JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES IN LINGUISTICS
Year:2015 | Volume:7 | Issue:1 (12)|Papers Count:8

The main purpose of this paper is the investigation of Persian modal auxiliary verbs in the framework of force-dynamic model of Talmy and idealized cognitive model of Langacker. Force-dynamic model which stands, originally, for the analysis of action and reaction of physical objects in the real world, has been used by Talmy for characterizing the deontic notion of modal auxiliaries and then, extended by Sweetser for conceptualizing the epistemic reading of modals. The investigation of deontic and epistemic notions of modal auxiliaries on the basis of this model, revealed that the actualization of the event is not guaranteed but it is actualized in the nonfactual world. The second model, i.e., the metaphoric idealized cognitive model, known as epistemic model, is proposed by Langacker under the influence of Lakoff's theory of idealized cognitive models. The investigation of modal auxiliaries in the framework of this model showed that modal auxiliaries are not under epistemic control and fall in the realm of irreality and with respect to the rate of momentum construed to the specified event, the modals locate in a near of far distance from immediate reality. By comparing the results of the two models, it is revealed that not being under epistemic control equals not being guaranteed and on the other hand, actualizing the situation in nonfactual world means falling in the scope of irreality; so, the two models cooperate in conceptualizing the Persian modal auxiliary verbs.

Persian Sign Language as a visual/ spatial language is still in its developmental stage. This language has a special linguistics structure and like other sign languages, it is different from its surrounding spoken language. PSL has some options to show aspectual meanings. In this paper, we consider one of the most common aspectual form (completive aspect).Like other sign languages, PSL signers use FINISH to show the perfect aspect.This lexical marker occurs after the main verb with the grammatical function of indicating that the action described by the verb was completed before the time of utterance.

There are some words in Arabic with geminate codas. These words have been adopted by Persian. However, since Persian does not allow coda geminates they undergo coda degemination in isolation and in environments preceding morphemes/ words with an initial consonant or vowel. This paper aimed at coming up with an inclusive ranking of constraints which can explain this process in all three environments within the frame work of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004). At first, gemination and its different types are defined to prepare the ground for explaining degemination. Then, it is argued that these words are geminate in the input and that they consist of a sequence of two identical consonants rather than one long consonant. In analyzing processes dealing with gemination and degemination, OT phonologists often adopt moraic theory or x-slot theory.This paper argues that both theories are not efficient enough in analyzing coda degemination in Persian.

Conditionals are linguistic expressions expressed by means of syntactically complex forms which consist of a conditional clause/phrase and a main clause that make the occurrence of one event dependent on the occurrence of another. The present study attempts to analyze the conditional clause in Persian within the Minimalist framework. For this purpose, after a brief review of various classifications of these structures on semantic grounds, the conditional clause is considered as an adjunct clause.Then, regarding the diverse positions of conditional clause in sentence structure of various languages, two distinct approaches are introduced.Afterwards, it is proposed that as an adjunct, sentence-initial conditional clauses involve TP-adjunction and in some cases higher projections like FocP-adjunction and sentence-final conditional clauses involve vP-adjunction.Principles of the Binding Theory and deletion tests provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. The sentence-medial conditional clauses are actually the output of topicalization of those elements that have been placed before the conditional clauses.

Grammatical metaphor is one of the major issues in systemic functional grammar which has received much more attention recently. The main question of this research is: What are the functions of grammatical metaphors, such as nominalization and modality, in political discourse, and why do media use grammatical metaphors in texts? The main objective of this research is to study the role of grammatical metaphor in political discourse based on systemic functional grammar. In this research, the basic functions of grammatical metaphors, namely nominalization and modality, in political discourse are investigated. The needed data are extracted from Resalat and Shargh newspapers; the frequencies of nominalization in two newspapers are 408 and 304, respectively. The frequencies of modality in Resalat and Shargh newspapers are 30 and 32, respectively. The results of research indicate that main functions of nominalization metaphor are foregrounding of positive self-representation, foregrounding of negative other representation, hiding ideologies and suppression of message, creating cohesion and coherence, changing the distribution of theme and rheme, changing the distribution of old and new information. Moreover, the results indicate that the main functions of grammatical metaphor of modality in political discourse are concretizing of ideologies, expressing attitudes of writer, indicating the degree of certainty of proposition occurrence, and foregrounding ideologies.

Some verbs are more complex than others in terms of mental representation. This can be attributed to the semantic factors like argument structure possibilities stored in speaker 's mental lexicon. Here, the argument structure complexity hypothesis is tested in Farsi by participation of twenty normal native speakers of Farsi. The method used here is cross modal lexical decision (CMLD). As for the results, such a hypothesis has been proved in Farsi using t tests to analyze the results. Results show that teaching more complex verbs first leads to generalizations over less complex verbs and finally facilitates their learning. Such a research implies complexity account of language treatment and also represents language data that can be used in treatment sessions whose use leads to less needed sessions.