JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES IN LINGUISTICS
Year:2020 | Volume:11 | Issue:2 (21)|Papers Count:12

This article aims to study the role of semantic transparency in processing simple and root compound nouns consisting of ‘ N+N’ comprising the most frequent compound nouns in Persian, in two Broca and two Transcortical Motor aphasias via picture confrontation naming and repetition tasks. Comparisons of two groups' performance showed that Transcortical Motor aphasic patients performed better than Broca aphasics in naming and repetition tasks, while for both groups naming was more difficult than repetition proving dissociation of naming and repetition processes and their independent organization in the brain. With respect to transparency, the highest and lowest numbers of errors were found in transparent and partially transparent nouns, respectively, proving easier processing of partially transparent nouns. Data analysis shows that naming and repetition of compound nouns take place via dual (holistic and decomposing) routes, but decomposition route is more dominant in repetition, and holistic route in naming. Analysis of errors demonstrates that the processing of simple nouns takes place through the holistic route. Also, the analysis of interaction in Persian non-fluent aphasic patients confirms that semantic transparency has no role in processing root compound nouns.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the procedures adopted by Iranian translation students in the translation of hedges. To this end, participants were asked to translate an academic article in the field of medical sciences from English into Persian. Pisanski Peterlin and Zlatnar Moe’ s (2016) approach was utilized for data collection and analysis so as to examine Iranian students’ general approach in hedging translation. The results indicated that, in spite of their importance in academic writing, almost forty percent of hedges were altered or deleted in different ways. Additionally, semi-structured discourse-based interviews were conducted to further examine the reasons behind students’ decisions regarding hedging translation. Finally, the findings were discussed within the risk management framework in translation. The analysis suggested that Anthony Pym’ s (2015) risk management framework could provide a real help to translators in translating hedging devices.

This article, first, is concerned with the study of left-dislocation and its information-structural implications in Persian. Left-dislocation in Persian is syntactically manifested by the topical and contrastive left-dislocation constructions. The double external possession construction as an instantiation of the topical left-dislocation is characterized by the sequence of two external possessors in the left-periphery of the core. The contrastive left-dislocation construction is distinguished from the topical one via the focality and position of the left-dislocated element figuring inside the clause. Each construction has specific syntactic and information-structural properties that the layered structure of the clause in the present RRG, as the framework of this study, fails to account for. Incorporating the concepts of discourse saliency and contrast as explicit selection among alternatives into the information-structural lexicon in RRG, the author of the present study tries to extend the scope of the left-periphery in the theory so as to increase its typological adequacy.

The present study aims at investigating the nature of Persian present tense. To achieve this aim, the (non)indexicality of Persian present tense, the interpretation of relative and complement clauses with present-under-past and present-underfuture constructions, and the absolute and relative components of Persian present tense were scrutinized. The results show that Persian cannot be considered as absolutely indexical and non-indexical. Hence, if the indexicality of the present tense of different languages is construed along a continuum with languages with indexical present tense on one extreme and languages with non-indexical preset tense on the opposite extreme, Persian falls somewhere in between. Furthermore, it was revealed that Persian present tense has both relative and absolute functions. Present-under-past constructions reveal the absolute reading of Persian present tense, since the present tense, in addition to the concurrence with the matrix clause past tense, can be synchronized with utterance time (double reading). Present-under-future constructions in complement and relative clauses reveal that Persian present tense has a relative reading because, in these sentences, the embedded present tense is not required to be simultaneous with the utterance time. Finally, it was shown that the relative and absolute parts of the present tense have ‘ inside’ meaning, meaning that the event expressed with the present tense is evaluated within time.

This study investigates the relationship between political ideology in media discourse and conceptual metonymies in Iranian newspaper headlines. In this research, by adopting the Critical Metonymy Analysis approach (Zhang 2014), cognitive metonymies extracted from Iran's newspapers headlines were analyzed critically, in order to know which conceptual metonymies have been used in their electoral headlines. Moreover, it aims to study how political ideologies of Reformists and Conservatives newspapers have influenced the selection of conceptual metonymies in electoral headlines. The data were extracted from electoral headlines of 12 available Conservative and Reformist newspapers, which were published during two months, from 15 Farvardin to 15 Khordad, 1396 (N=289 issue). The metonymies were identified, categorized, and analyzed based on availability and according to the principles of Conceptual Metonymy Theory. The results show that both metonymies of WHOLE FOR PART (3 types) and PART FOR WHOLE (2 types) have been used for highlighting and extension functions, respectively. The results reinforced the idea that ideology affects the formation of metonymy, and metonymies are appropriate tools to reproduce ideology in media. Therefore, the study of conceptual metonymy, along with other cognitive mechanisms, contributes to realize the objectives of Critical Discourse Analysis.

