Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects
Year:2019 | Volume:6 | Issue:23 |Papers Count:6

Scrambling in Kalhori kurdish is a feature-based movement triggered by Focus feature. In this article, Scrambling in Kalhori Kurdish is studied based on Minimalism Program (Chomsky, 1995). In this language short distance, long distance and multiple scrambling occur. Specific direct object, specific indirect object, embedded object, WH – question phrase and verb phrase are scrambled constituents in Kalhori Kurdish but nonspecific object cannot be scrambled. Long and short distance scrambling can create new binding relationship which contrary to Mahajan (1990) and Miyagawa (2001) show one characteristic of A – Scrambling which can be considered a Webelhuth S Paradox. Using evidence such as the position of sentence verbs, phrase verbs and the presence of overt subject in tag question, it is proved that EPP feature on TpP cannot trigger short distance scrambling in Kalhori Kurdish. Therefore short scrambling is an A' – movement to the Spec of Focus Phrase on upper TpP. Uniformity in short and long distance scrambling as the main outcome of the study is in contrast to previous studies like Saito (1985), Miyagawa (2001) and Karimi (2005) while it is in line with Minimalism and and its main claims for minimal use of analytic devices and it is also consistent with facts of Kalhori Kurdish.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the Morphophonological Prefixes and processes in Takestan Tati Dialect on the basis of Optimality theory. Morphophonological processes are phonological changes occurring in a morphological context, those changes happening among morphemes, and are phonologically governed. The research was analytical and the data were collected from Tati books and local media. Data were then analysed on the basis of relevant phonological and lexical process. The results illustrated that in Tati both elision and insertion processes happen in morphological borders, highlighting conspiracy in this language. However, elision has a higher rank in the hierarchy and any violation of it renders the output optimally unacceptable. In the same vain, this study concluded that the universally-ranked constraints also apply to Tati and the constraints in Tati dialect were in line with the universal ones. It is hoped, the present study could add to the linguistic scope and knowledge of scholars, acquainting the researchers more with Morphophonological processes of Tati dialect and its adaptation to the universalities of this realm.

The abundant use of prepositions in Persian has led the present study to choose the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), a structural-functional theory of grammar, in order to investigate the logical structure representations of some sentences containing the preposition ba meaning 'with'. This is to find out the semantic and structural motivations of this preposition assignment to Persian NPs. This article concludes that the preposition ba, is a basically locative preposition and a radial category with senses related to the central, primary maning of 'togetherness' and 'having'. As a consequence, it can be shown that one cannot be restricted solely to the primary preposition assignment rules stated in RRG, and must focus on the semantic motivations to represent the logical structure of the sentences containing prepositions, in a better way. In this way, we avoid the problems and issues in RRG primary logical structure representations. In addition, the analysis presented in this study is able to justify the various uses of the Preposition ba in Persian, such as adverbial, commutative, theme-marking and, instrumental ba.

There is strong evidence in support of close relationship between language and theory of mind development in children. Wellman and Liu (2004) have provided a scale of the developmental progression of the mental states understanding in preschoolers. In this scaling, a sequence of seven tasks is presented that seems to emerge in a predictable order in this process. In other words, this set of tasks focuses on various conceptual constructs supposed to be sequentially evident in this cognitive process. 30 Persian speaking and 30 Persian-Turkish speaking children were tested on seven tasks of the theory of mind to provide a sequential pattern of these tasks based on their level of difficulty, on the one hand, and to compare these patterns with each other and also with that of Wellman and Liu proposed for preschoolers, on the other. Determined social development pattern indicated that the sequence of the theory of mind tasks for Persian speaking and Persian-Turkish speaking children almost is the same. Based on the results, the difference between monolingual and bilingual groups mean scores wasn’ t significant in this study; none of the lingual groups was better than the other on performing theory of mind tasks.

In most varieties of Lori Dialects original ū is generally fronted to ī in some words which is seen with ū in Persian. A similar change is found in Central Iranian Dialects where original ū has been fronted to ü or ī . There are some issues about the origin of the fronted vowel, its distribution in sound system of the Iranian dialects, and its phonemic value especially in Central dialects. In this paper by a diachronic approach and etymological analysis of the words that have the fronted vowel, it will be shown that the fronting can be viewed as a sound change in historical development of the dialects. The results show that fronting of ū has been occurred where ū or ī are originally from Middle Iranian and Old Iranian ū , while it is not found in words that have an ū from Middle Iranian ō which itself is derived from Old Iranian au.

Errors are common and systemic deviations resulting from the violation of the rules of the second language. In the present study, lexical errors based on the classification of Dulay, Burt and Krashen of errors (1982) are divided into three categories: intralingual errors, interlingual errors and ambiguous errors. The purpose of this research is to investigate the source and distribution of lexical errors in the speech of Kalhori natives living in Kermanshah. The sample of this quantitative-qualitative study included 170 bilingual Kalhori males and females living in Kermanshah. They were selected equally via voluntary sampling method. After gathering data, at first they were classified and then their frequencies were shown through tables and charts. The results showed that the sources of these errors are intralingual and interlingual. The highest percentage of observed errors belonged to intralingual and then interlingual errors. The results of this study, along with presenting a description of the lexical errors of Kalhori natives, emphasize on the necessity of correcting and improving teaching methods, constructing tests and teaching resources and providing books to teach Persian to Kalhor students, in order to take steps to decrease the problems of Kalhori natives when interacting with Persian natives.