Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects
Year:2019 | Volume:7 | Issue:25 |Papers Count:6

The present study aims at investigating the process of compensatory lengthening in Kermanshahi Persian. According to the moraic theory, if a unit in the base layer or temporal manner has Mora, and that unit is removed in the phonological layer, its mora remains free in the layers of the mora or temporal, and thus compensatory lengthening takes place to maintain syllable or word weight. This paper is devoted to investigating two types of compensatory lengthening: one resulting from the deletion of a moraic consonant and the other being triggered through vowel deletion. The compensatory lengthening caused by the second case leads to gemination. However, the compensatory lengthening does not occur only in the vowel, but by removing the vowel, the adjoining consonant suffers compensatory lengthening.

In this study, “ Ab Bid” written by Mohammad Bahmanbeigi has been investigated according to Van Leeuwen's model (2008) to explore how the writer uses the representation of social actors to express his ideology and viewpoints. The writer, using suppression, excludes and deletes social actors of Pahlavi dynasty and at the same time, by nominating and activating the nomadic teachers, magnifies their educational actions. The people of “ Ab Bid” have been passivized consciously by the writer to indicate their cultural poverty and to show how they have been neglected by the government. The writer, using advantages of aggregation and presenting numbers and statistics emphasizes the importance of the nomadic teachers and the works of Tribal Education Department. Using anachronism, the writer reveals the existence of some prehistoric people at the time of the great ambitions of Pahlavi dynasty to challenge the government policies. By symbolization, Bahmanbeigi portrays the teachers of nomadic society as influential social actors. These findings confirm that the representation of social actors in “ Ab bid” reflects the ideology and social viewpoints of the writer.

The present study examines the prevailing current prefixed verbs in Persian within framework of construction morphology and its interaction with semantics. It examines the compositionality of meaning in the prefixed verbs and the effect of meaning on the construction of these verbs. For this purpose, after collecting the prefixed verbs in the syntactic valency lexicon for Persian Verbs (Rasooli et al., 2011), they were categorized according to the formal and semantic differences; then each of the verbal prefixes was separately analyzed and for each one, a general schema was presented that has different subschemata. The analysis of the data shows that these verbs do not have compositional meaning and the meaning of many verbal prefixes have changed over time. And, lexically, the verbs with these prefixes are treated as simplex. In addition, for all the prefixed verbs, a general scheme was suggested that according to their prefix, each group of verbs was considered as a subschema of this general scheme.

The present study aims at reviewing the strategies employed in some Iranian linguistic varieties in order to express possession. To do so, first the type of possessive strategy used in each variety was described based upon the categorization made by Croft (2003). Then the features considered by Croft (1990) to analyze the possessive constructions and the variables like the order of possessor and possessum, the category of possessor (noun or pronoun), the importance of animate or inanimate being in expressing the relation of possessive, the presence or absence of discrimination in alienable or inalienable possession in each variety have been addressed. The findings show that in the varieties studied in this research, mostly only one strategy from the three forms of case marking, juxtaposition, and linker is used; but in some cases two strategies from the three are used to show possessive as a syntactic phrase. Case marking strategy dates back to Ancient Iranian languages while juxtaposition and linker ones reach to Middle West Iranian languages. In terms of the features characterized by Croft, the possessor and the possessum are adjacent without any fusion except for some varieties that use the clitic possessors. The additional morpheme in such varieties mostly follows the first constituent and rarely the second in affix (or clitic) form.

The present paper is about the ellipsis of the verb phrase construction in Sanandaji Kurdish language within the minimalist program. The ellipsis of the verb phrase construction has been challenged in recent studies in Iranian languages and various analyses have been suggested for this structure. These analyses in Persian language include (1) the v-stranding verb phrase ellipsis, (2) the null argument, (3) the DP/NP Ellipsis. Considering the affinity between Persian and Kurdish languages, many of the generalization in the ellipsis of the verb phrase construction in Persian language can be applied in Sanandaji Kurdish language. Therefore, in this article we consider verb phrase ellipsis in Persian language and then, use the result in the analyses of Sanandaji Kurdish language data. Finally, it appears that based on empirical evidence and theoretical considerations, the findings of the research indicate that the ellipsis of the verb phrase construction exists in Sanandaji Kurdish language.

Human migration is the most significant characteristic of today's world. This may lead to different results including linguistic contact which by itself may bring about subtractive bilingualism or may lead to the attrition and death of the mother tongue. This study investigates the attrition and changes of mother tongue among Kurds of Ilam living in Tehran. This study seeks answers for questions like in which age groups can we see the most attrition and language changes? And also in which level (vocabulary or syntax) can we see these attrition and changes. This study was done among two separate groups of 30 Kalhori Kurdish speakers living in Tehran and 30 Kalhori Kurdish speakers living Ilam. A designed and validated Questionnaire was administered among the participants of the study. The results showed that changes and attrition occurred more frequently among persons under 20 in Tehran, they were more among women than in men and the most attrition and change was in vocabulary level.