Feature Geometry is an applied paradigm for the study of morphological-syntactic processes. In this approach, the verb inflection system consists of three parts of aspect, grammatical tense, and mood, and each has universal characteristics, which are sometimes represented by explicit inflectional morphemes. In this paper, while introducing this notion, we show that the interaction of aspect, tense, and mood in Persian geometric characteristics, explains the properties of verb inflection in this language. In Persian, [Event] and [Non-atomic] features are active in aspect subsection. [Non-atomic] derives imperfectivity versus perfectivity. So, the default value of viewpoint aspect is perfective and (mi-) explicitly spells out imperfectivity. In Persian, the functional head of AspA is active in INFL domain, but the AspQ head is active in the root modifier position and the predicate level. [Precedence] encodes the meaning of past versus non-past in Tense subsection, (-d /-t) spell out this feature in Persian. They position the topic time before the temporal anchor of the utterance. And finally, (-de /-te) are not the markers of narrow tense or viewpoint aspect in Persian. They denote the [Perfect] feature.

Languages employ two language tools to mark the objects which are case marking and agreement. The present study is intended to investigate agreement as an important aspect of DOM in Kalhori Kurdish. To this end, information structure as a functional approach was adopted as the theoretical basis of the study (Lambrecht, 1994, 2000; Dalrymple & Nikoleava, 2010, Nikoleava, 2001). This study is a descriptive-analytical one in which the data were collected through interview, observation, and consultation with authentic library sources. The results indicated that in Kalhori Kurdish, object agreement is performed as a representation DOM with objects that have verbal prominence and their instance has already been mentioned in the discourse. This agreement is in terms of person and number which is done by a group of objective enclitics appeared on the verb. Another finding was that in Kalhori Kurdish, subject agreement is not sensitive to information structure. Furthermore, it was found that indirect objects can not trigger object agreement, even if they are topical. Finally, it is possible to delete topical objects and subjects or to postpose them to post-verbal position, provided that they are topical.

One of the important issues in the phonotactics of Farsi vocabulary is how to put phonemes together and produce words with light and heavy syllables. The purpose of this study is to compare the fricative and stop sequences at the boundary of compounding in the compound and derivative-compound words with their clusters in simplex vocabulary. What are the differences between fricative and stop consonants in the cluster and sequence as for the place of articulation and articulators? In order to answer this question, 15446 compound and derivative-compound words and 14336 simplex words have been collected from Farsi dictionaries and the phonological information related to each word is examined. The results of data analysis indicates that: a) the total frequency of cluster with two articulators is about 5. 25 times higher than with one articulator in clusters in simplex words, and at the compounding boundary, the total frequency with two articulator sequences is about 2. 88 times higher than with one articulator; b) two-stop clusters are only heterorganic and two-stop sequences are of two types: heterorganic and contiguous; c) only in the fricative-stop clusters there are three kinds of, homorganic, heterorganic and contiguous clusters; in contrast, in three groups of sequences, all of these types of the heterorganic, homorganic and contiguous sequences are seen; d) as the number of other places of articulation increases between two members of the heterorganic cluster, the frequency of cluster production decreases. Such a decrease in frequency is seen only in two-stop and fricative-stop heterorganic sequences.

There is a group of verbs which lost part of their semantic content in the course of the Persian language history, namely, the so-called ‘ light verbs’ . They are combined with a preverbal element such as a noun, an adjective or a prepositional phrase, forming light verb constructions to express both predicate stative and dynamic events. The study of these constructions has been one of the challenging issues in modern linguistics. Light verb constructions are so frequent in Persian verbal system enhancing its importance for more serious investigations. The present study attempts to answer an important question related to these constructions on the basis of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz, 1993; Marantz, 2013). The questions include why certain Persian verbs, not all verbs, are formed by this construction, whether such a phenomenon is random or systematic? These questions were not addressed by previous researchers despite their importance. We argue that under-specification and subset principle of Distributed Morphology are at work in the process of Persian light verbalization and finally on the basis of these two, we conclude that their selection is systematic rather than being random. Certain semantic evidences were provided to substantiate this argument; firstly we show the status of the Persian Light verbs in accordance with Levin (1993) classification, then we apply a method based on Lesk (1986) algorithm and finally we propose a new classification for light verbs in Persian in which the verbs are classified into statives and eventives; then the eventive verbs are classified into change of state, change of possession, change of place and performatives. All these evidences demonstrate the fact that it is the particular semantic nature of these verbs that predispose them to light verbalization.

