Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects
Year:2020 | Volume:8 | Issue:3|Papers Count:6

Focusing on the two paths bala (=up) and payin (=down) and the combination of these two with the motion verbs rᴂ ftᴂ n (=go) and amᴂ dᴂ n (=come), the present research has attempted to make a comparison between the semantic frames of the verbs made out of the two paths in Persian and English so that it can examine the practicality of the FrameNet for describing the Persian language. To this end, a number of 120 sentences including the aforementioned path verbs were extracted from the major Corpus of Bijankhan and then, it was attempted to make a comparison between the semantic frames of each verb with their English counterparts via the FrameNet database. Ultimately, comparing the frames, the authors concluded that for those Persian path verbs which encode path or direction on the prefix adverb of the verb, the FrameNet provides a frame different from their English equivalents. On the other hand, in the current study, the metaphorical relationships of these verbs with other semantic frames were also addressed. The general conclusion was that language-specificity of the relation, the syntactic representation of the verbs, and different encoding of direction are good indication of the necessity of considering linguistic distinctions for additional practicality of the FrameNet to describe other languages.

This study aimed at investigating the speech act of condolence in Ilami Kurdish in the light of Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) speech acts theories. A discourse completion test (DCT) was developed to collect the data. It included 20 scenarios in which people usually express appreciation. The DCT was then completed by 240 Ilami speakers. The results illustrated 20 appreciation strategies out of which “ simple thanking” , “ recognition of imposition” , and “ repayment or promise to compensate” were respectively the most frequently used strategies. Also, 14 strategies were found to be unique for the Iranian or Islamic contexts, nine of which were different prayers (30. 7%) such as “ prayers for blessing increase” , “ being safe from predicaments” and “ health” . The other five strategies were more associated with ethical issues and focused on the complimenting the person and mentioning the favor they have done. Further, the results indicated that there is not a meaningful difference between males and females, and also between individuals in different age groups, education levels and occupations with regards to the use of thanking strategies.

In the present research, the lenition of stop consonants in Persian continuous speech has been investigated within the framework of laboratory phonology. Data were designed such that Persian stops were placed in three different consonantal positions, namely word initial, intervocalic word medial, and word final. Also, the stop consonants differed with respect to context (voiced vs. voiceless) as well as lexical stress (stressed vs. unstressed). Duration of stop consonants as well as their frequency of occurrence as stops, fricatives and approximants were computed. Results showed that voiceless stops resist lenition and do not lose their phonetic quality in any context. However, voiced stops show different magnitude of consonantal reduction depending on word position and context. This finding is in line with the phonetic approach to lenition, supporting the articulatory mechanisms underlying consonantal weakening, namely greater sonority, lesser articulatory effort and shortening. The results further agree with perceptual constraints underlying consonantal lenition which assume that stop consonants are more likely to be weakened inside a prosodic unit like a word rather than at its edges, also in intervocalic position, as they are surrounded with more sonorant sounds, and they are more likely to turn into approximants than fricatives.

Since transitivity is a crucial and applied concept in language and discourse, its analysis can provide answers to many questions in child language studies. Transitivity in semantic-discoursal approach of Hopper and Thompson theory involves a number of components, only one of which is the presence of an object of the verb. The other components are the punctuality and telicity of the verb, the agency of the participant, and the affectedness of the object. To this end, 100 declarative clauses from 4 children around 3 were analyzed. We analyzed different parameters of Hopper and Thompson theory in Persian child language to see if there are any differences in identified parameters between child and adult language. Properties of the prototypical transitivity and its occurrence in Persian child language were also studied. The data analysis method was descriptive-analytic. The results showed all components of Hopper and Thompson theory have morphosyntactic and semantic manifestations in Persian child language. Features such as participants, kinesis, volitionality and affectedness of the object have higher frequency in child language than that of the adults which result in higher transitivity of clauses in child language. All ten parameters identified in this theory are present in the prototypical transitive clauses in Persian child language. The prototype of a transitive construction in child language involves an animate being (perhaps the child itself) acting on an animate object.

The main objective of the current study is to examine the constructions containing jɑ-/-je in Laki within the framework of Goldbergˊ s Constructional Grammar on the basis of a descriptiveanalytic method. Data was collected in a survey recording the daily speech of speakers aged 50-60 which were finally analyzed based on the theoretical framework of the study as well as the linguistic intuition of one of the authors as a native speaker of the dialect. Findings of the research indicated that when jɑ-/-je constructions come with sentences such as transitive, intransitive, causative, unergative, and unaccusative the participant agent cannot be present as a direct subject and also when this construction comes with intransitive unergative sentences containing agent, it leads to deletion of participant agent syntactically. Thus, this construction does not only occur with two predicate verbs but also comes with one predicate verbs. The study also reveals that although the presence of jɑ-in the sentence leads to deleting the participant agent syntactically, it continues to remain present semantically.

Khezeli Kurdish dialect is a branch of the South-Western Iranian languages family. The purpose of this research is to describe the verbal inflectional categories of Khezeli and to investigate the analyticity/syntheticity degree of these categories. The data were extracted from a corpus of audio files and transcribed notes gathered from native speakers living in Karezan district of Ilam province. The tense, mood, and aspect categories in Khezeli are coded fusionally. Thus, these three categories were investigated as one category called tense-aspect-mood (TAM) category. The results indicated TAM category is coded both synthetically and analytically. In addition, the voice, polarity, agreement and causative categories are generally synthetically coded. The category-per-word value (cpw) is determined by counting the number of the inflected categories in the maximally inflected verb form. The obtained cpw value for Khezeli is 6-7 and, in this regard, Khezeli Kurdish dialect is classified among the most common languages of the world.