Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects
Year:2021 | Volume:9 | Issue:2|Papers Count:7

The growth of economic, cultural, and political exchanges among different countries has led to the formation of new scopes in the translation profession. The legal and political significance of organizational titles and commercial brands has caused the translation of these elements to be in need of extreme precision and dependent upon particular linguistic and technical considerations. The present study is a field research with a linguistic perspective on the translation of brand and organization names from Persian to English. While analysing the syntactic structure of such names and presenting different methods for their translation, a new classification of translator errors in rendering such structures is provided. The results indicate that four types of error are more common, namely: 1. mistaking a proper noun for a common noun and the reverse, 2. grammatical mistakes, 3. combined errors (grammatical & lexical) and 4. lexical errors. The findings also reveal that the recognition of the linguistic elements forming organizational and brand names, especially the combination of proper and common names, knowing the international conventions in their translation, as well as attention to cultural considerations are preconditions of an appropriate translation of such titles, and translators should receive special training in this regard.

Cleft lip and palate is an innate malformation in a person’ s palate and upper lip which causes disorder in vocal tract. The present article aims to study vowel space in children with repaired cleft lip and palate and compare it to their normal peers with disability and voice as factors. So, Persian vowels were studied in CVC framed words. These words were produced by 12 participants, 6 children with repaired cleft lip and palate and 6 normal children, and were recorded using PRAAT software. Then, first and second formants were measured and after that the data was analyzed statistically. The results revealed that the effect of disability on first formant of vowels [æ , e, u], and second formant of vowels [æ , ɒ , o, u] is significantly different. The results also showed that the effect of voice on first formant of vowels [æ , e] is significantly different. Moreover, it was proved that the vowel space in children with cleft lip and palate is in lower place and near to the lips comparing to the vowel space in children with normal vocal tracts and vowel space in voiced context is different from voiceless context.

Mostly, several formal structures could be used to express a specific proposition. In fact, under different communicative circumstances, speakers choose a grammatical structure among different ones with the same proposition to express their idea. Different factors could affect such choice and in this research, we examine whether information structure has any effect on this matter. Generally, information structure focuses on studying paired sentences which are semantically identical, but not grammatically or pragmatically. One kind is multiple argument realization, in which a verb appears with its arguments in diverse formal structures with a single meaning. Therefore, we have analyzed some multiple argument realizations of two argument verbs in Persian based on the theory of information structure introduced by Lambrecht (1994). The data consisting of around 150 sentences in 50 multiple realizations, have been collected from a few Iranian newspapers and then studied in accordance with the mental states of the interlocutors and pragmatic relations, topic and focus. The analysis showed that the mental representation of discourse referents, pragmatic articulation of sentences along with different focus structures have an impact on shaping and using this kind of realization. Moreover, it has been found that processes such as preposition and topic promotion play an important role in this matter.

The present study aims to figure out Kurdish imperfective aspect in the framework of minimalist program. We try to determine not only the identity of the chain “ χ æ ri: k bu: n” , as a mechanism to make imperfective aspect in Kurdish, but also the way it combines with matrix verbs. Trying to find the identity of this chain, the findings reveal that “ χ æ ri: k” belongs to adjectives, although it is not able to modify nouns like attributive adjectives. Following Baker (2003), we prove that lack of phi-features is recognized as the main reason for this unique behavior. Moreover, unlike Dabirmoghadam (2013) who considers “ χ æ ri: k bu: n” as an auxiliary, we prove that this chain, made of the adjective “ χ æ ri: k” and the axillary “ bu: n” , is a conjunct verb. Like Punjabi (Gill and Gleason, 1969), this verb is used to express imperfective Aspect in Kurdish. To find the way it combines with matrix verbs, we show that this verb joins the matrix verb in the structure of serial verbs. Following Muysken and Veenstra (2006), we reveal that “ χ æ ri: k bu: n” is inside a minor Aspect Phrase (Asp P) which joins the main (Asp P) as an adjunct, repeating the level.

Using metaphorical address terms to represent sentiments and feelings is an important subject in studying societies. This research aims to study this sociolinguistic phenomenon from a cognitive perspective and has three objectives: finding types and frequencies of conceptual metaphors, their rate of occurrence in address terms used by the two age groups of young and middle-aged women and men, and the amount of metaphorical address terms among all kinds in Azeri Turkish of Khoy. The study employed content analysis and data are collected by field study from 100 native speakers using a questionnaire. Statistics indicated that following the classification of Lakoff and Johnson (1980), frequencies of metaphorical address terms in relation with each other were structural metaphors (267) cases, ontological metaphors (212) cases and orientational metaphors (3) cases. Findings indicated that: 1) the greatest amount of using metaphorical address terms belonged respectively to young women (%39. 17), young men (%28. 22), middle-aged men (%19. 30) and middle-aged women (%13. 31), 2) out of the total number of obtained address terms, (%55. 1) were related to metaphorical and (%44. 9) to non-metaphorical address terms. We can thus conclude that more than half of addresses in Khoy have a metaphorical nature.

The purpose of this study is to describe tense, aspect, and mood in Khezeli a member of the South-Western Iranian languages family. The data was retrieved from a corpus of audio files and transcribed notes gathered from native speakers living in Karezan district of Ilam province. Like many languages, in Khezeli, the tense, mood, and aspect categories are coded fusionally. Thus, these three categories were investigated as one category called tense-aspectmood category. The results showed that the future tense is not coded in this dialect. As a result, the context and time adverbials are the only devices to differentiate the future tense from the present tense. In addition, the past and present tenses as well as five aspects are inflectionally coded: perfective, progressive imperfective, non-progressive imperfective, perfect and nonperfect aspects. Khezeli also consists of five moods: indicative, indicative/injunctive, subjunctive, imperative, conditional/optative. It was revealed that perfect/non-perfect and perfective/non-perfect dichotomies are not the same in Khezeli; because, perfect/imperfective and non-perfect/perfective aspects can co-occur in this dialect. On the whole, Khezeli consists of 15 tense-aspect-mood categories. Four of them are in the present tense and the remaining eleven are in the past tense. All of the categories have subject-object case marking system.