This paper focuses on the semantic extensions of zadan (to hit) in terms of two vital processes, namely, metonymy and metaphor by adopting the four-category framework of Riemer (2005) as its analytical tool. It provides a descriptive-analysis by looking at the data gathered from certain Persian texts such as the eightvolume of Sokhan dictionary. The analysis of the data revealed that all four categories including metaphor, effect metonymy, constituent metonymy and context metonymy play a role in the semantic extensions of zadan. Moreover, it was revealed that the aforementioned patterns had a considerable flexibility to explain the semantic diversity of zadan (to hit) in Persian. The flexibility had two dimensions: a) it had the ability to explain language specific examples which had compatibility with one of the existing sub-classes and could easily be placed under one of the suggested classifications; b) it also had the potential to improve the classifications in placing specific data which had no correspondence in English or Warlpiri by adding some new sub-categories to Riemer’ s framework. Finally, the examination of the semantic diversity of zadan explicitly shows that out of the two main linguistic devices (i. e., metaphor and metonymy), metonymy by far plays a more significant role in creating the semantic diversity for the verb zadan and the semantic extensions are mainly the results of functions of metonymy and post-metonymy.

The present study examines the merge position of internal argument of the verb during the derivation process of the hierarchical structure by pure syntactic criteria. In the Kurdish language, internal arguments of the verb have a variety of positions in the linear sequence corresponding to the generated structure; sometimes they are placed before, and sometimes after the verb (CPs after the V, and NPs before the V (in the unmarked sequence). It is, therefore, challenging phenomenon to determine the merge position of the internal arguments of the verb. On the one hand, drawing on the Uniformity of Theta-role Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH) (Baker, 1988). Moreover, the empirical evidence such as the nominal nucleus arrangement in the Kurdish language, which is described by the CP, will be the bases for the analysis that, regardless of their syntactic category, the merge position of the internal arguments into a single, fixed position and different linear order patterns are the results of some kind of movement. The issue of linearization has been studied within the framework of Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) (Kayne, 1994) which makes the movement of the object necessary to obtain the desired linear order. This is done by observing Holmberg’ s Generalization (Holmberg, 1986) which follows the movement of the verb. Furthermore, the object movement is done in the form of Copy Theory (Chomsky, 1993) and the absence of CP as the internal object of the verb, prior to the verb in the sequence, is also the result of Final-Over-Final Constraint (Sheehan et al., 2017) which causes the underlying CP to appear in the phonetic part.

It has always been too arduous a task to keep track of the memory of students with Down Syndrome. However, paying attention to the strategies that can help such students with processing the given information is among the concerns intellectually disabled instructors deal with. As phonological awareness plays an important role in successful reading skills, paying attention to it in elementary education, especially among children with disabilities, is important. The present study introduces a teaching method based on the emotioncy model. Emotioncy is a psychological and integrative concept of two words (emotion and frequency) that points to the effect of emotions arising from the use of the senses in learning concepts. The concept has three levels, namely avolvement, exvolvement, and involvement that, due to the involvement of more senses in the learning process, has been suggested for teaching phonemes and vocabulary to students with Down Syndrome. To this end, 30 Down Syndrome students were chosen from primary special needs schools in 7 districts of Mashhad. The phonological awareness test was first conducted as the pretest to measure their auditory, visual, and kinesthetic skills, and their ability to identify phonological differences and similarities. Then, out of 15 words, 5 words that all students' level of knowledge about them were diagnosed with a pretest to be zero were selected. And each word was taught in 5 phases of auditory, visual, tactile-kinesthetic, internal, and comprehensive based on emotioncy levels. The phonological awareness test was conducted as the posttest. The duration of the study was 2 sessions for each student individually (60 sessions for 30 students in general) and each session lasted one hour (60 minutes) for 15 consecutive weeks. The results of t-tests showed that using the emotioncybased teaching model accelerates information processing in their memory by reinforcing the auditory, visual, and tactile-kinesthetic stimuli, leading to the improvement of phonological awareness skill in students with intellectual disability. On the other hand, due to the direct relationship between phonological awareness and reading skill, the results also show a significant change in their reading speed. Therefore, it seems that this model can significantly help students with intellectual disability in their learning and increasing the speed of processing the given information.