LANGUAGE SCIENCES
Year:2018 | Volume:5 | Issue:7 |Papers Count:7

constituent ordering, is not arbitrary; rather, it is aimed at fulfilling efficiency principles. Length effect-as a formal characteristic-is a significant determinant in the occurrence of movement rules. The ultimate structural configuration of sentences is interwoven with processing ease. Adopting eye movement registration technique, the current research study aims to explore eye behavior in response to processing difficulty of syntactically different but semantically identical sentences and provide behavioral evidence for the effect of length on the occurrence of movement in structural sentence pairs in Persian. Encompassing two syntactic movements (relative clause extraposition and postposing) through 2 sets of 40 sentence pairs in two length levels (short and long), some eye behavior such as fixation count/duration and regression were registered and analyzed using SPSS. Regarding the patterns of fixation, when the constituents under study were short, there was either no significant difference before and after the occurrence of syntactic movement, or the mean of fixation count and duration was lower in sentences with canonical constituent ordering; however, the patterns appeared to be reversed and hence a significant difference was spotted by the increase of constituent length. Regarding regressions, the mean regressions declined after the post-verbal movement of constituents by the increase of length. It can be concluded that syntactic movement is weight-sensitive and aimed at easing processing difficulty. Also, the likelihood of post-verbal movement in extraposition and scrambling increases by the rise of length and driven by the incentive of increase of processing efficiency.

Similarity avoidance-as a perceptual factor-is the basis of the phonotactics of a variety of languages. Stop consonants are considered to be ideal candidates for deletion as they have intrinsically weak perceptual cues, especially in final position. The present research study sought to explore the relationship between the probability of final stop deletion in consonantal clusters and the degree of similarity between such stops and the other member of the cluster in Persian. To do so, all final consonantal clusters were analyzed considering the degree of similarity in voicing, place, and manner of articulation between the two consonants of the cluster. Data analysis demonstrated that the chance for the deletion of final stops increases as the similarity between the stop and the previous consonant in the cluster increases and that all three parameters of voicing, place, and manner are important in this regard. Patterns of final stop deletion in final clusters of Persian were analyzed using a perception-based approach within Optimality Theory framework, where markedness constraints rule out outputs that are perceptually weak and faithfulness constraints prevent any change in a perceptually strong input.

The present study focuses on compensatory lengthening of vowel in Ilami Kurdish variants on the basis of Moraic Theory. In Moraic Theory, one segment is removed from phonological layer but its mora remains in moraic layer. In the above-mentioned variants compensatory lengthening occurs following deleting consonants like /? /, /j/ and /h/ and a vowel is lengthened following their deletion. In current study, the researcher, being a native speaker of Ilami Kurdish variant (Feily) and familiar with other Ilami Kurdish variants, collected data from 20 informants by interviewing with them. A descriptive-analytic approach was adopted in the study. Some of the most remarkable results of this research study are as follows: (1) The main motivation behind compensatory lengthening is maintaining moraic weight of word which was demonstrated through non-linear analysis; thus, Moraic Theory can efficiently describe the compensatory lengthening in Ilami Kurdish variants; (2) Only three consonants, namely /h/, /j/ and /x/, have syllable weight, whose deletion leads to compensatory lengthening of vowel; (3) The maximum mora in Ilami Kurdish variants is three; (4) In Ilami Kurdish varients, the nature of the long vowels are changed as a result of deletion of moraic consonants following them.

According to Krashen’ s Natural Order Hypothesis (1982), the grammatical structures of second languages are acquired in a pre-determined natural order. Previous research studies have corroborated the stages during acquisition of some grammatical structures of second languages. In an attempt to explore the acquisition order of Persian voices by speakers of other languages, the researcher designed 15 pairs of paraphrases and distributed them among the participants at different linguistic levels. The participants were asked to select sample sentences they had learned and used first regardless of the order present in their textbooks. The data were analyzed in terms of those obtained by examining Persian-acquiring children. Analysis of data showed that like Persian-acquiring children, almost all speakers of other languages acquire active voice structure first in order.

In the current article, the history of rhetoric from 400 B. C. to 100 A. D. is reviewed. During this 500 years, the theoretical basis of classical rhetoric was established and has remained almost the same throughout the centuries. The first sage who established theoretical basis for rhetoric with a logical approach was Aristotle. Aristotle’ s views on rhetoric are very carefully and precisely analyzed in this article. Following Aristotle, Roman teachers of rhetoric such as Cicero and Quintilian added more to the theory of rhetoric. The Roman’ s theory of rhetoric is also reviewed in the article. The current article seeks to show the differences and similarities of Aristotle’ s theory of rhetoric as well as the Romans perception of it.

Persian velar glide [w], unlike the palatal glide [j], does not serve a contrastive function in Persian phonology since it has incomplete distribution, occurring only in few words after the mid back vowel /o/. Thus, [w] is described as an allophone of the phoneme /v/. Furthermore, it has been assumed that [w] in [ow] may be deleted in connected speech giving rise to the compensatory lengthening of the preceding [o] vowel. In the present research, we examined the phonetic realization [w] in Persian words in an experimental study. The results suggested that [w] is acoustically present in the target words but is reduced or weakened to different degrees. As [w] is reduced in [ow], the shape of the vocal tract as well as the phonation type changes, resulting in (1) increase of overall intensity of the spectrum; (2) increase in the formant frequencies; and (3) decrease in bandwidths of the formant frequencies. All these systematic acoustic variations cause the vowel [o] in [ow] to be produced and perceived as longer than an ordinary [o] vowel.

Socioterminology is a discourse-based approach that evaluates the terms in their real contexts. In this approach, for measuring the accuracy of standardized equivalents, considering the time factor in implantation function, one or more standardized equivalents can be compared with other existing equivalents and their related terms. This paper, adopting this approach in the framework of language planning, aims to study the relationship between terminology and “ vadjeh-gozini” in the context of the “ Terminology Guideline” , approved and published by the Academy of Persian Language and Literature, as the standard manual for Persian term standardization. For this purpose, first, the terms composed of “ vadjeh-gozini” or directly related terms to this concept are extracted. Second, the application of the terms and their semantic references are studied, and their meanings are compared with the definitions of terminology. The results show that “ vadjeh-gozoini” is a polysemous term, referring to term formation and standardization. Since, differentiating it from terminology is necessary. Besides, its related terms such as “ equivalent selection” and “ vadjeh-gozini methods” have brought about some difficulties in comprehension of the concept of “ vadjeh-gozini” . Therefore, a revision is suggested. In this paper, the author has suggested a sample of conceptual harmonization between “ vadjeh-gozini” and some of its related terms in Persian, including their corresponding English terms. The methodology used in this article paves the way for the systematic decision making in Persian terminology, and simultaneously, intends to reduce the conceptual gaps of professional communications in terminology domain.