these linguistic families, too. Synchronically and based on the analysis of a linguistic corpus extracted from the speech of two women and three men of low-educated/illiterate 35-78 year-old Korta informants, this study attempts to linguistically describe the verbal system of Qal' e-ganji variant of Korta Dialect. To do so, the grammatical categories relating to finite verbs including the five morpho-syntactic categories of tense, aspect, mood, agreement, and voice have been investigated and described in this linguistic variant. Findings indicated that the verbal system of this dialect utilizes various morpho-syntactic strategies to manifest the distinctions related to those five categories.

Kinship terms are the most essential elements of language that have been considered from different viewpoints. In this article, while collecting southern Tālishi kinship terms, they have been divided into fundamental, compound, half-blood, and synthetic. Their structure and their status of being referential or addressive have been examined and through their linguistic structure, their social structure has been discovered. Also, stablity or insecurity of kinship relationship, venerability and worthlessness, pleasantness or unpleasantness of some relatives, sexuality, giving superiority to paternal or maternal kinfolk, the authority structure in family, the effect of extended and nuclear family on kinship terms, lexical variability or lack of terms for some relatives have been studied. It was a descriptive-analytical study, using library and field research. In southern Tālishi of Shaft, the kinship link is extensive and stable. The authority pattern is patriarch and the variability of father's term is high and the residence pattern is patri-local. Gender is prominent and social change led in the disappearance of some kinship terms. In Siyāhmezgi Tālishi, the words of father, mother, sister, wife and husband have devil or undevil versions. Some kinship links have no words and they are just described.

Spoken in southwestern shores of Khazar Sea in Guilan Province, Guilaki is a northwestern Iranian dialect, and together with Māzandarāni and Semnāni dialects constitute Khazar group of Northwestern Iranian dialects. Gilaki has varieties in diverse regions in Guilan province such as Rasht, Langerud, Anzali, but its archaic variety is Gāleshi, spoken in mountainous area in the east of Guilan. The vocabulary and sound system of this dialect is profoundly affected by Persian, so that most of its northwestern features were disappeared or only may be seen in archaic variety of Guilaki suchas Gāleshi. The aim of this paper was to examine the vocabulary of Guilaki varieties to find the northwestern phonological features of this dialect by looking at certain characteristics of its historical phonology. Findings showed that Guilaki has basic northwestern features, though exhibit some of them only in one word, or though these characteristics are best seen in archaic varieties of Guilaki such as Gāleshi.

Toponymy or the study of geographical names is one of the linguistic fields that follow specific Principles. This type of study became prevalent in the current decades; however it was not in focus, yet. Toponymy has been investigated in Iranian dialects less than Persian. Tāti is one of the northwestern Iranian languages which is spoken in Iran and outside the Iran’s borders and it has two branches, i.e., southern and northern. The study of toponymy in Tāti can help us to better understand the dialects of this language. Throughout this paper, while discussing the general issues in Iranian toponymy, the types of geographical names inKhalkhāl's Tāti spesker regions – with more focus on the Dərav villagewas studied and their linguistic features have been investigated.

Tālishi is one of the northwestern Iranian dialects, spoken in southwest borders of Caspian Seain Guilān, and also in Ardebil and the Republic of Azerbāijān. Considering dialectical and geographical characteristics, it can be classified into three major groups: northern, central and southern. No linguistic description about Anbarāni variety of northern Tālishi dialect has yet been carried out, while it’s an endangered Iranian dialect, saving characteristics of old and middle Persian. In this paper, the most frequent phonological processes of northern Tāi (Anbarāi variety) have been investigated according to changes from Old Persian and compared to Modern Persian. The phonological processes included final vowel omission, raising, centralization, length reduction, weakening or lenition amd strengthening or fortition. The data were collected through field study and based on the author’s linguistic intuition as a native speaker and also through interview with native speakers. The Old and Middle Persian data have been collected through library research. If there was none of the required words in the written documents, or if they were not accessible, they have been reconstructed.